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  “Rachel talked frequently about the friendships she developed here in Akron and how grateful she was for her inner circle of friends. After spending the last three days here in Akron with this wonderful group of people, I can easily see why she felt so blessed to have developed these relationships.

  “They say if you can find one true friend in your life you are blessed. We are all so blessed because, in Rachel, we were privileged to have that one true friend. Matthew, chapter 5, verses 14–15, tell us, ‘You are like a light for the whole world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bowl; instead it is put on the lamp stand where it gives light to everyone in the house.’ Rachel has always been that bright light to all of us.

  “My husband, Mitch, is forever reminding our three boys that decisions shape our lives and ultimately shape who we become as individuals. We all have a question before us today, and that question is: what meaning will we attach to these events? If we choose tragedy, we all will lose. My challenge to all of us today, myself included, and what I would like to leave everyone with, is to take that piece of Rachel that we were so fortunate to experience and to hold it forever in our hearts. By allowing it always to inspire us to be better mothers, fathers, and friends, we will carry Rachel and Evan’s light forward.”

  Reverend Kirkpatrick thanked Carolyn, and asked Evan’s fifth-grade math teacher, Mr. Suder, to say a few words about his student. Suder was a short-statured, older fellow nearing retirement, who was known for his big heart, good cheer, and love of children. He talked about how Evan always had a smile on his face, and recalled his wonderful, infectious laughter, raising a chuckle when he told the story of the day Evan discovered the joy of mathematics. After a poor grade on a test, he suggested to Evan that if by some fluke he didn’t make it to the major leagues, he was sure to have a great career as a statistician, and then explained to him was that was. Evan quickly became an A student from that moment on. His voice then turned somber as he expressed the sadness all the teachers felt over the fact that Evan would not have the opportunity to continue to share his gifts. He then pulled himself up to his full height, apologized for the folly of a math teacher attempting to read a poem, and launched into Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death.” His rich, stentorian voice gave way to a whisper by the time he arrived at the last sentence.

  Reverend Kirkpatrick rose to end the service. Listening to the last two speakers, he had felt a shift come over him. He knew he would forever regret his actions this day if he did not summon the courage to at least make mention of Danny. He hesitated, looked out at the congregants, and noticed a woman with luminescent white hair sitting in the last pew, who seemed to know what was on his mind. This somehow gave him the reassurance he needed. He cleared his throat and began to speak without the slightest idea of what he was about to say, but confident that God would give him the right words.

  “We have spoken of Rachel and Evan, but have not mentioned Danny.” He felt the congregation rustle uncomfortably in their seats and perceived a collective gasp. The reverend was quite aware that many people in town, including some of the elders in his church, had vehemently objected to the idea of including Danny in the service in any manner.

  “However, I would be remiss if I did not at least remind us all that he, too, was a child of God, and that he, too, has passed into another life, prematurely, and will be missed.” Steve and Debby Turner looked down and then back up at the reverend with deep gratitude. To them, of course, Danny was their little boy, and would always remain so.

  “Most faiths embrace the concept of forgiveness, but for those of us who are Christians, we know that Jesus told us to ‘above all else, love one another,’ and that His words on the subject of forgiveness knew no bounds, even right up to the moment He uttered His very last few words, when He asked His father to forgive those who had persecuted Him because He knew they did not understand what they were doing. I ask that you each search your own hearts and attempt to find that same forgiveness, not only for Danny, but for anyone in your life whom feel you need to forgive, perhaps beginning with yourself.

  “When Jesus was asked how we should pray, he spoke the words we now call “The Lord’s Prayer.” So, please let us all stand, and hold the hand of the person next to us, and as we recite these words, I pray we set aside our grievances and listen with an open heart as if we were hearing them for the first time.”

  Initially, when the group stood and reached out to one another, the discomfort was palpable; yet by the time the end of the prayer was near, the timbre had escalated and the sanctuary reverberated with these familiar words:

  “And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, amen.”

  At that moment, a collective sense of hope descended on the group, and more than a few grievances were put to rest.

  CHAPTER 14

  Homecoming

  My mind is like a bad neighborhood;

  I try not to go there alone.

  —Anne Lamott

  THE FUNERAL WAS a desultory affair, made more so by the gray sky that threatened snow and the wind that whipped through the field and fluttered the canopy over the gravesite. Carolyn stood alone for a few minutes as Mitch helped to carry Rachel to her final resting place. After the ceremony concluded and the group dispersed, Mitch waited patiently while Carolyn took one last look into the open grave, and the cemetery workers began their chores. She realized it was time to leave when she noticed the practiced gaze of the crew chief that was intended to make it obvious this was not a spectacle intended for mourners.

  “There’s something I’d like to do before we head back home,” Mitch said as they trailed the last few cars out of the cemetery. Carolyn stared at him without saying anything, so he continued, “I’d like to go over to Nicholson’s Quarry, to the place where Danny ended it all.”

  “Why would you want to do that? Haven’t we seen enough horrible things over the last few days?”

