On the morning of the verdict, the uncertainty woke Sherrone Jenkins up just before 5 a.m. She walked into the family room and sat in a brown chair, the gift of strangers maddened by the shooting death of her daughter three summers ago.

She prayed aloud in this small room, still thick with the memories of Sherdavia L. Jenkins, the daughter who never lived here.

Jenkins prayed that this would be the last day of the trial of Damon Darling. That he would be found guilty. That she could somehow summon a certain kind of resolve and grace to get through the day.

``I just kept saying, Lord, give me strength. I have waited three years for this to be over,'' she says, just hours before the verdict. ``I am tired.''

It's been three years and 100 days since Sherdavia was shot in the neck while playing on her front stoop, mercilessly trapped in the crossfire of a Saturday afternoon gunfight in the Liberty Square housing projects.

There was something about Sherdavia's death that rallied the community. Maybe it was that she was just 9, a child killed by an AK-47 assault weapon meant for warfare. Just before the second week of summer camp. Just six weeks before the fourth grade at Lillie C. Evans Elementary School. Or that she was gifted, scoring a perfect score on the math portion of the FCAT; a chess player who dreamed bigger than the sum of her life.

``That's the thing, Sherdavia was a blossoming life,'' says her father, David Jenkins, 36. ``Now all we have is a memory of who she was . . . and our imagination of who she would have become.''

Hers was a funeral that made warriors of mourners. Neighbors demanded what others had taken for granted: peaceful homes, quiet nights and most poignantly, playtime without gunfire. Countless vigils and marches were held in memory of Sherdavia and every other child claimed by Miami's streets. A butterfly garden and a park were named in her honor. The Jenkins parents pushed for stronger gun laws protecting children.

In the weeks after Sherdavia's death, the family moved to a safer three-bedroom duplex close enough to Liberty Square to hold onto precious friendships, far enough to start over.

`A LONG ROAD'

But this was a family fractured, two parents and four children who would often fall before they began to heal. The pain would manifest differently. Sherrone quietly raged; David talked his way through, needing to give voice to the loss.

``Even today, with a verdict you are still dealing with a family torn apart and a hurting community,'' says the Rev. Anthony Dawkins, who has counseled the Jenkinses since Sherdavia's death. ``It's such a long road, a long stretch. They are still healing.''

Here's a family, ordinary in its flaws and triumphs, that has tried to recover from an unimaginable loss in ways that are both honest and courageous and real.

Perhaps most importantly, the Jenkinses have forgiven the two men charged with Sherdavia's murder -- one plea-bargained, the other was found guilty of manslaughter. That may well have been the longest, toughest road traveled.

``That's all I used to think about, being a vigilante, seeking my own justice,'' David Jenkins admits. ``Now I trust the justice system.''

Most every day is still a balancing act, a delicate struggle for some sort of normalcy -- whatever that means -- while holding tight to memories of a daughter and sister.

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