Forgiving My Daughter's Killer

by Kate Grosmaire

  After Andy graduated in 1986, we packed all our worldly belongings and drove to St. Petersburg, Florida. There, Andy began a new job as an auditor for a state agency, and Sarah began attending preschool at First United Methodist Church downtown. One day her preschool teacher pulled me aside and invited me to come to church on Sunday. Though I would’ve preferred a Catholic church, I wasn’t sure where Andy—who was still Presbyterian—would feel comfortable.

  The Methodist church might be a good compromise, I thought. And for a while, it seemed to be. When we joined the church, I didn’t need to renounce any of my Catholic beliefs or be rebaptized, which was a surprise to me after all the insults I’d received in Memphis from people of other Christian faiths. By the time God gave us another daughter in 1988, I was in the handbell choir, we attended church regularly, and Sarah had made little friends. We had our new baby, Allyson, baptized during the church service. I loved the Methodist way of performing baptisms, because it involved the entire congregation. During the ceremony, the congregants renewed their own baptismal vows and promised to help in the raising of Allyson. I loved how connected everyone was, in some small way, to every baby baptized into the church.

  But, in the spirit of “covering all bases,” I also took her to the chapel at St. Anthony’s hospital where I was the childbirth education coordinator and had her baptized into the Catholic Church.

  I thought my love for Allyson might just consume me. I was so proud to be the mother of two lovely little girls, and I was overjoyed to discover the following year that I was pregnant again! In fact, our little growing family was preparing for many transitions. By New Year’s Eve in 1990, we were on I-75 in a gigantic Ryder truck heading to Tallahassee, where Andy had been transferred for his job.

  Our new apartment was just big enough to house our two little girls and the baby on the way. Andy’s new position also brought a raise that was big enough to really affect our bottom line each month. Life was full of possibility.

  One morning, about seven weeks after we arrived in Tallahassee, I was sitting in our apartment when a horrible thought seized me.

  “I haven’t felt the baby kick all morning,” I told Andy over the phone. Since Andy was at work, I rushed to the doctor’s office alone to get checked out—where an ultrasound confirmed my worst fear.

  My baby had died.

  Unable to reach Andy at work, and knowing no one else in town, I climbed back into my car and sat there for a moment. The sun had warmed the car so that it was terribly hot.

  My child had died within me.

  I drove home from the doctor’s office in a state of shock. As soon as I got home, I called my mother, who flew down from Memphis to help with the girls. The next day I would have to be induced, to labor and deliver my stillborn baby.

  “I don’t even know where the hospital is,” I said to Andy, who had to consult a map to get us there. We hadn’t planned on needing the hospital for another three months . . . and not under such circumstances.

  My mother stayed home with Sarah and Allyson as we drove away for the procedure. Left alone with nothing but two kids and a heart full of worry, she did the only thing she knew to do. She found our phone book and looked up all the local Catholic churches.

  “Hello, my daughter and her husband just moved here,” she would explain to anyone who answered the phone. “They don’t have a church home, and my daughter just lost her baby. Can you help?”

  Some of the church secretaries took notes; others promised to pray. But then a young priest at St. Thomas More, Father Tom Guido, picked up the phone. After listening to my mom’s story, he said, “I’ll be right there.”

  He immediately drove all the way across town to Tallahassee Community Hospital, to the bedside of a couple he had never met. Imagine our surprise when a priest showed up—someone we didn’t know—during one of the toughest moments of our lives. Though it was a little awkward, I marveled at Father Tom’s willingness to drop everything and come to the hospital to help people who didn’t even attend a Catholic church . . . all on the insistence of a worried Catholic mama. That’s a servant. He prayed with us, offered us what comfort he could, and—two days later—prayed with us again at the funeral of our infant daughter.

  “Your sister’s spirit isn’t in that tiny casket,” I said to Sarah, who was six years old at the time. “She’s with Jesus in heaven.”

  Saying that out loud comforted me in a way I had not expected. Until that point, I was focused on her earthly life, her physical connection to me. But really, I had the promise of a life in heaven with her forever.

