July 23, 2017 became one of those dates that would remain buried in paperwork long after the emotions surrounding it had faded.
According to a Missouri Children's Division letter dated September 20, 2017, a report of concern regarding a child or children had been received on July 23.
The letter was addressed to me at our Bates City, Missouri home.
A family assessment was completed.
And then the part that stood out to me:
“A Family-Centered Services case will not be opened.”
That sentence matters because it is easy for someone reading a report years later to see only the existence of a report and assume the worst.
But a report is not the same thing as a finding.
An allegation is not automatically a fact.
An investigation is not automatically proof.
And the letter did not say that the allegations were substantiated.
It said the assessment had been completed and that a Family-Centered Services case would not be opened.
I would eventually learn how important it was to separate those things.
At the time, though, I wasn't studying the language.
I was living it.
My life was already becoming complicated.
Jon and I had children.
We had jobs.
We had money problems.
We had relationship problems.
We had family problems.
And we had a growing collection of situations that seemed to generate paperwork.
Some of the evidence I later found was incredibly ordinary.
Messenger conversations.
Phone problems.
Money.
Food.
Hotels.
Work.
Housing.
Trips to Iowa.
Arguments.
People asking one another for help.
Those ordinary details became important because they showed what our lives actually looked like during periods when everything was unstable.
One conversation involved Jon communicating with his mother Marty.
There were discussions about an AT&T phone account, temporary PIN numbers, and getting a phone turned back on.
At one point, Jon said that if he could get $300, he could go into the AT&T store and try to turn the phone back on.
Another message said he had been on hold for thirty minutes, had paid $300, and still didn't know whether it was enough.
There were conversations about a phone, money, paperwork, work, and people trying to figure out where they were going to be staying.
Some of the messages were hostile.
Some were confusing.
Some involved other people whose identities and roles I still cannot completely establish from the messages alone.
There were references to paperwork being taken back and to letting someone's family think that Jon had left.
There were conversations about girls going swimming and microwave popcorn.
There were conversations about work.
There were conversations about waiting for a paycheck.
There were conversations about selling tools.
There were conversations about going to Iowa.
There were conversations about paying for a hotel.
There were conversations about buying a phone at Walmart.
None of these things, standing alone, explained our lives.
Together, they showed something else.
Instability.
Jon was frequently struggling with money.
At another point, he contacted Joey Thomas asking for $100 because, according to the message, they had nothing to eat and Marley needed a costume for school the next day.
Joey asked what had happened to $6,000.
Jon explained that his mother had to start over financially because a house they had planned to rent had fallen through.
There were messages about being out of gas.
There were messages about not having a working phone.
There were messages about having to drive to Lenexa to tell a contractor he was done with a job because he couldn't call or text anyone.
There was a message in which Jon said, “I swear to god joe this is the last time I'll ask.”
There were also references to his having gotten out of prison and having saved money for a house.
Again, that was Jon's own statement in a private conversation. It did not, by itself, tell me exactly which prior case or sentence he was talking about.
There were also references to $10,000.
There were discussions about commissions being cut in half.
There were references to work, housing, food, children, and transportation.
At one point, Jon said they were starting to even out and making some housing moves.
Then another message appeared to have been sent to the wrong person, followed by an explanation that it was intended for his dentist.
There were also conversations about a hotel room.
Jon asked Joey if he could call and pay for their room for the night because it was about $48.
Joey asked for the direct line and room number.
Jon gave him the information.
The messages show the request.
They do not independently prove whether the payment was ultimately completed.
That became another lesson for me.
A message can prove that someone said something.
It cannot necessarily prove that what they said actually happened.
A screenshot can show a conversation.
It cannot automatically tell you everything that happened before or after it.
And a police report can tell you what an officer wrote.
It cannot automatically turn every statement in that report into a proven fact.
I began seeing the same problem everywhere.
The more records I collected, the more I realized that my life had become a giant puzzle made out of different kinds of evidence.
There were court documents.
Police narratives.
Letters.
Text messages.
Social media.
Financial records.
Search warrants.
Protection orders.
And memories.
My memories mattered.
But they were not the same thing as a court record.
A police officer's statement mattered.
But it was not the same thing as a conviction.
A court finding mattered in a different way.
And a dismissed case mattered too.
Because dismissal meant something had happened in the legal system, but it did not necessarily mean that every allegation surrounding the case was true or false.
The distinctions became especially important when I started looking at the Iowa records.
The same names appeared again and again.
Jon Martinac.
Katherine Martinac.
Different case numbers.
Different years.
Different types of cases.
Some were civil.
Some were criminal.
Some involved protection orders.
Some involved search warrants.
Some were traffic-related.
Some involved allegations of drug activity.
Some were dismissed.
Some continued.
And eventually, some resulted in convictions.
I was no longer just looking at one incident.
I was looking at a history.
And that history was beginning to explain why I had spent so many years feeling like I was constantly trying to put out fires.