Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A Mother's Reckoning
A Mother's Reckoning
I was in my office in downtown Denver, getting ready to leave for a meeting about college
scholarships for students with disabilities, when I noticed the red message light on my desk
phone flashing.
I checked, on the off chance my meeting had been canceled, but the message was from my
He didn’t say anything more. He didn’t have to: I knew just from the sound of his voice that
It felt as if it took hours for my shaking fingers to dial our home phone number. Panic crashed
over me like a wave; my heart pounded in my ears. Our youngest son, Dylan, was at school; his
Tom picked up and immediately yelled: “Listen to the television!” But I couldn’t make out
any distinct words. It terrified me that whatever had happened was big enough to be on TV. My
fear, seconds earlier, of a car wreck suddenly seemed tame. Were we at war? Was the country
under attack?
“What’s happening?” I screamed into the receiver. There was only static and indecipherable
television noise on the other end. Tom came back on the line, finally, but my ordinarily steadfast
husband sounded like a madman. The scrambled words pouring out of him in staccato bursts
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made no sense: “gunman . . . shooter . . . school.”
I struggled to understand what Tom was telling me: Nate, Dylan’s best friend, had called
Tom’s home office minutes before to ask, “Is Dylan home?” A call like that in the middle of the
school day would have been alarming enough, but the reason for Nate’s call was every parent’s
worst nightmare come to life: gunmen were shooting at people at Columbine High School, where
There was more: Nate had said the shooters had been wearing black trench coats, like the one
“I don’t want to alarm you,” he’d said to Tom. “But I know all the kids who wear black coats,
and the only ones I can’t find are Dylan and Eric. They weren’t in bowling this morning, either.”
Tom’s voice was hoarse with fear as he told me he’d hung up with Nate and ripped the house
apart looking for Dylan’s trench coat, irrationally convinced that if he could find it, Dylan was
fine. But the coat was gone, and Tom was frantic.
“I’m coming home,” I said, panic numbing my spine. We hung up without saying good-bye.
Helplessly fighting for composure, I asked a coworker to cancel my meeting. Leaving the
office, I found my hands shaking so uncontrollably that I had to steady my right hand with my
left in order to press the button for my floor in the elevator. My fellow passengers were
cheerfully chatting with one another on the way out to lunch. I explained my strange behavior by
saying, “There’s been a shooting at Columbine High School. I have to go home and make sure
my son’s okay.” A colleague offered to drive me home. Unable to speak further, I shook my
head.
As I got into the car, my mind raced. It didn’t occur to me to turn on the radio; I was barely
keeping the car safely on the road as it was. My one constant thought, as I drove the twenty-six
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miles to our home: Dylan is in danger.
Paroxysms of fear clutched at my chest as I sifted again and again through the same jagged
fragments of information. The coat could be anywhere, I told myself: in Dylan’s locker or in his
car. Surely a teenager’s missing coat didn’t mean anything. Yet my sturdy, dependable husband
had sounded close to hysterical; I’d never heard him like that before.
The drive felt like an eternity, like I was traveling in slow motion, although my mind spun at
lightning speed and my heart pounded in my ears. I kept trying to put the pieces of the puzzle
together so it would come out okay, but there was little comfort to be found in the meager facts I
As I drove, I talked out loud to myself and burst into uncontrollable sobs. Analytic by nature,
I tried to talk myself down: I didn’t have enough information yet. Columbine High School was
enormous, with more than two thousand students. Just because Nate hadn’t been able to find
Dylan in the chaos didn’t necessarily mean our son was hurt or dead. I had to stop allowing
Tom’s panic to infect me. Even as terror continued to roll over me in waves, I told myself we
were probably freaking out unnecessarily, as any parent of an unaccounted-for child would in the
same situation. Maybe no one was hurt. I was going to walk into our kitchen to find Dylan
I nonetheless couldn’t stop my mind from careening from one terrible scenario to another.
Tom had said there were gunmen in the school. Palms sweaty on the wheel, I shook my head as
if Tom were there to see. Gunmen! Maybe no one knew where Dylan was because he had been
shot. Maybe he was lying injured or dead in the school building—trapped, unable to get word to
us. Maybe he was being held hostage. The thought was so awful I could barely breathe.
But there was, too, a nagging tug at my stomach. I’d frozen in fear when I heard Tom mention
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Eric Harris. The one time Dylan had been in serious trouble, he’d been with Eric. I shook my
head again. Dylan had always been a playful, loving child, and he’d grown into an even--
tempered, sensible adolescent. He’d learned his lesson, I reassured myself. He wouldn’t allow
Along with the dozens of other frightening scenarios whirling through my fevered brain, I
wondered if the horror unfolding at the school might not be an innocently planned senior prank,
One thing was for sure: Dylan couldn’t possibly have a gun. Tom and I were so adamantly
anti-gun, we were considering moving away from Colorado because the laws were changing,
making it easier to carry concealed firearms. No matter how hideously ill-conceived the stunt,
there was no way Dylan would ever have gotten involved with a real gun, even as a joke.
