Cold Ground for a Summer Love

When Colin came home, Kira would wear black.

Two Mothers' Sorrow

Kira called her mother, sobbing and hysterical. Kira's mother and father, recently separated, went to Radford to get her. Her mom, Valerie Makepeace, began to grasp the depth of her daughter's love for the boy who had been so polite and respectful.

They took her to Colin's home in Manassas so she could sleep in his bed that night.

It was a pain her mom understood. When she was 27, Makepeace's first husband died in a motorcycle accident, a jarring experience that left her wondering how she would face the many years to come without him. She sees her daughter's trips to the cemetery as healthy, part of a healing process that has only begun.

But Makepeace worries about her daughter, about her being frozen forever in a perfect month, one in which Kira and Colin never fought, never argued.

"He will always be perfect. They will always be perfect. She will never, ever see a side of Colin that was not perfect," Makepeace said. "And who can compete with perfection?"

It is a question that occurs to Colin's family, too.

Colin's mother, Amy Wolfe, said she sometimes wishes Kira had been pregnant when Colin left, a little piece of her son alive and growing at home. But no, she said, laughing, he was too good of a kid for that.

Now, the family's hope for Kira is that she moves on one day and finds a new love, she said.

"As Colin's mother, I don't find anything negative in her going to the cemetery," she said. "But if I were her mother, I would be saying: 'Honey, let it go, move on. You're a young girl, and you have your whole life ahead of you.' But Kira, I don't think she's ready to let go."

Kira's Vigil

"To me, it's the most comforting place in the world because it's the closest I can be to him," said Kira, her legs curled beneath her a few feet above where Colin's body lies.

On the first pilgrimage to his grave, Sept. 12, she spent three hours there, crying and telling him about how beautiful the service had been.