The Ravine (24 page)

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.

C
HAPTER
14

Homecoming

My mind is like a bad neighborhood;

I try not to go there alone
.

—Anne Lamott

T
HE 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 solve.

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.