  Her name was Caitlin.

  The next time I walked into church, I felt like a stranger. Deep loss sometimes does that. It separates. Because most of the people there had no idea of the loss we had just experienced, there was a part of me they’d never know. A support group called The Compassionate Friends helped me go through my grieving process alongside other parents who had lost children. It put me back on the path to a normal life, and soon thereafter, I saw those two blue lines once again.

  “Are you ready to do this again?” I asked Andy.

  It was the fifth of March when we casually strolled into the hospital for Ann’s birth. She was a week overdue, and a nonstress test just the day before had showed that I was already having minor contractions. The plan was to give me a little medicine—Pitocin—to jump-start things a little. The births of my other children weren’t easy—a C-section, followed by a VBAC with an epidural—so I had vowed to do this one as naturally as possible. A midwife, no pain medicine, and a bouncing baby.

  It was a noble plan.

  “Call Dr. McDavid,” I told the midwife as the contractions became too much to bear. “I want an epidural or a C-section, now!”

  I’d made a big deal out of not wanting either of those for the past few months. But now, I’d had enough.

  “Sure,” she said calmly. “Let me talk to him and I’ll be right back to you.”

  She returned to the room a few minutes later and just as calmly said, “How about we just give you a shot for pain, and we’ll see how you do with that?”

  “It won’t be enough!” I shouted. I was far beyond caring that my crazy had leaked out.

  “Let’s just see what this does,” she said, injecting the cool, soothing medicine into my arm. “Then we’ll decide from there.”

  It was all I needed. After the medicine took the edge off, I quickly dilated to ten centimeters and pushed out a beautiful, ten-pound baby.

  “Look at that!” the midwife exclaimed. “It’s a girl!”

  For some reason I felt a huge sense of accomplishment over her size and health. I held her immediately and looked at her face. We hadn’t decided on a name yet, so I was looking for inspiration.

  “Who are you?” I whispered, running my finger over her lips. Sarah and Allyson, whom my mom had brought to see the baby, provided many helpful suggestions.

  “We got it,” Sarah told me excitedly. “Rainbow Dolphin Star Heart!”

  They had come up with a name that included four of their favorite things. Even though the girls had already settled the issue in their minds, inspiration still hadn’t struck Andy and me by the time we were leaving the hospital. In the hallway, a clerk stopped us.

  “You haven’t filled out your birth certificate form yet.”

  “Yes, I have,” I responded.

  “But you haven’t filled in the name.”

  “And?”

  “You have to give her a name before we can let you take her home.”

  “Really?” I asked, incredulous. Had National Geographic filmed our interaction, they could’ve made a thirty-second documentary on what happens when a hospital staffer steps between a mother and her newborn. “You’re going to take my baby away from me? Only because I haven’t decided on a name?”

  I had worked before at a hospital as a birth certificate clerk. On a few occasions I’d let a baby go home without a name, so I knew she was being difficult.


  “I’ll let you know when we decide,” I said as we left with our unnamed bundle of joy.

  After we got home, we discussed the main contender for her name: Ann Margaret. Ann because both my middle name and my mother’s name is Ann. Margaret because both Andy and I had a grandmother named Margaret.

  “Should we worry about people comparing her to the Ann-Margret?” Andy asked. We certainly didn’t want her to get teased her whole life for having the same name as a sexy starlet who appeared in Elvis flicks.

  “No one ever really knows your middle name anyway,” I said. “I think it’ll be fine.” And so, the unnamed baby became Ann Margaret Grosmaire.

  Ann Grosmaire, I typed.

  I never thought I would be putting her carefully selected name into an Internet search to find an article about her shooting.

  When the results came up, I steeled my nerves and forced my eyes to look at the screen.

  TEENAGER SHOT IN NORTHERN LEON COUNTY

  IN CRITICAL CONDITION AT TMH

  A 19-year-old woman is listed in critical condition this evening at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, the victim of a gunshot wound.

