I opened drawers, looked through clothes. Then I studied all the wrestling brackets from tournaments I had won; they nearly covered every inch of all four walls. The month before, I had asked my mother where we’d hang all the future brackets I was sure to win. That had been my biggest concern then, where we’d hang the new brackets.

It didn’t take long for the silences to become deafening, and when I fled the house, I didn’t take anything with me. I left it all, even the pictures. Still today, I wish I had taken them. But I didn’t, and I have no idea what happened to everything I left behind. I never asked.

A few weeks after the shooting I received my mother’s death certificate. Date of birth: July 25, 1968, 3:47 P.M. Date of death: August 29, 2000. In the slot where the time was supposed to have been recorded, the coroner had simply written “At Dawn.”

thirty-four

1

THE DAYS PASS. THEY’RE in no great hurry to pass but they pass all the same. I write. I think of Carolyn. I sit in my quiet apartment and watch the world in a rush beyond these walls, while within them little changes. I sit and I wait for the trains and the vibrations. Sometimes Thomas sits with me; sometimes he does not. We’ve become a family. Like the one I was born into, it’s not a perfect family. But it’s a family all the same.

2

I had a great friend once, back in Ohio. A friend named Jason Daniels who I lived with after my mother died. When I left for college I told him and his family that I’d call with my contact information once I got settled, but of course I never did. I knew that I wouldn’t. When I left that August day, it was the last time I saw or talked to any of them. I left them all behind. I tried to leave it behind as well. The past. I should have known better.