The county attorney charged Beatrice and Brenda with malicious punishment of a child in the fourth degree and Raymond with fifth-degree domestic assault.

All three were gross misdemeanors.

Nobody went to prison, which I had known from the second week and which took me about a year to make peace with.

What they got was probation, court-ordered programming, a no-contact order, and a permanent public record.

Beatrice and Brenda are both on the state maltreatment registry, which means neither will ever work with children or vulnerable adults, which mattered to Brenda in a practical way and to Beatrice in a way that mattered more.

Brenda additionally pled to theft in the fifth degree for the bracelet and to a felony for something else entirely, which came out during the financial disclosure — she had falsified two loan applications, and her employer, an insurance company, found out in the ordinary way, which is that a background re-check flagged the charge.