Unsettled by the exchange, I turned back to the bed and woke Tom. There had been an edge to Dylan’s voice in that single word I’d never heard before—a sneer, almost, as if he’d been caught in the middle of a fight with someone.
It wasn’t the first sign we’d had that week to indicate Dylan was under some stress. Two days before, on Sunday, Tom had asked me: “Have you noticed Dylan’s voice lately? The pitch of it is tight and higher than usual.” Tom gestured toward his vocal cords with his thumb and middle finger. “His voice goes up like that when he’s tense. I think something may be bothering him.” Tom’s instincts about the boys had always been excellent, and we agreed to sit down with Dylan to see if something was on his mind. It certainly made sense that Dylan would be feeling some anxiety as his high school graduation loomed. Three weeks before, we’d gone to visit his first-choice college, the University of Arizona. Though Dylan was highly independent, leaving the state for school would be a big adjustment for a kid who’d never been away from home.
But I was unsettled by the tight quality I’d heard in Dylan’s voice when he said good-bye, and it bugged me that he hadn’t stopped to share his plans for the day. We hadn’t yet had the chance to sit down and talk with him, as Dylan had spent most of the weekend with various friends. “I think you were right on Sunday,” I told my sleepy husband. “Something is bothering Dylan.”
From bed, Tom reassured me. “I’ll talk to him as soon as he gets home.” Because Tom worked from home, the two of them usually shared the sports section and had a snack together when Dylan got back from school. I relaxed and continued to get ready for work as usual, relieved to know that by the time I arrived home, Tom would know if something was bothering Dylan.
In the wake of Nate’s phone call, though, as I stood in our kitchen trying to piece together the fragments of information we had, I felt chilled by the memory of the nasty, hard flatness in Dylan’s voice as he’d said good-bye that morning, and the fact that he’d left early but hadn’t made it to class. I’d figured he was meeting someone early for coffee—maybe even to talk through whatever was bugging him. But if he hadn’t made it to bowling, then where on earth had he been?
The bottom didn’t fall out from my world until the telephone rang, and Tom ran into the kitchen to answer it. It was a lawyer. My fears so far had been dominated by the possibility that Dylan was in danger—that either he’d been physically hurt or done something stupid, something that would get him into trouble. Now I understood that Tom’s fears also included something for which Dylan could need a lawyer.
Dylan had gotten into trouble with Eric in his junior year. The episode had given us the shock of our lives: our well-mannered, organized kid, the kid we’d never had to worry about, had broken into a parked van and stolen some electronic equipment. As a result, Dylan had been put on probation. He’d completed a Diversion program, which allowed him to avoid any criminal charges. In fact, he’d graduated early from the course—an unusual occurrence, we were told—and with glowing praise from the counselor.
Everyone had told us not to make too much of the incident: Dylan was a good kid, and even the best teenage boys have been known to make colossally stupid mistakes. But we’d also been warned that a single misstep, even shaving cream on a banister, would mean a felony charge and jail time. And so, at the first indication that Dylan might be in trouble, Tom had contacted a highly recommended defense attorney. While part of me was incredulous that Tom imagined Dylan could be involved in whatever was happening at the school, another part of me felt grateful. In spite of Tom’s worry, he’d had the foresight to be proactive.
I was still miles away from the idea that people might actually be hurt, or that they’d been hurt by my son’s hand. I was simply worried that Dylan, in the service of some dumb practical joke, might have jeopardized his future by carelessly throwing away the second chance he’d been given with the successful completion of his Diversion program.
The call, of course, brought much, much worse news. The lawyer Tom had contacted, Gary Lozow, had reached out to the sheriff’s office. He was calling back to tell Tom the unthinkable was now confirmed. Although reports were wildly contradictory, there was no doubt something terrible involving gunmen was happening at Columbine High School. The district attorney’s office had confirmed to Gary Lozow that they suspected Dylan was one of the gunmen. The police were on their way to our home.
