by Kim Hooper
Charlie and Joey agree that I should sit on the love seat for the interview (my place isn’t big enough for a proper couch). Charlie will sit across from me, on the bed, off-camera. Joey will stand by the fridge, filming. I expected some kind of preinter-view, something to help me warm up, but they say they’d rather jump right in. “Sometimes it’s better to get your thoughts before you have a chance to polish them, ya know?” Charlie says. My heart starts beating a little faster.
“Just remember, nobody will see me asking you questions. It’ll just be you on screen. So when you answer, use full sentences. Okay?”
I swallow and nod.
“Tell me how the shooting has affected your life,” Charlie says.
He wasn’t kidding. He’s jumping right in.
I shift on the couch, finger-comb my hair behind my ear self-consciously.
“I mean, I think about the shooting every day still. I have nightmares at least a couple times a week. I still have a hard time in public places, like if I can’t face a doorway and see what’s happening. It’s gotten better, but it’s still, like, a thing.”
“How has it been for you getting to know Joyce Ketcher?”
I shift again, then mentally chastise myself. I’m sure it looks better on camera for me to be still, not moving about nervously like a mental patient.
“It’s been good,” I say.
“Full sentences,” he whispers.
I start again. “It’s been good getting to know Joyce Ketcher. I know some people think it’s weird, but it’s been good for both of us to be in each other’s lives. I wanted to understand what happened, why Jed did this, and she wanted to understand the same thing. We’ve been a comfort to each other in that way. What people don’t realize is that lots of people are affected by shootings. There are ripple effects. It’s been a year and, sometimes, I still feel like it’s right there, like it just happened. Joyce says we both have PTSD, and that’s probably true.”
“What about your father—how has it been getting to know him?”
Crazy. Painful. Confusing. Weird. Fascinating.
These are all the words that come to mind, but not necessarily the words I want the public to hear.
“Getting to know my father has been … unbelievable,” I say.
He looks at me expectantly, wanting more.
“I didn’t even think my father was alive, let alone in Boise, coming to the bar where I worked. Because of his memory loss, we’ve had to really start over, from the beginning. It’s a slow process.”
We do weekly breakfasts, a standing date. Angie comes along. I’ve actually developed more of a relationship with her than I have with Cale. It’s just hard to get to know someone who comes with no past, basically. He feels like such a stranger. Angie can tell me more about Cale than he can tell me himself—not just the timeline of his life, but his personality, his traits, things I might have in common with him. When I requested no mushrooms in my omelet, for example, she said, “You must get your mushroom aversion from Cale.” Cale didn’t even know he had a mushroom aversion.
“Has your mother been in touch with Cale too?” Charlie asks.
The truth is she hasn’t, but I feel like if I say this, it will make her out to be a grudge-holding bitch. When, really, he’s the asshole of the situation. Nobody will ever call him that now. He has pity on his side. It’s so hard to be angry at someone who looks at you blankly, without knowledge of his own mistakes.
“My mother hasn’t been in touch with Cale yet. She lives in Bend. But we have talked about them meeting,” I say.
Mom says she’s not up for it. She knows he will apologize to her—because he has been told what he did all those years ago—but the apology will be inherently inauthentic. He doesn’t remember, so his remorse is stiff, awkward.
I visit Mom once a month, call her a few days a week. We talk more now than before because I feel the need to remind her that she is, and always will be, more important to me than Cale. She won’t admit she worries about that, but I can tell she does. She gets so quiet when I mention my breakfast dates with him. It’s not fair, really. He gets this big, fat, convenient pass. She gets nothing—no award or acknowledgment for busting her ass as a single mother, raising me to be who I am. The media cares only about Cale and me reuniting; that’s the exciting story. Cale is portrayed as this victim, this good-hearted man who got shot while pursuing a relationship with his long-lost daughter. The truth is so much more complicated. My mother is the victim in many ways, and I’ll never be fully convinced of the goodness of Cale’s heart.
“What are you doing for work now? I know you said you could never work in a bar again,” Charlie says.
I’m grateful for the change of subject.
“I can’t even go to bars now,” I say.
I haven’t set foot in a bar since the shooting. I get invites sometimes, from school friends who don’t know what happened or have forgotten (it’s amazing how fast people forget).
“So, safe to say you’re no longer a bartender?”
I laugh. “I’m no longer a bartender. I still serve drinks though. At a coffee shop,” I say.
It’s the coffee shop where Joyce and I met—Bean There, Done That. The pay isn’t as great—people don’t really tip baristas—but I can pay my rent and have a little left over, so it’s fine for now.
“And I’m studying to be a nurse, hoping to work in emergency medicine,” I say. It’s something I’m proud of, something I want people to know.
Predictably, Charlie asks, “Is that inspired by what you’ve been through?”
“I’ve always wanted to be a nurse, but I didn’t decide that I wanted to focus on emergency medicine until after the shooting, so I guess it was inspired by that. I want to be on the front lines, comforting people when they’re most scared.”
Sometimes, I think it’s masochistic of me to want to put myself in chaotic crisis situations. But I also hope that enough exposure to those situations will be healing, in a way.