And so it went, for twenty-six long miles. One minute I was awash with images of Dylan
hurt, wounded, crying out for help, and then I’d be flooded with happier snapshots: Dylan as a
boy, blowing out his birthday candles; squealing with happy pleasure as he rode the plastic slide
with his brother into the wading pool in the backyard. They say your life flashes before you
when you die, but on that car ride home, it was my son’s life flashing before me, like a movie
reel—each precious frame both breaking my heart and filling me with desperate hope.
That hellish ride home was the first step in what would become a lifetime’s work of coming to
• • •
When I arrived home, my panic kicked into an even higher gear. Tom told me what he knew in
spotty bursts: shooters at the school, Dylan and Eric still unaccounted for. Whatever was
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happening was serious. He’d called our older son, Byron, who’d said he would leave work and
come to us immediately.
Tom and I raced around the house like demented wind-up toys, flooded with adrenaline,
unable to stop or to complete a task. Our wide-eyed pets crouched in the corners, alarmed.
Tom was single-minded in his focus on the missing coat, but I was personally confounded by
Nate saying Dylan had missed bowling. He’d left the house that morning with more than enough
time to get there; he’d said good-bye as he left. Thinking about it, I found myself haunted by the
That morning, the morning of April 20, my alarm had gone off before first light. As I dressed
for work, I watched the clock. Knowing how much Dylan hated to get up early, Tom and I had
tried to talk him out of signing up for a 6:15 a.m. bowling class. But Dylan prevailed. It would be
fun, he said: he loved bowling, and some of his friends were taking the class. Throughout the
semester, he’d done a good job of getting himself to the alley on time—not a perfect record, but
nearly. Still, I needed to keep an eye on the time. No matter how dutifully he set his alarm, on
bowling mornings Dylan usually needed an extra call-out from me at the bottom of the stairs to
But on the morning of April 20, I was still getting dressed when I heard Dylan bounding
heavily down the stairs, past our closed bedroom door on the main floor. It surprised me that he
was up and dressed so early without prompting. He was moving quickly and seemed to be in a
We always coordinated our plans for the day, so I opened the bedroom door and leaned out.
“Dyl?” I called. The rest of the house was too dark for me to see anything, but I heard the front
door open. Out of the blackness, his voice sharp and decisive, I heard my son yell, “Bye,” and
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then the front door shut firmly behind him. He was gone before I could even turn on the hallway
light.
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
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.
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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
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—-
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
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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
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
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
Then Tom told me he was going to try to get into the school.
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.
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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
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
“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
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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,
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
It was completely surreal, and I thought very clearly: We are the last people on earth anyone
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
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
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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
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
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
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
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
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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
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
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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
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
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
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
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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 the 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
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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
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
I said as gently as possible, “Please prepare yourself for the worst. The police are here. They
think Dylan is involved.” As she protested, I repeated what I had already said. What had been
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inconceivable hours before had already begun to solidify into a new and horrible reality. Just as
nebulous shapes resolve into letters and numbers with every progressive click of the machine at the
eye doctor’s, so was the magnitude of the horror starting to come into focus for me. Everything
was still an incomprehensible blur, but I already knew two things: this would not be the case for
much longer, and the confusion was resolving into a truth I did not believe I could bear.
I promised my aunt I would be in touch, and hung up to keep the line open for communication
As the shadows lengthened, time slowed. Tom and I muddled through our uncertainty in
hushed whispers. We had no choice but to accept Dylan’s involvement, but neither of us could
believe he had participated in a shooting under his own free will. He must have become mixed
up with a criminal, somehow, or a group of them, who forced him to participate. We even
considered that someone had threatened to harm us, and he had gone along in order to protect us.
Maybe he had gone into the school thinking it was a harmless joke, some kind of theater, only to
I simply could not, would not, believe Dylan participated voluntarily in hurting people. If he
had, the kind, funny, goofy kid that we loved so much must have been tricked, threatened,
Later we would learn that Dylan’s friends spun similar explanations for the events unfurling
around them. Not one of them considered he might willingly be involved. None of us would
learn the true level of his involvement—or the depths of his rage, alienation, and despair—until
many months later. Even then, many of us would struggle to reconcile the person we knew and
We stayed out there in the driveway, suspended in limbo, the passing hours marked only by
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our helpless confusion as we careened from hope to dread. The phone rang and rang and rang.
Then the glass storm door of our house once again swung open, and this time I could hear the
television Tom had left on in our bedroom, echoing inside the empty rooms. A local news anchor
was reporting from outside Columbine High School. I heard him say the latest reports had
Like mothers all over Littleton, I had been praying for my son’s safety. But when I heard the
newscaster pronounce twenty-five people dead, my prayers changed. If Dylan was involved in
hurting or killing other people, he had to be stopped. As a mother, this was the most difficult
prayer I had ever spoken in the silence of my thoughts, but in that instant I knew the greatest
mercy I could pray for was not my son’s safety, but for his death.
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