When Tom hung up the phone, we stared at each other in stunned horror and disbelief. What I was hearing couldn’t possibly be true. And yet it was. And yet it couldn’t possibly be. Even the most nightmarish worst-case scenarios I’d played out in my mind during the car ride home paled with the reality now emerging. I’d been worried Dylan was in danger or had done something childish to get himself into trouble; now it appeared that people had been hurt because of whatever he was doing. This was real; it was happening. Still, I could not get my brain to grasp what I was hearing.
Then Tom told me he was going to try to get into the school.
I yelled, “No! Are you crazy? You could get killed!”
He looked at me steadily, and then he said, “So?”
All of the noisy confusion swirling around us came to a dead stop as we stared at each other. After a moment, I bit back my protests and turned away. Tom was right. Even if he died, at least we’d be sure he’d done everything he could to stop whatever was happening.
Shortly after one o’clock, I called my sister, my fingers shaking as I dialed. My parents were both dead, but my older sister and younger brother lived near each other in another state. My entire life, my sister has been the one I reach out to when things are going well, and the one I reach out to when they aren’t. She has always taken care of me.
The minute I heard her voice, whatever composure I’d been maintaining collapsed, and I burst into tears. “Something horrible is happening at the school. I don’t know if Dylan is hurting people or if he’s hurt. They’re saying he’s involved.” There was nothing Diane could say to stem my tears, but she did promise to call our brother and the rest of the family. “We’re here for you,” she said fiercely as we said good-bye so I could keep the line free. I had no idea then how much I would need her over the years to come.
By the time our older son, Byron, arrived, my frenzied attempts to do something—anything—had ground to a halt, and I was sitting at the kitchen counter, sobbing into a dish towel. As soon as Byron put his arms around me, every ounce of strength left my body and I collapsed, so he was holding me up more than he was hugging me.
“How could he do this? How could he do this?” I kept asking. I had no idea what “this” was. Byron shook his head in silent disbelief, his arms still around me. There was nothing to say. Part of me thought, I’m his mother. I should pull myself together, be a role model here, be strong for Byron. But it was impossible for me to do anything other than weep helplessly, a rag doll in my son’s arms.
The police began to arrive, and they escorted us out of the house to wait in the driveway. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, the kind of day that makes you feel like spring might finally be here to stay. Under other circumstances, I’d be rejoicing we’d survived another long Colorado winter. Instead, the beauty of the weather felt like a slap in the face. “What are they looking for? What do they want?” I kept asking. “Can we help?” Eventually, an officer told us they were searching our house and our tenant’s apartment for explosives.
It was the first time we’d heard anything about explosives. We could find out nothing more. We were not allowed into our house without a police escort. Tom would not be permitted to go to the school, or anywhere else. Later, we learned that no one had been allowed in the school. The first responders hadn’t entered the building until long after Dylan and Eric were dead, surrounded by the bodies of their victims.
As we stood there, waiting in the sunny driveway, I noticed that three or four of the officers were wearing SWAT team uniforms and what appeared to be bulletproof vests.
The sight of them was more puzzling than alarming. Why were they at our house instead of at the school? They crouched and entered our home through the front door, their guns drawn and held at arm’s length with both hands as if in a movie. Did they think we were harboring Dylan? Or that Tom and I would somehow be a danger to them?
It was completely surreal, and I thought very clearly: We are the last people on earth anyone would expect to be in this situation.
We spent hours pacing the driveway like frightened animals. Byron was still smoking then, and I watched him light cigarette after cigarette, too overwhelmed to protest. The police would not engage with us, though we begged for information. What had happened? How did they know Dylan was a suspect? How many gunmen were there? Where was Dylan? Was he okay? Nobody would tell us a thing.
Time warped, as it does in emergencies. Media and police helicopters began circling noisily overhead. Our tenant, Alison, who lived in the studio outbuilding on our property, brought us bottles of water and granola bars we couldn’t bear to eat. If we needed to use the bathroom, we did so with two armed policemen guarding the other side of the door. I wasn’t sure if they were protecting us or if we were suspects. Both options horrified me: I’d never done anything illegal in my life, and it had never, ever occurred to me to be afraid of my son.
