A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy(13)
With the two officers flanking me, I stood at my closet door. The realization I would have to select clothing to wear to Dylan’s funeral hit me like a punch in the gut; I was still hoping to be rescued from the truth. After a few deep breaths, I hung a brown tweed skirt, a white blouse, and a dark wool blazer on a single hanger.
? ? ?
Tom and I packed the car in a frenzy.
We had to go, but where? How could we bring this to someone else’s door? The road around our property was thick with media trucks and disaster tourists peering out of their cars. Once we passed the police barricade surrounding our house, we’d be at their mercy. To whose home could we bring a swarm of reporters and curiosity seekers—an inconvenient invasion of privacy at best, and the threat of outright danger at worst? We would arrive, not knowing when we would leave, and with a menagerie of sick and messy animals in tow. We needed help, but from whom?
Judy offered to host us at her house. Grateful to have an option, we agreed, and she left to get ready for us.
Byron wanted to pick up a change of clothes at his own apartment, but the idea terrified me. Could he think clearly enough to drive safely? Reporters and photographers surrounded our property, their cameras and sound equipment aimed toward our house from every vantage point. Would a similar reception greet Byron at his apartment? In truth, I simply didn’t want to let him out of my sight. I relented only after Byron reminded me his lease was in his roommate’s name: he’d likely be able to pick up a few things without attracting attention. He assured me he’d meet up with us later.
As we finished loading the car, some of our neighbors showed up carrying a roast beef wrapped in towels, a gift from yet another neighbor—probably her own family’s dinner. I’d been crying all day, but that act of spontaneous generosity set off a fresh jag. In just a few hours, we’d shed our old identities as valued members of a vibrant community to take on a new one: we were the parents of a perpetrator now, the agent of that community’s destruction. It felt significant, as I clutched the warm glass dish in my arms, that people would still be kind to us.
It was time to go. Some of our neighbors masterminded our escape: one opened the gate at the foot of the drive while another took his own car down to the bottom of the drive and skidded into the middle of the road, blocking anyone who might follow us. The rest of us raced after him in three separate cars—Byron in one, Alison in the next, with Tom and me in the last. As we careened out of the gate at top speed and flew down the dark, twisting road, I was thrumming with fear—of an accident, of exposure, of what would come next.
When Tom and I finally slowed down, we found ourselves alone for the first time since noon, driving aimlessly through the suburbs before our 8:30 meeting with our new attorney. I don’t know how or when Tom contacted him in the chaos, but they’d arranged a meeting in the parking lot of a convenience store near our house. This plan was so cloak-and-dagger that under any other circumstances I would have laughed. Once again, I thought: We are the last people in the world. There was no solace to be found in an old identity, though. Whatever was happening, it was happening to us—and it was happening because of whatever Dylan had done.
We still had little actual information about what had gone on in the school. We knew for sure only that Dylan had been seen inside with Eric during a shooting incident that left many killed and wounded, and investigators believed he’d been involved. I knew my son had died that day, but I did not know yet exactly what he had done.
As we slowly wound our way through the darkened suburb, Tom and I realized we were both having second thoughts about our plan for the night. We were worried Judy’s close connection to the community would mean we might be too exposed if we stayed with her. I was also afraid we’d put her family at risk. We needed a place to collapse and grieve. Mostly, we needed somewhere safe—a place to hide.
As parents and business partners and spouses, Tom and I were good at coordinating complicated logistics with each other, and we relied on those skills as we tried to figure out how to handle what the next few hours would bring, let alone the next few days. We had not yet begun the emotional work of grieving for Dylan, or of struggling to understand what led him to wreak such terrible destruction—a journey we would not weather together as smoothly.
That night, our sole focus was on the most basic of human needs: shelter. Hotels and motels were out of the question as the media flocked to Denver. We couldn’t give our distinctive last name at the front desk, or register with a credit card. We couldn’t leave town. Even if the police would allow such a thing, what would happen to Dylan?
A possibility entered my mind. Too absorbed in our own crisis, we’d barely considered what our friends and family members must have been going through as they watched the tragedy evolve, but Tom’s half sister Ruth and her husband, Don, lived in a quiet suburban neighborhood about twenty-five minutes away from the epicenter of the tragedy, and they did not share our last name. If they were willing to have us, their home would be a good place to be.
We didn’t see Don and Ruth often, although they had always been there for us. When we’d first moved to the Denver area, they’d been invaluable in helping me to get settled. After Dylan was born, Ruth was one of my only visitors at the hospital, as I hardly knew anyone else in town.
They were good people. When my children were small, we’d endured a long season of illness, passing chicken pox and a bad flu around the family for several weeks. On my birthday, I was too ill even to answer the doorbell when it rang; I dragged myself downstairs in time to see Ruth’s car pulling away down the drive—and at my feet, an entire home-cooked dinner, complete with a chocolate birthday cake and candles.