  “I guess you could say I’m curious, and maybe it’s that, but I also feel as if we haven’t properly said good-bye to Danny yet.”

  Carolyn let out an intentionally disingenuous laugh. “Good-bye? I’m not so sure he deserves any more of a good-bye than he’s gotten.”

  “Well, I think we should try to keep in mind what Reverend Kirkpatrick said at the end of the service. Danny was a human being too, and our friend, and while it may be a little early to forgive him completely, I think we at least should try,” Mitch replied.

  “Mitch, I know that’s right. And I pray that I will one day get there, but right now, I’m not there yet.”

  “Okay, I know what you mean. But do me a favor, and just indulge me.” And off they drove to the ravine.

  The Akron Beacon Journal had printed several photos of the area, as well as a map pinpointing the exact location, so they expected to find a crowd when they arrived. They drove down a winding road for several miles and eventually came upon the spot. It was somewhat more obscure and out of the way than they had imagined, but they knew they had found it when they turned a bend and came upon a single police car parked in front of an opening between two boulders that were decorated with the now-familiar yellow crime-scene tape. The media had apparently moved on to the next juicy story, and so Mitch and Carolyn were alone with the police officer who was assigned to the site, save for one other car. He turned out to be the same uniformed policeman they had met the other day at Danny and Rachel’s house.

  Officer Ellis seemed relieved to have some company, and unlike at their previous meeting, was quite talkative. Because he knew Carolyn and Mitch were close friends of the family, he allowed them to walk to the edge of the cliff and peer over the precipice. The impression from the impact of the Escalade was fairly obvious, but the vehicle had been removed, and after just a few days the image was already somewhat obscured by leaves and other greenery. By next spring, the spot where Danny’s
car had settled would be an overgrown jumble of weeds and branches, and by the end of the decade, a new subdivision would be under construction and the Turner murders mythologized into just another local legend. But at this moment they were still very raw.

  The officer gestured toward the pathway between the two large boulders.

  “The owners of the quarry have agreed to put a metal fence between the two rocks. They’re afraid this might become one of those popular places for people to come and, ya know—”

  “Drive or jump off? You mean sort of like the Golden Gate Bridge,” replied Mitch, ever the architect.

  “Yeah, I guess that sort of thing,” Ellis replied. “Out here, it’ll probably also become one of those places where teenagers congregate when they’re bored on a Friday night and dare one another to do stupid things. It’s a pretty steep drop. It will be tempting to kids with nothing better to do,” he said, scratching his head.

  Mitch noticed Carolyn clutching one of the boulders and leaning over to stare into the ravine. He hustled over to grab her. “Whoa, honey, that’s not a safe place at all.” There was something about the look in her eye that scared Mitch, so he pulled her back. She broke free, fell to her knees on the gravel, and started pounding the ground.

  “Why, Danny? Why? Why? Why?”

  Mitch kneeled next to her with his arm around her and let her cry it out until she was finally ready to leave. The embarrassed police office retreated to the squad car and pretended to be otherwise occupied.

  An hour later, when they reached the interstate, they both breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of signs promising they were headed in the direction of Chesterland. They were looking forward to seeing the boys, and just being in their own home. They each craved some semblance of normalcy; Carolyn thought about taking a long, relaxing bath, and Mitch was anxious to put on his running shoes and run for several miles along his usual path.

  Much to the amazement of Mitch, Carolyn, and everyone who was close to the Turner family, Christopher adjusted remarkably well. He moved in with Maryann and her new husband, and his grandparents saw him almost every day, so he certainly didn’t lack attention.

  Mitch and Carolyn stopped over to visit with them from time to time, and were delighted to see that Christopher seemed happy and at peace with things. He talked with Mitch and Carolyn about his mom, dad, and brother, and about what had happened, but the tragedy didn’t seem to preoccupy him. His interests had more to do with the then and now. Carolyn and Mitch were somewhat relieved. While they were not convinced that Christopher was out of the woods, thus far he was doing remarkably well. Fortunately, Maryann wanted them to stay involved in Christopher’s life and they were determined and happy to do so. Things were not so sanguine in the Bianci household, however.

  An outsider looking in would have assumed life had returned to normal, but that was far from true. Things were starting to come apart at the seams.

  Mitch had returned to his role of running XAI. The biggest change in his work life was that he now had to travel a great deal, because his firm had successfully landed the Superfood Supermart account Mitch had been pitching the day he was abruptly forced to leave the office when his father-in-law called. He was required to go to Portland, Seattle, or San Francisco at least one week out of every month, because the first six stores were scheduled to open simultaneously in those markets the week before Thanksgiving—right around the one-year anniversary of what Mitch and Carolyn had euphemistically taken to calling “the events in Akron.”

  Mitch welcomed these changes; the challenges work provided engaged him intellectually and architectural problems provided a great distraction from bleaker thoughts. His newfound travel schedule gave him a fabulous excuse to get out of the house every few weeks and forget about the issues at home. In his mind, those issues all centered around Carolyn’s inability to shake her grief. She was an expert at hiding her true feelings from everyone in the world except Mitch, and so, in the privacy of their home, a pall was cast, and little by little it was starting to take a toll on their marriage. However, the issues didn’t all originate with Carolyn.