“Have you forgiven Jed Ketcher for what he did? Or where do you stand with him in your mind?”
“Honestly, I rarely think of Jed Ketcher anymore—not in the sense of Jed Ketcher the shooter. I think of him as Joyce’s son who died after doing a terrible thing. He’s not a monster in my mind. Maybe he would be if I’d never been in touch with Joyce, if I hadn’t come to call her a friend.”
These days, Joyce and I don’t see each other all that often. We text more than anything. But I know she’ll always be in my life.
“I love Joyce,” I say.
My own declaration startles me. I haven’t even said those words to her before. I imagine her seeing the documentary, tears coming to her eyes. I’ve seen so many tears in her eyes over the last year.
Charlie looks to me to say more, but I’m still taken aback by myself. After a few seconds, I say what has become my truth:
“To know Joyce Ketcher—as a mother, as a person—is to forgive her son.”
“Has she forgiven him?” he asks, leaning forward, interested.
I know she hasn’t. She hasn’t forgiven herself either. She’s started seeing a therapist to help with that. But this is not for me to disclose.
“You’ll have to ask her,” I say.
I know it’s not the complete sentence Charlie wants, but I don’t care. I don’t want him to have me on camera saying anything about Joyce’s thoughts or feelings. Those are hers.
Charlie gives Joey a nod, and the red light of the camera goes off.
“How about we get some footage of you talking about the night of the shooting?” Charlie says. “Most people know the details, but we should get it anyway.”
“Okay,” I say.
I sit up straight, clear my throat. This is the easy part.
The red light goes on.
“It was a typical Thursday night at Ray’s,” I begin.
And then I tell the story, a story I’ve told so many times that it’s finally starting to become “a thin
g that happened to me” rather than a thing that continues to happen to me. There is power in voice, in sharing. Maybe that’s why I wanted to do this documentary. It is my way of reaching out, saying, “Can you help me hold this? I don’t want to carry it on my own.” And even though the film won’t be released for a while, I already feel lighter.
JOYCE
MY PHONE BUZZES WITH a text from Tessa:
We just finished. They’re on their way to you. It was totally fine. You’ll be fine.
I text back:
If you say so.
She knows I’m nervous. We’re both nervous about this whole thing. I’m especially nervous because their documentary started with me. They wanted insight into the mind of the shooter, vis-à-vis his mother. The old cliché lives on: Mother knows best. It was me who told them there was so much more to the story. I didn’t want to focus on Jed, glamorize his actions in any way. I wanted to focus on the victims, the lives he affected. I wanted people to see the full picture.
“They’ll be here any minute,” I tell Gary.
He brings me a glass with a little bourbon in it, sits with me on the couch to wait for Charlie and Joey to arrive. Gary won’t be in the documentary, says it’s my story to tell. I can’t help but wonder if he just doesn’t want to be publicly connected to Jed. It’s not like it’s a secret, at least not in Boise. We don’t hide the fact that we’re together. But maybe he doesn’t want the whole world to know. I’ll always wonder if he’s a bit ashamed to be with me, the mother of Jed Ketcher. He would never admit as much, but I wonder if it’s a truth that’s buried beneath his logic, a truth he’s not even brave enough to confront.
I officially moved into his place six months ago. It took me that long to agree with him that selling my house was for the best. It was bittersweet; I have so many happy memories of Jed there. But it was more painful than anything to be in that house, to walk by Jed’s room and ask myself again and again what I did wrong. I didn’t want to believe Gary when he said I would feel better if I sold the house. I thought he was saying, “You’ll feel better when you forget Jed.” But that’s not what he was saying. Gary is a simple man. He means exactly what he says; there are no layers. We sold the house for much less than its value. We had to, given the history it carried. The new owners have completely renovated it—maybe to fit their taste, maybe to erase whatever evils it may have contained. Gary was right—I do feel better now. And I could never, ever forget Jed.
GARY WELCOMES IN Charlie and Joey. They set up in the living room. I sit on the couch, waiting for them to tell me what to do. Gary stands off to the side, hands on his hips, like he’s working security at a club. He’s protective of me, even though I stubbornly insist I don’t require any protection. Secretly, I like his old-fashioned chivalry. Secretly, I like being taken care of. Eventually, maybe I’ll admit that, settle into it, instead of denying it because of fear he will disappear. I seem to live in fear of loved ones disappearing. It doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure out why.
“Okay, Joyce, you ready?” Charlie asks.
He is sitting in a chair Gary has brought from the kitchen. Joey is standing against the back wall, the camera on his shoulder.
“I’m ready,” I say.
They ask me to recount the night of the shooting, how I came to know what Jed had done, what my initial thoughts were. I feel my cheeks flush as I recall my denial, my disbelief. I imagine the families of the victims watching, shaking their heads at me. I don’t know if I’ll ever shake off the guilt, the feeling that I should have known.
“How does the shooting continue to impact you today?” Charlie asks.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about what Jed did. Some mornings, I wake up feeling like a boulder is on my chest. There’s nothing I can do to make right what he did. There just isn’t. I’ll spend my life trying.”
