Nineteen Minutes Read online

  Lacy emptied the contents of her wallet into the coffee can, bills and coins. Numb, she walked out of the gas station, leaving the carton of milk on the counter.

  She had nothing left inside. She'd given it all to her son. And that was the greatest heartbreak of all--no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through.

  *

  Ervin Peabody, the professor of psychiatry at the college, offered to run a grief session for the entire town of Sterling at the white clapboard church in its center. There was a tiny line item in the daily paper and purple flyers posted at the coffee shop and bank, but that was enough to spread the word. By the time the meeting convened at 7:00 p.m., cars were parked as far as a half mile away; people spilled through the open doors of the church onto the street. The press, which had come en masse to cover the meeting, was turned away by a battalion of Sterling policemen.

  Selena pressed the baby closer against her chest as another wave of townspeople pushed past her. "Did you know it was going to be like this?" she whispered to Jordan.

  He shook his head, eyes roaming over the crowd. He recognized some of the same people who'd come to the arraignment, but also a host of other faces that were new, and that wouldn't have been intimately connected to the high school: the elderly, the college kids, the couples with young babies. They had come because of the ripple effect, because one person's trauma is another's loss of innocence.

  Ervin Peabody sat in the front of the room, beside the police chief and the principal of Sterling High. "Hello," he said, standing up. "We've called this session tonight because we're all still reeling. Nearly overnight, the landscape's changed around us. We may not have all the answers, but we thought it might be beneficial for us to start to talk about what's happened. And maybe more importantly, to listen to each other."

  A man stood up in the second row, holding his jacket in his hands. "I moved here five years ago, because my wife and I wanted to get away from the craziness of New York City. We were starting a family, and were looking for a place that was . . . well, just a little bit kinder and gentler. I mean, when you drive down the street in Sterling you get honked at by people who know you. You go to the bank and the teller remembers your name. There aren't places like that in America anymore, and now . . ." He broke off.

  "And now Sterling's not one either," Ervin finished. "I know how difficult it can be when the image you've had of something doesn't match its reality; when the friend beside you turns into a monster."

  "Monster?" Jordan whispered to Selena.

  "Well, what is he supposed to say? That Peter was a time bomb? That'll make them all feel safe."

  The psychiatrist looked out over the crowd. "I think that the very fact that you're all here tonight shows that Sterling hasn't changed. It may not ever be normal again, as we know it. . . . We're going to have to figure out a new kind of normal."

  A woman raised her hand. "What about the high school? Are our kids going to have to go back inside there?"

  Ervin glanced at the police chief, the principal. "It's still the site of an active investigation," the chief said.

  "We're hoping to finish out the year in a different location," the principal added. "We're in talks with the superintendent's office in Lebanon, to see if we can use one of their empty schools."

  Another woman's voice: "But they're going to have to go back sometime. My daughter's only ten, and she's terrified about walking into that high school, ever. She wakes up in the middle of the night screaming. She thinks there's someone with a gun there, waiting for her."

  "Be happy she's able to have nightmares," a man replied. He was standing next to Jordan, his arms folded, his eyes a livid red. "Go in there every night, when she cries, and hold her and tell her you'll keep her safe. Lie to her, just like I did."

  A murmur rolled through the church, like a ball of yarn being unraveled. That's Mark Ignatio. The father of one of the dead.

  Just like that, a fault line opened up in Sterling--a ravine so deep and bleak that it would not be bridged for many years. There was already a difference in this town, between those who had lost children and those who still had them to worry about.

  "Some of you knew my daughter Courtney," Mark said, pushing away from the wall. "Maybe she babysat for your kids. Or served you a burger at the Steak Shack in the summer. Maybe you'd recognize her by sight, because she was a beautiful, beautiful girl." He turned to the front of the stage. "You want to tell me how I'm supposed to figure out a new kind of normal, Doc? You wouldn't dare suggest that one day, it gets easier. That I'll be able to move past this. That I'll forget my daughter is lying in a grave, while some psychopath is still alive and well." Suddenly the man turned to Jordan. "How can you live with yourself?" he accused. "How the hell can you sleep at night, knowing you're defending that sonofabitch?"

  Every eye in the room turned to Jordan. Beside him, he could feel Selena press Sam's face against her chest, shielding the baby. Jordan opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't find a single word.

  The sound of boots coming up the aisle distracted him. Patrick Ducharme was headed straight for Mark Ignatio. "I can't imagine the pain you're feeling, Mark," Patrick said, his gaze locked on the grieving man's. "And I know you have every right to come here and be upset. But the way our country works, someone's innocent until they're proven guilty. Mr. McAfee's just doing his job." He clapped his hand on Mark's shoulder and lowered his voice. "Why don't you and I grab a cup of coffee?"

  As Patrick led Mark Ignatio toward the exit, Jordan remembered what he had wanted to say. "I live here, too," he began.

  Mark turned around. "Not for long."

  *

  Alex was not short for Alexandra, like most people assumed. Her father had simply given her the name of the son he would have preferred to have.

  After Alex's mother had died of breast cancer when she was five, her father had raised her. He wasn't the kind of dad who showed her how to ride a bike or to skip stones--instead, he taught her the Latin words for things like faucet and octopus and porcupine; he explained to her the Bill of Rights. She used academics to get his attention: winning spelling bees and geography contests, netting a string of straight A's, getting into every college she applied to.

  She wanted to be just like her father: the kind of man who walked down the street and had storekeepers nod to him in awe: Good afternoon, Judge Cormier. She wanted to hear the change in tone of a receptionist's voice when the woman heard it was Judge Cormier on the line.

  If her father never held her on his lap, never kissed her good night, never told her he loved her--well, it was all part of the persona. From her father, Alex learned that everything could be distilled into facts. Comfort, parenting, love--all of these could be boiled down and explained, rather than experienced. And the law--well, the law supported her father's belief system. Any feelings you had in the context of a courtroom had an explanation. You were given permission to be emotional, in a logical setting. What you felt for your clients was not really what was in your own heart, or so you could pretend, so that no one ever got close enough to hurt you.

  Alex's father had had a stroke when she was a second-year law student. She had sat on the edge of his hospital bed and told him she loved him.

  "Oh, Alex," he'd sighed. "Let's not bother with that."

  She hadn't cried at his funeral, because she knew that's what he would have wanted.

  Had her own father wished, as she did now, that the basis of their relationship had been different? Had he eventually given up hoping, settling for teacher and student instead of parent and child? How long could you march along on a parallel track with your child before you lost any chance of intersecting her life?

  She'd read countless websites about grief and its stages; she'd studied the aftermath of other school shootings. She could do research, but when she tried to connect with Jos