The Guilty - Jason Pinter [58]
bottle hit the ground when I dropped it. Or the announcement
that my plane was boarding. All I could see was that headline:
"He Left Me Bleeding On The Street"
Mya Loverne, David's daughter, comes clean about
the relationship that nearly ended her life
by Paulina Cole
27
Just months ago, voters looked at congressional candidate
David Loverne as a man who held family above all else.
A beautiful wife, Cindy. An ambitious daughter, Mya.
But all this is gone after a series of revelations that
have shocked New Yorkers and destroyed a family that
seemed indestructible.
David Loverne is being accused of perpetuating a
long affair with a former aide, Esther Margolis. Ms.
Margolis claims she is pregnant with Loverne's child,
and that Mr. Loverne paid her sums totaling nearly ten
thousand dollars in order to keep quiet and raise the
child alone. Mr. Loverne refused comment for this article, but Ms. Margolis said, "I couldn't face looking at
my son years from now and lying to him about who his
father is."
I read the rest of the article, my heart hammering, hands
shaking. Then I came to a line that nearly had me shouting
in anger. It read: Yet David and Cindy Loverne are not the only
members of the Loverne family whose world has been shat-
tered.
The Guilty
175
Mya. Paulina was going to exploit Mya's fragility to sell
newspapers. I read on, rage building inside me.
When you first look at Mya Loverne, you see a
woman brimming with potential. Young, with strong
green eyes, a confidence and solidarity that tells you
she's taken on everything the world has thrown at her.
At first glance you would think the world is this young
woman's oyster.
But that isn't the case. In fact, far from it.
In the last eighteen months, Mya Loverne has been
attacked. She's had her bones broken by an attempted
rapist. And she's been abandoned by the one person
who promised to be there for her.
For Mya Loverne, the wine has grown warm, the
roses wilted. The one person to whom this misery can
be pinned is Gazette reporter Henry Parker, with whom
Mya ended a three-year relationship last summer. The
relationship was halted in the most disgusting, careless
way possible, when Henry dumped Ms. Loverne for another woman. This was prior to Mr. Parker being accused of murder, a charge that was not pursued, despite
a nationwide manhunt that left several dead.
"We shared our bed and our lives for almost three
years," Mya told me when we met yesterday at a coffee shop near her apartment. "Do you know what it's
like to have someone know every intimate detail of
your life and then not even return your phone calls?"
The original sin, however, was the night last year when
Mya was attacked while on her way home from a party.
"A man pulled me into an alley," Mya told me, the
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pain from that night still evident in her eyes so many
months later. "He wanted to rape me. He told me he was
going to hurt me."
In an effort to call for help, Mya pressed the redial
button on her cellular phone. It dialed the last number
she'd called. Her boyfriend, Henry Parker.
"I called him while this man was on top of me," Mya
said. "And Henry hung up."
Thankfully Mya, ever resourceful, was able to get a
shot of pepper spray off, deterring her attacker from
committing the heinous crime of rape. It did not, however, prevent him from breaking Mya's jaw in retaliation. Henry Parker, though, did not see Mya until the
next day, when after a frantic night of phone calls from
Mya's parents they were unable to locate him. The reason they couldn't find Henry?
"He told me," said Mya, "that after he hung up he
turned his cell phone off."
We all know how Henry Parker has destroyed the
family of his former pursuer Officer Joseph Mauser, deceased, John Fredrickson, deceased, and Linda Fredrickson, widowed. We have seen the careless havoc he
has wrought upon the lives of good and decent people
like Mya Loverne. And yet he is allowed to cover the
news for this city's "esteemed" newspaper, the Gazette.