  Mitch was confused and frustrated by the way things were. He had grown weary of encouraging Carolyn to put things behind her, the way he had. He’d read the books on the various stages of grief, as had Carolyn, and they had each attended a few meetings of a support group that was held at a local church. Upon occasion she would be fine for a few days, or even an entire week, and then something would happen and she would be brought right back to the moment when she had learned of Rachel’s death. She hardly ever slept through the night anymore, seemed distracted all the time, and, of course, cried regularly. And he noticed that she did not want to leave the house by herself, not even to run a few errands. Some of her behavior was downright scary.

  One day in March, he stopped at the house unexpectedly in the middle of the afternoon, right before the boys were due home from school, and heard her in the basement listening to that final phone message from Rachel on the answering machine. The fact that she was listening to it was understandable, and he could appreciate why it was so important to her, but in the five minutes Mitch stood there, he overheard her replay it at least ten times. He could hear her weeping, but chose to head back to the office rather than try to deal with it. Of course he felt terribly guilty about abandoning her, but by now he was beginning to feel it was fruitless to attempt to comfort her. Lately, when he would talk to her about how things were starting to deteriorate in the family, they would simply wind up arguing. A few times in the last month, she had simply forgotten to get Frankie off the school bus, and she’d been called to pick him up back at school. For a conscientious mother like Carolyn, this would have been unthinkable in the past. Thus far, most of these issues had been fairly minor, but they were increasing in frequency, and he was frustrated by his inability to get her to talk honestly about what was going on with her.

  So, a mile down the road, he turned the car around and came home, ostensibly to comfort her, but in actuality to catch her in the act of doing something that he felt was pretty bizarre. He hoped a confrontation might cause a breakthrough.

  “Carolyn, what are you doing down there?”

  “Nothing, I was just cleaning up,” she said as she shoved the answering machine beneath the couch while Mitch bounded down the stairs.

  “Were you listening to Rachel’s message again?”

  “No, what makes you think that? I hardly ever listen to it anymore, you know that!”

  “Actually I don’t think that’s true and it bothers me that you’re not being honest with me about it.” He glanced down and saw the edge of the answering machine peeking out from beneath the couch. She grew furious when she followed his line of sight and realized she had been caught.

  “Okay, Mitch, so I did listen to the message. What’s so bad about that? It’s just comforting to hear Rachel’s voice. You don’t understand what I’m going through. Why do you have to be such a bully about it?”

  “Don’t understand? All I’ve been doing is living this nightmare since that day last November. It hasn’t been easy on me either, but I’m determined to move on. It’s really sick and unhealthy to listen to that tape over and over.” He was shouting now and so she shouted back.

  “I don’t listen to it over and over. I just listened to it once, and I hav—”

  “That’s a lie. I was standing upstairs before and heard you play it about a dozen times!”

  “You think I’m sick? What about you creeping around checking up on me in the middle of the day? Why don’t you just leave me alone? You can’t think about anybody but yourself! You don’t understand what I’m going through and you don’t even try!” She pushed past him and ran up the stairs.

  Mitch started to follow her, with the intention of winning the argument, when it dawned on him that he was being a bully. He was doing more harm than good and he needed to back off. This wasn’t one of those problems that he could wrestle to the ground and s
olve.

  Later that night, after they had given each other the silent treatment through dinner and long past the time they had put the kids to bed, Mitch finally saw the light and apologized. He felt bad about their argument earlier in the day, and knew he had only made matters worse. He knew that at times he could be impatient, and that was not going to help matters.

  “Honey, I have to tell you honestly that I’m worried about us in general, and I’m worried that things are never going to get better,” Mitch started. “You seem to be living a double life. You try to keep it together for the kids and the neighbors and even your parents, but behind the scenes and with me, well, it just seems like you’re never going to get over this. And now things are starting to happen that, well, just aren’t good. Half the time you don’t seem like you’re even here.”

  She winced at him, and was about to jump on the “double life” comment, but backed off when she saw that he was genuinely concerned. “I know that’s what it looks like, Mitch, but I think I’m getting better, and I don’t know what else to do. I can’t just wipe Rachel and Evan out of my mind. And sometimes I can see Danny doing that, you know, that night, and I get so damned angry at him, that I want to kill him! I’m going as crazy as he must have been, because I start to think about their last minutes, over and over, and I can’t get these horrible pictures out of my mind.”

  “Doesn’t it help to pray about this, honey? And what about that women’s support group at the church?”

  “Are you kidding? You see that closet over there?

  “Yeah. What about it?

  “When I can’t stand it anymore, that’s where I go and kneel on the floor and ask God to let me stop thinking, and stop hating and being so angry all the time. I must do that six or seven times a day, but I still can’t let go of this. It just seems like the world is such an awful place with so much misery. So hopeless and ruthless and random. Then I start to think that something awful is going to happen to you or one of the kids. Particularly the kids, to tell you the truth.