by Jessica Pack
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, stroking her hair with all the tenderness he had always had. He was her gift, her foundation, and her treasure. She shook her head, unable to speak, yet knowing he understood. They talked about everything—he knew every hurt and fear.
She cried for a long time, then finally lifted her face to look at him. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Paul would have confirmed it on his phone as soon as he woke up, then come looking for her.
He nodded. “Official time of death was 2:17, Central time.”
Melissa nodded and wiped at her eyes. “I need to call Mom; she said she’d be up early.”
“She just texted.” There was the barest hint of apology in his voice. Melissa waited for him to continue. “The press got her number. She’s been getting calls all morning but didn’t turn off her phone because the moving company hadn’t called to confirm their arrival. But I guess they just did, so she’s turning off her phone. She said she’ll call when she’s on the road.”
She didn’t want to talk to me, Melissa said to herself. She lifted a hand and smoothed her hair behind her ear as she slid off Paul’s lap. “She didn’t ask how I was doing.” It wasn’t a question.
“She’s overwhelmed, that’s all.”
Melissa stared into the fireplace. “What if this is a mistake?” she whispered. “What if she comes all this way and still isn’t . . . here.”
Paul put his arm around her shoulders and she relaxed back into him. “It’s going to be okay, Mel. Maybe not easy, maybe not right away, but it is going to be okay. Give her a chance.”
“I’ve given her a hundred chances.”
“Then giving one more won’t be too hard.”
5
Amanda
Five hours, fifty-two minutes
The first media van showed up at 8:05. Amanda had already hung up on five reporters by then. At 8:30 the movers finally called her to confirm her address. As soon as she hung up, she sent a text message to Melissa, explaining why she had to turn off her phone and promising a call later in the day. She shut off the phone. The silence was sharp and comforting. Amanda was good with silence.
A second van arrived at 8:40 and a third five minutes after that. At ten minutes after nine o’clock, the moving van backed into the driveway and Amanda opened the garage to allow the men easy access to the house. As the garage door lifted, anxiety peaked and rolled in her chest like those tiger cubs on TV that you know are perfectly capable of annihilating one another if they choose to. Amanda had to take deep breaths and repeat affirmations of strength and push-through-it. She never let anyone in. Not Mormon missionaries promising her peace. Not neighbors holding out wavering friendship. She hadn’t had her carpets cleaned or bugs sprayed for four years. She’d fixed her own sink, recalibrated her own furnace, and reattached a section of rain gutter all by herself. Thanks to YouTube videos and DIY bloggers, she’d managed to avoid asking anyone for anything. She’d have never hired help for the move if she’d been capable of hauling couches and mattresses on her own. Letting the five men wearing matching orange T-shirts that said COAST TO COAST MOVING in through the garage door seemed to shatter a little bit more of the haven her home had been. But maybe letting them in would make it easier for her to leave.
The burly men of various colors looked out the living room window at the press vans and then back to her. How she wished she could keep hiding. Instead, she gathered her fortitude and pulled her shoulder blades together, forcing herself to stand a little straighter and hopefully look a little more confident and comfortable than she felt. “I’m Amanda Mallorie,” she said. “My son was executed this morning. That’s why they’re here.” She waved through the window and worried the gesture looked as though she didn’t appreciate the intensity of what she’d said.
She watched their expressions shift; the supervisor seemed embarrassed for her, another blandly accepted the situation, two looked at each other with raised eyebrows as if to say, “Dude, did you hear that? This is that murderer’s house.” The fifth man’s face darkened as he put his hands in his pockets and turned away, staring out the window. Amanda wished she could tell them it was fine if they left, but she kept her mouth shut and her shoulders squared even though the panic chipped away at her ability to stay in this room with these strangers.
“If I ignore them long enough, they’ll leave,” she lied. The supervisor seemed to ponder another moment and then nodded. Thank goodness. “Thanks for explaining that, Mrs., uh, Mallorie.”
She’d used her maiden name on the reservation—not to be deceitful but because she always used her maiden name these days. She felt like a coward who had tricked these men into helping her. To apologize would make it worse, though, so she didn’t apologize. She didn’t say anything at all.
After another second, the supervisor turned to face his crew. “This is just like any other job. We’ll start with the basement and move our way up with the hope that we’ll finish loading the truck by noon.” He turned back to Amanda. “Did you put a yellow sticker on anything you don’t want us to put in the van?” She’d read the instructions that had been e-mailed to her several times.
“Yes,” Amanda said. “I’m leaving the major appliances and some tools in the garage.” She’d been sorting the house for months in preparation—taking apart what furniture she could manage herself and dropping things off at various Goodwill establishments throughout eastern South Dakota. The furniture that remained only emphasized the bare spaces that had once been so full of living. There had been happy memories here. She had to believe those memories would come with her and that the empty, burning feelings of these last few years would stay behind.
“I have a few boxes to finish packing upstairs,” she said once the supervisor had ushered his workers to the basement. “I’ll be finished by the time you reach that level.”