“What are some things you do to try to make it right?” He already knows the answer to this question; I told him when we spoke on the phone. He wants other people to know. He wants them to see that I’m a good person. I don’t know if I’m a good person though. I’m a desperate person.
“I’ve reached out to surviving victims, the families of those who died. I’ve tried to connect however I can.”
I feel like an idiot, saying these things. It’s embarrassing to reveal my pitiful efforts. I started with letters to the families of Leigh and Jason Maguire, Bob Lang, Rick Reed, and Dan Velasquez. In the letters, I expressed interest in meeting in person. Bob Lang’s daughter, Greta, met with me. She was as understanding as she could be—or she faked it well. Sherry Reed, Rick’s wife, talked to me on the phone (meeting in person wasn’t feasible; she moved to California after he died). She was short with me, seemed angry, but she restrained herself, which was almost worse than if she’d just yelled at me. The Velasquez family never responded to me. The Maguires sent me a nasty email. They hate me. My therapist says I have to allow them that. “You can only control yourself. You cannot control others’ thoughts or feelings or opinions,” she said. I wanted to say, “Well, duh,” but clearly I’ve struggled to accept this basic fact.
“I started a support group here in Boise for mothers of children with mental illness,” I say. “I’ve become very involved with Everytown for Gun Safety. We’re organizing a march here in Boise this summer.”
“It must be hard for you to continue to see shootings on the news. Can you talk a little about that?”
I look to Gary, because he’s had to bear the brunt of my emotional breakdown every time there is a shooting. He gives me a small nod, a nod that says, Go ahead, sweetie. You’re okay.
“It seems like we can’t go a week without a shooting. It’s just awful,” I say, the tears coming. “Every time, I’m brought right back to that night. I think about the shooter, the shooter’s family. I think about the victims. It’s just so much heartache. There have been times I’ve gotten physically ill hearing the details. I’ve thought about never watching TV again, never going online again. But that’s just denying the problem. I have to face it. We all do. I’m a mother of a shooter. That’s a cross I have to bear for however many years I have left. There are many who haven’t been touched personally by a shooting yet, and it’s those people we need to join us in solving this problem.”
“Do you think it’s a problem that can be solved?” Charlie asks.
“That’s a tough question,” I say. “What I’ve come to accept is that there is evil in the world. It’s not always visible. I had it under my own roof, and I didn’t even realize. We cannot solve for the existence of evil. But we can make it more difficult for evil people to arm themselves.”
I’m aware I’ve become obsessed with this topic, because it appears to be the one thing that is a controllable factor in all this. I’m on my computer at all hours of the night sometimes, gathering statistics, writing letters to congressmen, connecting with others affected by gun violence. I’m nearly manic sometimes. Gary doesn’t say anything. He lets me be, even when I know my ideas are grandiose. Just the other day, I told him I wanted to organize a Million Mom March 2.0 in Washington, DC, like the one they did back in 2000. He just nodded, said, “Go for it.”
“In your heart, have you forgiven Jed for what he did?” Charlie asks.
“That’s another tough question,” I say.
I look to Gary again. More tears are threatening. He must see them too because he comes to me, obviously not caring that he’s on camera. He sits next to me on the couch, puts his arm around me, kisses the top of my head. That just makes the tears come harder, faster.
“This is Gary,” I say to the camera, ugly crying and not caring at all.
Charlie gives me a moment to compose myself. Gary remains at my side. I wipe my eyes.
“I’m working on forgiving Jed,” I say, “and myself.”
Charlie leans forward, elbow on the arm of the chair, chin in his palm.
“We all have things to work on in life, don’t
we?” I continue. “That is … and forever will be … mine.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK STARTED WITH a much less interesting title. Thank you to Stephanie Beard for the title brainstorming, and for everything else.
Thank you to Todd Bottorff and everyone at Turner Publishing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—you are a writer’s dream.
Carey Nelson Burch, I heart you so much. Thank you for supporting this book (and all my books).
Thank you to Sue Klebold, whose book A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, planted the seed that became this book. Her story is heartbreaking and reveals the complexity of who we are as humans. The media likes to capture our attention with tidy stories, but life is rarely tidy.
Thank you to Caitlin and Michael Hocklander for reading this when it was just a Word document. You are my Boise experts. I can’t wait to visit again.
Thank you to Randy and Jan Fredrickson for answering my questions about police and hospital protocols, respectively. I am completely to blame for any mistakes made.
I am so grateful to my early-early readers—Wendy Paine Miller, Huong Diep, my husband, and my mom. Thank you for getting me.
Chris and Mya, you are my everything. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’ve been more inspired (and productive!) with you two in my life. Thank you for loving me in a way that makes me feel safe and secure enough to undertake writing these crazy books.
No Hiding in Boise is Kim Hooper’s fifth novel. Her previous works include People Who Knew Me (2016), Cherry Blossoms (2018), Tiny (2019), and All the Acorns on the Forest Floor (2020). She is also a co-author of All the Love: Healing Your Heart and Finding Meaning After Pregnancy Loss. Kim lives in Southern California with her husband, daughter, and a collection of pets.