As the afternoon stretched on, we continued to pace the driveway. Conversation was impossible. The Rocky Mountain foothills surrounding our home had always soothed me; Tom and I often said we didn’t feel any need to travel because we already lived in the most beautiful place on earth. But that afternoon, the tall stone cliffs seemed cold and forbidding—prison walls around our home.
I looked up to see a figure coming up the driveway. It was Judy Brown, the mother of one of Dylan’s childhood friends, Brooks. Alerted by the Littleton rumor mill that Dylan was involved in the events at the school, she had come to our house.
I was startled to see her. Our boys had been good friends in first and second grades and then reunited in high school, but they hadn’t been close, and I’d only seen Judy a few times in the years since elementary school. We’d chatted warmly a few weeks before, at a school event, but we’d never done anything together except when our boys were involved, and I wasn’t sure I could manage any social niceties. I was too disoriented to question why she was there, but it did seem odd for her to have materialized during this most private of times. She and Alison sat on either side of me on our brick sidewalk, urging me to drink the water they’d brought. Tom and Byron paced up and down the front walk with brooding expressions as we all struggled with our own splintered thoughts.
My mind was a chaotic swirl. There was no way to square the information we had with what I knew about my life, and about my son. They couldn’t be talking about Dylan, our “Sunshine Boy,” such a good kid, he always made me feel like a good mother. If it was true that Dylan had intentionally hurt people, then where in his life had this come from?
Eventually, the detective in charge told us he wanted to interview each of us separately. Tom and I were happy and eager to cooperate, especially if there was anything we could do to shed light on whatever was happening.
My interview took place in the front seat of the detective’s car. It’s unthinkable now, but during that interview, I really believed I could straighten the whole mess out if I could only explain why everything they were thinking about Dylan was wrong. I did not realize I had entered a new phase in my life. I still thought the order of the world as I’d known it could be restored.
I pressed my trembling hands together to still them. Solemn and intimidating, the detective got right to the point: Did we keep any weapons in our home? Had Dylan been interested in weapons or in explosives? I had little of relevance to share with him. Tom and I had never owned any guns. BB guns were standard fare for young boys where we lived, but we’d bucked the trend for as long as we could—and then made our kids create and sign handwritten safety contracts before giving in. They’d used the BBs for target practice for a while, but by the time Dylan was a young teenager, the air rifles had found their way to a shelf in the garage with the model airplanes and G.I. Joe action figures and the other forgotten relics of the boys’ childhoods.
I remembered aloud that Dylan had asked the year before if I would consider buying him a gun for Christmas. The request was made in passing and came out of the blue. Surprised, I had asked why he wanted a gun, and he’d told me it would be fun to go to a shooting range sometime for target practice. Dylan knew how avidly anti-gun I was, so the request had taken me aback—even though we’d moved to a rural area, where hunting and hanging out at the shooting range were popular pastimes. As alien as it might have been to me personally, guns were an accepted part of the culture where we lived, and many of our neighbors and friends in Colorado were recreational firearm enthusiasts. So while I would never allow a gun under our roof, Dylan’s request for one didn’t set off any special alarm bells.
I’d suggested we search for his old BB gun instead. Dylan rolled his eyes, a teasing smile on his face: Moms. “It’s not the same thing,” he said, and I shook my head decisively. “I can’t imagine why you’d want a gun, and you know how your dad and I feel about them. You’re going to be eighteen shortly, and if you really want one, you can get one for yourself then. But you know I would never, ever buy you a gun.”
Dylan nodded fondly at me, and smiled. “Yeah, I knew you’d say that. I just thought I’d ask.” There was no intensity to the request, and no animosity when I dismissed it. He never mentioned a gun to me again, and I filed it in the same category as the other outlandish Christmas requests he’d made over the years. He hadn’t seriously thought we were going to get him a muscle car or gliding lessons, either.