The supervisor nodded and Amanda headed for the second floor. On her way up the stairs, she heard an angry, though hushed, conversation. She took the stairs two at a time in order not to overhear their discussion, but thought of the man who had turned away when she’d announced who she was. If she didn’t hear what he said, she wouldn’t have to repeat the shrinking words in her head. There were too many other words she could not un-hear.
Monster.
Demon.
Terrorist.
I hope he rots in hell.
It took fifteen minutes to clear the nightstand and take the bedding off her mattress—the bed frame was already disassembled and stacked against the wall. She put the bedding into the last open box marked “Master Bedroom” and then taped it closed. The condo in Cincinnati had two bedrooms—one more than she needed.
She stacked the box on top of the others, then glanced around the room. After the divorce, she’d gotten a new bedroom set through a classified ad in the Leader . . . and cried herself to sleep the first night she’d slept on the unfamiliar bed. The marriage had not been great, but there had been security in being part of a pair. How would she manage a house, career, and two kids by herself? Should she have fought harder to make the marriage work?
Melissa had heard her crying and slipped into the bed beside her. Robbie had come in a few minutes after that, and they had all three fallen asleep in Amanda’s new double bed. She’d been the first to wake up the next morning and had looked from Melissa to Robbie. She wasn’t alone. She was part of them and they were part of her and they would be all right together. The huge chest of drawers from that bedroom set had been picked up with some other big pieces by the Salvation Army last week since it wouldn’t make it up the stairs of her new place. No longer a set, just pieces.
On her way out of the room, Amanda ran her hand along the curved headboard, feeling the barest hint of excitement at the thought of arranging her new room in a new place in a new city. Excitement, she remembered fleetingly, was nice. It would be a couple of weeks before she’d see her furniture again—the discount moving company shared a semi-trailer among three or four people m
oving to and from the same places—but she liked that she was looking forward to the delivery. Surely, by the time her furniture arrived she would be ready to start this new life of hers, right?
She pulled the bedroom door shut too hard and jumped at the sound, which reverberated strangely through her chest. It had sounded like a shot and drove away the soft feelings she’d found comfort in. She opened the door again to convince herself everything was fine on the other side of the door. She was still shaken by the slam, however. Too shaken. She didn’t do well with sharp noises. She’d been at a grocery store one day when a balloon in the floral section had popped. She’d had to leave without completing her shopping. She couldn’t watch anything on TV that had gunshots. That therapist she’d seen a million years ago said her reaction was a form of PTSD, but that didn’t make sense. Amanda hadn’t been at the mall the day Robbie walked in with an assault rifle.
Amanda went into the extra bedroom, which she’d used as a kind of study. She’d given away everything except her filing cabinet, office chair, and a few boxes—one of which she hadn’t sealed because she kept adding more and more things to it as she worked through the rest of the house. She took a moment to organize all the items she’d haphazardly thrown in these last few days, but her hands were still shaky and she couldn’t focus her thoughts.
The Westroads Mall shooting, committed by a young man named Robert Hawkins, had shaken the state of Nebraska—the state just south—in 2007. Robbie had been sixteen years old. Omaha was only a few hours away and mass public shootings, which were now almost common, had been rare back then. The Westroads tragedy had ignited gun law debates and sparked finger-pointing campaigns against everything from public security to mental illness to video games. Robert Hawkins had a history of mental illness and making violent threats; the shooting had been motivated by his own wish to die in a way that made him famous. He shot himself after eight innocent people lay dead or dying on the second floor of the Von Maur department store.
Like everyone else, Amanda had watched the aftermath of the event play out in the newspapers and on TV. She’d been shocked that something so horrific could happen so close to home—people didn’t shoot up malls in the Midwest. The only thing she specifically remembered about Robbie’s reaction to the shooting was his pointing out that he and Hawkins shared the same first name.
Six years later, Robbie walked into the Cotton Mall in Sioux Falls on the anniversary of the Westroads shooting and repeated Robert Hawkins’s fateful and fatal actions, shooting from the upper concourse of the mall into the common area below. A mall security guard tried to intervene and Robbie shot the man in the head. An off-duty police officer knocked Robbie to the ground moments later and other holiday shoppers helped hold him until the police came—Robbie never had the chance to seal his grotesque act with his own blood as he’d intended.
Amanda, Melissa, and Paul—Melissa’s husband of only six months at the time—had been caught in the middle of the firestorm that followed. Amanda had resigned from her twelve-year teaching position at Jefferson High—one of the victims, Garett Draden, had been a student there. No one resisted her resignation. The numbness sank a little deeper. Paul and Melissa transferred to the University of Cincinnati five months after the shooting, inviting Amanda to come with them to Ohio.
“This is too much, Mom,” Melissa had said after announcing their plans. “No one can expect you to stay here after all that’s happened, not even Robbie.”
Amanda chose to stay, just until after the trial, she’d said. But after the first trial came sentencing and then the next trial; then Robbie dropped his appeals. There was no point at which Robbie hadn’t needed her.
