Rehoboth Beach is the Delaware setting of a pivotal interval in Christine Blasey Ford’s account: while her family gathered around her dying grandmother, a call from Anna Eshoo’s office prompted Ford to put her allegation against Brett Kavanaugh into a letter for the Senate Judiciary Committee. The place is presented not as a public political stage but as a family summer home, where a private decision about disclosure unfolded amid illness and impending loss.

A Family Visit in Late July

In the last week of July 2018, Ford returned to the Washington area after her grandmother suffered a stroke and was expected to die. Ford disliked flying, but traveled with her sons to stay with her parents at their summer home in Rehoboth Beach. The visit lasted ten days in hot, humid weather, placing the family together while her grandmother’s condition worsened.

The Call and the Letter

Ford’s parents did not know about her allegation, and she did not want to burden them while they cared for her grandmother. When an aide from Anna Eshoo’s office called, Ford stepped onto the porch for privacy. The aide asked her to write a letter describing what had happened with Kavanaugh for the committee, which held hearings on Supreme Court nominees. By then, Ford was accustomed to repeating the account, and the writing itself was straightforward; deciding whom to address it to was harder.

Privacy and the Choice of Recipient

The aide advised Ford to send the letter to both Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s top Democrat, and Chuck Grassley, its Republican chair. Ford worried that involving both senators would increase the chance that her name and story would become public. She sent the letter only to Feinstein, believing, on the basis of what Eshoo’s office had told her, that Feinstein would have to honor constituent confidentiality. Rehoboth Beach thus marks the setting for a consequential act of disclosure that was also an attempt to keep control over who could learn of it.