The detective had another question: Was Dylan interested in explosives? I thought he was asking about firecrackers, and I answered truthfully: Dylan did like those. He’d accepted fireworks as payment when he’d worked at a fireworks display stand, one of his first summer jobs. (It’s legal to sell them in Colorado.) So he had a lot of them, which he kept safely stored in a big rubber bin in the garage. He set the firecrackers off on the Fourth of July, and enjoyed them; the rest of the year, they sat in the bin in the garage, forgotten. Dylan was a collector of a lot of things. I hadn’t heard anything yet about propane tanks or pipe bombs, so I had no idea what the detective was really asking me.
I felt small and frightened in the front seat of the detective’s car, but I was dedicated to answering his questions fully and truthfully. When he asked if I had ever seen any gun catalogs or magazines around the house, his question jarred something loose in my memory. A few catalogs with guns on the cover had arrived in the stacks of unwanted junk mail we received on a daily basis. I hadn’t paid any more attention to them than I had to the catalogs advertising personalized baby clothes or orthopedic devices for the elderly, and had thrown them away without looking at them. Dylan had pulled one of those catalogs out of the trash. He’d been looking for a pair of heavy-duty work boots to fit his large feet, and he found a pair of boots he liked in the catalog. When we learned they didn’t carry his size, I threw the catalog away a second time. He’d eventually found a pair of boots at an army surplus store.
I felt like the detective was looking at me with knowing eyes. Gotcha. Suddenly defensive and self-conscious, I heard myself begin to babble, trying to get this police officer to understand how many catalogs came every day, and why I hadn’t checked the addressee. I thought he’d understand if only I could make myself heard. I had always relied on my aptitude for addressing problems logically, and on my ability to communicate effectively. I did not yet understand—and would not for some time—that my version of reality was the one out of sync.
The detective asked about recent events, and I told him everything I could remember. A few weeks earlier, we’d visited the University of Arizona. Dylan had been accepted, and we wanted him to be able to plant his feet on the ground of his number-one pick to make sure th
e fit felt right. Just three days before, Dylan, handsome in a tuxedo, had posed with his prom date, smiling awkwardly while we snapped a picture. How could that boy be the one they were accusing?
But there was no answer forthcoming, nor any hope. The interview was over. As I climbed out of the detective’s car, I felt as if I were about to explode into a thousand pieces, bits of me spinning out into the stratosphere.
We still weren’t permitted into the house. Tom and Byron were still pacing the driveway. A police officer told us the investigators were waiting for the bomb squad, a piece of information that only added to our terror and confusion. Were they looking for a bomb? Had our home been booby-trapped by someone Dylan knew? But nobody would answer any of our questions, and we couldn’t tell if this was because they didn’t yet know exactly what had happened, or because we were suspects.
Because we had been standing for so long in our driveway, cut off from any media or news updates, we probably knew less than anyone else in Littleton—or the rest of the world, for that matter—about what was going on. Cell phones were not yet as ubiquitous as they are now; although Tom had one for work, its signal was blocked by the sandstone cliffs surrounding our house. The police had commandeered our home phone. Frightened and bewildered, all we could do was pray for our son.
We waited outside in the sun, perched on concrete steps or leaning against parked cars. Judy approached me. Dropping her voice confidentially, she told me about a violent website Eric had made. Still out of my mind with worry about Dylan, I didn’t understand why she was telling me about it, until I did: she’d known Eric was disturbed and dangerous for a long time.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, genuinely baffled. She’d told the police, she said.
The house phone rang constantly. The detective called me to the phone to speak to my elderly aunt. She’d heard about a shooting in Littleton. (Dylan’s name had not yet been mentioned on air.) She was in frail health, and I worried about telling her the truth, but realized that protecting her would soon be impossible.
Mother's Reckoning : Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (9781101902769) Page 3