  According to the Leon County Sheriff’s Office, 19-year-old Conor McBride went to the Tallahassee Police Department at about 2:15 p.m. today and announced that he had killed his girlfriend.

  When officers arrived at McBride’s parents’ house . . . in northern Leon County, they discovered Ann Grosmaire, 19, alive in the house.

  Grosmaire had been shot and was unresponsive, according to LCSO. She was taken to TMH.

  McBride is being interviewed at the LCSO office.

  Conor, I thought, what were you thinking? Why did you just drive around and leave my daughter all by herself? Was she afraid? Aware at all?

  “Mr. and Mrs. Grosmaire,” a nurse said. “You can come back and see Ann now.”

  We walked back to her room, where Ann was lying in a bed. Her head was still bandaged, and the machines keeping her alive whooshed rhythmically.

  “Do you think I can touch her?” Andy asked. He didn’t want to hurt or further endanger her. Her condition just seemed so precarious. I could tell Andy was worried that he would make things worse, but how could that be possible?

  “Be open to seeing glimpses of God,” Father Will said to Andy and me that day at the hospital. “Open your eyes and notice the divine during this trying time. God is with you. Notice it.”

  Glimpses of God? Well, we definitely saw God in the way our friends and family responded when they heard the news. They kept arriving at the hospital, overflowing from the little area set aside for loved ones as the information ripped through our community like an earthquake. Some people grabbed their purses and their car keys and headed straight to the hospital. Others immediately began praying. Still others began asking around, wondering how to meet any physical needs we had. Even though they couldn’t really do much to help, they headed to the hospital with hearts full of sorrow and mouths full of petitions to God.

  The hospital staff provided more room for our loved ones, and Andy left Ann’s room to thank them for coming. Suddenly he was in the position of comforting the friends who’d shown up from church and work. While he was out in the visitors’ area, one of Andy’s coworkers—Janet—quietly came up to him and motioned to a man standing near the elevator.

  “Who’s that?” she whispered. Andy looked at the man. His hair was gray, almost white. Dark eyes. He slouched against the wall as if he wanted it to absorb him.

  “Is that Conor’s father?” Janet asked. Conor had worked for Andy’s office, and Janet knew him. “He looks an awful lot like Conor.”

  Andy walked through the sea of well wishers, deliberately making his way to the man. He wasn’t sure what he would say, but he crossed the room of people with a rare single-mindedness and purpose.

  When he finally got to him, the two men looked at each other.

  Frequently in times of tragedy, the community blames the parents of the perpetrator. After school shootings, for example, the media and the culture come down hard on the parents.

  Why didn’t you see this coming?

  What did you do so wrong to create such a monster?

  Instead, Andy knew that Michael McBride, in many ways, was the only other person in the hospital who could begin to grasp what he was feeling.

  They were both fathers who had lost a child. Though Ann was in a hospital room and Conor was somewhere in jail, deep down they both knew they’d irrevocably lost their children.

  When Andy’s eyes met Michael’s, he didn’t punch him in the nose or start screaming obscenities. Rather, he reached his arms around him and pulled him into his chest. I’ve always compared Andy to a big teddy bear, calm and loving. Kind and compassionate.

  The hug lasted for a few seconds—seconds packed full of emotion and regret.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Andy finally said. “But I may hate you by the end of the week.”

  Michael simply nodded.

  “Do you want to see Ann?” Andy asked.

  CHAPTER 4

  Three weeks before their high school prom, about a year before Ann was shot, she and Conor went out on a date. They had been dating for two years, and there was no doubt that they would attend prom together. I appreciated Conor for many reasons. He had a solid head on his shoulders, he seemed to really care about academics, and Ann was crazy about him. I developed a sweet, nurturing relationship with him . . . one that Andy did not strive to replicate. Andy is sometimes known as “Mister Uh-oh” at work because he’s called in when things have gone bad—or, if someone needs to be let go, people always say “Uh-oh!” when they see him. I’m not sure what kind of boy Ann could’ve brought home that would’ve pleased Andy . . . and the guys seemed to pick up on that.

