Indian Meadows, January 1989

I was alone. My husband was dead. My children were dead.

My little pet, Trixy, was dead.

I should be dead too.

And I would have been if I had come with them to Indian Meadows that weekend in December. But I had stayed in the city to give the shower for Alicia Munroe, and because of that I was alive.

I didn't want to be alive. I had nothing to live for now, no reason for being.

A life without Andrew had no value.

A life without my children had no meaning.

I did not know what to do without them; I did not know how to cope with the business of everyday living, or how to function properly.

It seemed to me that I walked around like a zombie, doing everything automatically, by rote. I got up in the morning, showered, dressed, and drank a cup of coffee or tea. I made my bed and attended to chores in the house, helping Nora as I always had.

Sometimes I visited Anna and the horses in the stables; I spoke on the phone to my mother and Sarah. Several times a week I called Diana, or she called me, and my father was more in touch with me than he had ever been, phoning me constantly.

But for the most part I did nothing. I had no strength, no initiative; I was filled with apathy.

Occasionally I did come to my small office at the back of the house, where I sat now, trying to answer some of the condolence letters I had received. There were hundreds of them, but I could face only a few at a time, they were so harrowing to deal with.

Frequently I sat upstairs in my sitting room, thinking about Andrew, Lissa, and Jamie, grieving for them and for Trixy. My little Bichon Frise had been my constant companion before the children were born, forever at my heels, following me everywhere. She had been a genuine little presence.

I could not understand why this terrible thing had happened to us. What had we done to deserve it? Why had God allowed them to be murdered? Had I done something to offend Him? Had we all done something wrong? Something which displeased Him?

Or was there no God?

Was there only evil in this world?

Evil was man's invention, not God's. It had existed since the beginning of time and would continue to exist until this planet blew itself up, which it would, because man was evil and destructive, intent on killing and destroying.

My life, our lives, had been touched by evil when that animal had pulled the trigger, wiping out two innocent children, a little puppy, and a decent man who had never done any harm to anyone in his forty-one years.

Andrew had been cut down in the prime of his life, my children at the beginning of their lives, and it made no sense to me. Some of my friends had told me that it was God's will, and that we should never question Him. Or ask why He did certain things, that we must accept them, however painful.

How could I accept the deaths of my husband and my children? And so I kept on asking why. I wanted to understand why it had happened. I needed to know why God permitted the human race to commit the crimes it did. Did God want us to suffer? Was that it? I did not know. I had no answers for myself. Or for anyone else.

Perhaps there were no answers; perhaps there was no God, which was something I'd been pondering for five weeks. My mother said we lived in a godless world, and she might just be right.

We knew now from the ballistics report that the gun used to shoot my family had been a nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun, which carried seventeen or eighteen bullets in the clip and did not have to be reloaded. DeMarco had told David this, explaining that it could be bought on the streets quite easily, adding that it was the gun of choice.

Gun of choice.

What had we come to? Had we learned nothing over the centuries?

According to DeMarco, the same type of bullet had killed all of my family, so he and Johnson were fairly certain there had been only one gunman. But that did not rule out an attack by a gang, DeMarco had told David. Unfortunately, there were still no suspects. And no witnesses had come forward.

Nothing was happening, as far as I knew, despite the intense media coverage, which still continued. The shooting of my family, the funeral service, and the police investigation had attracted the media in droves; it had become a circus in the end, with newspaper and television reporters hounding us on a daily basis. Even the British press had descended on us, much to our distress.

I no longer read the newspapers or watched the television news. I did not want to get caught by surprise by something about me or mine. Certainly I no longer cared what was happening in the world. The world was irrelevant.

I had fled to Indian Meadows.

I had also wanted to escape the apartment and New York, which I now loathed. The city filled me with disgust and fear.

David had told me not to be too disdainful of the media and their constant coverage of this tragedy.

"They're keeping the pressure on the police," he had pointed out again just the other day. "Be glad about that, Mal. The N.Y.P.D. doesn't want to get roasted alive. They'll only intensify their efforts to find the perp." After a pause, he had thought to add, "Mind you, DeMarco and Johnson are hell-bent on solving this crime, and DeMarco especially has made it a personal crusade."

Everything David said was true. And DeMarco did seem to be very personally committed. Yet I doubted that the monster who had so cold-bloodedly taken the lives of my family would ever be tracked down.

He was long gone with his lethal weapon.

He was free.

Free to live his evil life. And kill again, if the whim took him.

And I was left to grieve.

I grieved for my husband and my children, grieved for the lives they would never lead, grieved for the future which had been stolen from them, grieved for all that might have been and never would be now.

I wanted to die.

And I was going to die.

Soon. Very soon.

I had been unable to kill myself up until now because I had not been left alone for a moment. There was always someone with me.

Did they all suspect my intentions?

I had been surrounded since the day after the funeral, when I had driven up to Sharon with Diana and my father. Sarah had followed with my mother and David, and they had stayed for days.

They had given me love. And they had tried to comfort me, as I had endeavored to console them. But none of us had succeeded. The loss was too great, the pain too excruciating. It lingered deep inside, never beginning to fade.

Eventually they had all left, although some of them only temporarily, such as my mother, David, and Sarah. She had had to go to work at Bergman's, David to his law office. But they were all back within a few days, and Nora and Anna were never far from my side. Even Eric, Nora's husband, seemed to hover constantly when he was not at work.

Diana had decided to return to London toward the end of December. She had wanted to stay with me here, at least to help get me through the holidays, as had my father. I had pointed out that my mother, David, and Sarah would be coming to Indian Meadows for Christmas, and that they should go, should try to get on with their lives as best they could.

"Perhaps you're right, Mal," Diana had said. "You and I will only feed on each other's pain and grief if I remain here." It struck me she was only saying this to help me feel better. Certainly I knew it was heart-wrenching for her to leave me. In fact, at the last minute, just before she and my father had set out for Kennedy, she had begged me to quickly pack a bag and go with her to London, then up to Yorkshire.