Melissa had gone on with her life. Amanda visited her twice a year, and each time Melissa resurrected the idea of Amanda moving to Ohio. Two years ago, when Melissa became a mother, Amanda was not there. She met Lucy four months later when she went to Cincinnati for her usual week-long visit in July. She saw Lucy again six months later when she went to Ohio for Christmas. During her trips, she got haircuts, went off-the-rack shopping, hugged Melissa, smiled politely, deep-cleaned anything that needed it at Melissa’s house, and took her granddaughter to the park as though she were a normal person. Then she scurried back to South Dakota and pushed away the rising guilt of having abandoned her daughter for the sake of her son.
“It’s time,” Melissa had said four months ago when they got the news that Robbie’s execution date would be in January. “This isn’t doing you or Robbie any good, Mom. Just come to Ohio.”
“I can’t,” Amanda had said into the phone. “And I hope you never know what it feels like to be the only person in someone’s life.”
Melissa had been angry and ended the phone call. She and Robbie had exchanged letters during his incarceration, but his medication and state of mind influenced the content of those letters. After a particularly difficult letter Paul had called Amanda and told her that they would not be accepting any more of his letters; would she please explain that to Robbie? After that, Amanda and Melissa didn’t talk about Robbie very much. Amanda understood that Melissa needed distance from her brother, but he had become Amanda’s life. He needed her.
Robert Hawkins—the Westroads Killer—had threatened his stepmom with an ax when he was fourteen and had spent years in and out of psychiatric institutions and state care. He’d been diagnosed with depression before the age of six. Amanda, like everyone else, assumed Hawkins was damaged from the start; that there had always been something “wrong” with him and he had turned homicidal on that fateful day in 2007.
That impression of Hawkins, and other mass shooters of the last decade, easily played into people’s desire to think that someone they loved could never be so evil. Yet someone Amanda loved as much as anyone in the whole world had done something horrific. Something beyond imagination. Everyone needed to believe that there had always been something deep and dark and twisted about Robbie, but there hadn’t been. Yes, his father had had an alcohol problem that resulted in Amanda being the sole breadwinner for many years. Yes, his parents had divorced when Robbie was twelve, and the relationship with his father had become fractured. Robbie had dealt with those things the way millions of other kids dealt with them and continued to be successful and “normal.” Yes, he was eventually diagnosed with a serious mental illness. Yes, he could have lived a normal life if he’d taken his medications. No, Amanda had never imagined his not taking his meds would lead to this. Never in a million years had she considered the possible outcome to be anything like it had been. To everyone else, Robert Mallorie was all Robbie had ever been. Only Amanda believed that his kindness, goodness, humanity, and innocence had ever existed. Only Amanda knew there was more to Robbie than what he became.
Men’s voices downstairs brought her back to the present, and she blinked at the box she’d finished organizing in the extra bedroom. She taped up the box and crossed off “finish packing study” from her mental to-do list. The movers were calling to one another from the main level—had they finished the basement already? She walked quickly into the hallway, not shutting the door this time, and felt her mind pulling out of the heavy thoughts. Thank goodness. Unlike memories of her children when they were little—which she’d let in only today—thoughts of the shooting and all that happened before and after always surrounded her. Over and over she wondered what one thing she could have done differently that would have changed the outcome. After four years, she had looked at every piece of her mothering from every angle and found no solid answer, but a thousand possibilities. She had been too strict about homework, but too lenient with curfews. She hadn’t made her children do enough chores, then grumbled about doing everything herself. She had served too many processed foods but didn’t make enough cookies. She was home too much, but then again she worked, so maybe she was home too little. She’d yelled. She’d spanked. Sometimes she wished she could leave her children and move to Hawaii all by herself.
Amanda looked down the hall at the
last door—with the two-toned black and silver stickers that read DANGER ZONE. Robbie’s bedroom.
The letters weren’t straight—Robbie had been nine when he’d put them up. He’d thought himself so clever, convinced that if the rest of the family believed he had something dangerous behind that door, they would never be tempted to come in. He had explained that the ruse would keep Melissa from “messing with my stuff.” Melissa had rolled her eyes. At the grand age of eleven, she had no interest in his Transformers or Legos and claimed that everything in his room smelled bad. She was right about the smell part. Amanda had tried for years to get his room not to smell like socks. When had it finally stopped? When he was fifteen and started liking girls?
It had seemed so overwhelming back then to be a mom when the kids bickered relentlessly and nothing was ever clean, and yet it had actually been so simple. Feed them. Love them. Make sure they did their homework and showered regularly. Robbie had asked for some stickers to make a sign on his door and she’d given him the ones left over from putting the name “Mallorie” on the mailbox. Simple. Easy. Cute. Good mothers let their sons take ownership of their bedrooms as a matter of pride and responsibility.
Part of the D in “DANGER” had been ripped off—an attempt to hide that nine-year-old silliness from his sixteen-year-old-self years later. Removing the sticker after seven years had taken the varnish with it and Amanda had insisted he leave the rest of the letters up until she could figure out how to get the stickers off without further damage. They’d argued about it for three days—Robbie hating the immature warning on his door that was so “not cool.”
“It’s my house,” Amanda had finally said in a stop-arguing tone of voice. Dwight had been gone four years by that time, so the house really was hers. “I’m not letting you ruin that door.”