  I looked through the upstairs window and saw Conor pulling in to drop Ann off. It seemed like only five minutes had passed when I noticed Ann speeding out of the driveway in her car.

  “Andy, where’s Ann going?” I asked.

  “She just got a call from Conor,” Andy said. “He’s been in an accident.”

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I had just seen him with my two eyes in what seemed like seconds ago.

  “Let’s go see if he needs help,” I said.

  About a mile from our house, we saw Ann’s Volvo pulled over on the side of the road. The ambulance and the police car were already there, lights flashing. Conor’s vehicle had rolled over completely and was back on the right side of the road. The front of the car had been smashed down more than the back. The wind-shield was completely shattered.

  Conor was conscious and sitting in the ambulance. His face was covered in tiny cuts, but otherwise he seemed fine.

  “The car hit the tree and rolled over,” said the sheriff. “You can see the scrapes on the top of the car where it slid down the pavement.”

  “How could he have survived that?” I asked while looking at the car. “It seems like a miracle.”

  “Well, the Honda has side air bags as well as front,” he said. “It may have been a miracle, but those air bags helped. He must have been going sixty miles per hour.”

  Ann told us that Conor had seen a deer crossing the road. He went off to the right, then overcorrected and hit the tree.

  “I haven’t ever seen deer on this road,” I said. Though I didn’t say it at the time, it seemed sort of suspicious that a deer had caused such a bad wreck. Part of me wondered if he had simply been speeding on the road and gotten careless. Shortly after those thoughts went through my mind, his dad parked behind us and walked up quickly.

  “Where’s Conor?” he asked, his voice full of concern and emotion.

  He would be fine, of course.

  I sat next to Ann and watched her in the hospital bed.

  Oddly, I didn’t feel like I was helping her by being there. I was in the room with her, but I had no sense of her being there, or of her being aware of my presence. She looked asleep, but I didn’t feel any o
f the warm feelings of comfort I used to feel when she was a child who had finally drifted off.

  Instead I felt cold.

  When Andy came into the room, I looked up and smiled, welcoming the company. He had someone with him. I felt a hint of recognition. Someone from church? From Andy’s work? I was not familiar with all his coworkers and employees.

  The man had slumped shoulders and a frown etched on his face. As he followed Andy into the room, I stood to greet him. The bed was between the door and my chair. When our eyes met, I gradually recognized him.

  Michael McBride?

  I paused.

  Can I go to him?

  Without even a second to contemplate what I was doing, my feet answered my own question. I walked around the bed. Even as I approached him, I thought, Can I embrace him? That was the word in my mind.

  Embrace.

  The Holy Spirit is sometimes described as a wind, without shape or form. In that moment this mysterious, unseen force propelled me across the room, around the foot of my unconscious daughter’s bed, to the father of the boy who put her there.

  Can I embrace him?

  Again, my body answered my own question. I don’t know what I would’ve done had I been the one to see Michael as he stood by the elevators. I don’t know what it would’ve been like if Michael had waited until the next day to come to the hospital. But in that moment, in Ann’s quiet, semidark hospital room, God’s grace moved me across the room, and my arms reached out and hugged him.

  Crossing that room, I took the first steps of my journey of forgiveness.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I haven’t been able to talk to Conor yet. We were on vacation, so I drove straight here.”

  After talking for a few minutes, I left to see who was in the waiting room. I hadn’t wanted to sit in Ann’s room for a long period of time, but I didn’t want her to be alone. Since Andy was there to take a shift, I walked out of Ann’s room and into the hallway teeming with people—congregants, friends, family. At the time, Andy had started a five-year program to become a deacon in the Catholic Church. Cindy, the wife of another man in the program, had seen the news online and told her husband, “We have to go to the hospital.” My husband knew her husband well, but the wives only got together one day a month for a retreat. Even though we wives weren’t terribly close, she did whatever was necessary to take care of the people in our group.