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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gregg Olsen
Read between
February 7 - February 7, 2024
When Shelly was a little older, Lara took her to dance lessons, but half the time the girl refused to go inside the studio. She’d skip the recitals too.
Shelly always looked distraught and upset, whatever we
nothing was good enough.
Shelly’s behavior began to change from being merely disruptive and ungrateful to dark and vengeful.
Every bit of attention to another person meant a deficit in what she ...
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paid, Shelly sought...
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sadi...
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“She used to chop up bits of glass and put them in the bottom of [the kids’] boots and shoes,”
Grandma Anna, Shelly’s paternal grandmother, was just that kind of person too.
Anna Watson,
it brought Lara a shudder of
Anna tipped the scales at more than 250 pounds, and her left foot dragged when she walked, emitting a scraping noise that let people know when she was coming or going.
She was absolutely right about everything, so much so that no one ever dared challenge
young wife, Lara. Anna ran one of...
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George Watson, was
He was kind.
standing four inches shorter, and did whatever his wi...
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George slept in a small eight-by-eight-foot shed just outside the back door to the kitchen. He never slept in the house, becaus...
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the family owned in Battle Ground.
Mary and Pearlie, Lara only ever heard Anna refer to them as her “retards.”
Dang.
Lara’s perspective, the women were nearly slaves to Anna. At home, Anna made them clean her house, do the dishes, wash the floors. She’d order them to stop whatever task they were engaged in to wash her feet, do her hair.
angry about something that she had held Pearlie’s head in the toilet bowl and repeatedly flushed.
Everyone, it seemed, but little Shelly.
motherhood. Since Shelly’s school was next to the nursing home, Shelly would often go to Grandma Anna’s after school instead of taking the bus home.
Anna knew what was best for Shelly.
Lara came to pick Shelly up and found her beautiful red hair all cut
The grandma Anna cut her granddaughter Shellys hair.
Making people unhappy was her way of having fun.
Shelly mainly served the role of protégé in her grandmother’s life. Grandma
Shelly would reveal just how good a student she’d been.
She was a no-show after school in March 1969.
Shelly hadn’t come home because she’d been taken to the juvenile hall detention center in Vancouver.
Lied about abuse of home at fifteen and a half
Her tone was cool.
berries. They appear to be delicious but are actually dangerous.
she used to steal my things and take money out of my purse. I
“Shelly has accused you of raping her,”
“She doesn’t probably know what it means,” Lara finally said, reaching over to calm her husband.
doctor Paul Turner
Shelly fancied herself a poet and was always writing something, but nothing Lara saw as she picked
True Confessions magazine.
The confessions magazine was under her bed about tape
“I WAS RAPED AT 15 BY MY DAD!”
one that mirrored exactly the cover of a magazine.
In the Watsons’ view, the magazine was proof nothing had actually happened, that the lurid story had merely been Shelly’s inspiration.
Les and Lara had had it with her.
She’s never even been touched.”
“She needs a psychologist.”
proved
she might have problems that needed fixing.
Nothing had ever been.
seventies: no one can help a troubled person who doesn’t think they need it.
