What Comes After

In this family, it is only Holly, a retired Navy officer who works as an inspector general with the Office of Naval Research, who is ambivalent. Only Holly who gazes out the window of the minivan with uncertainty about how to feel and what to do. "When Leslie died, I made a promise that I wouldn't rest until I discovered the truth" about who made the mistakes that led to her daughter's death, she says, trying to resolve what may be the hardest dilemma. Should her allegiance be to a promise she made her late daughter, or to the family she has left? How angry can a mother afford to be?

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

WHEN SHE GOT TO HER OFFICE IN BALLSTON ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 16, one of the first things Holly did was call up an e-mail from her older daughter that ended: "I love you, too, Mom."

It was Leslie's second year at Tech, where she'd been accepted into the university's honors program and was majoring in history and international relations. Extremely close to both her parents, she called and messaged them often.

She and Holly were kindred spirits in adventure. When Leslie was growing up, Holly had a tendency to do goofball-mom things, such as taking her daughter fishing using ham, cheese and marshmallows as bait -- reasoning that if she were a fish, that's what she would like to eat -- and Leslie would say, "Mom's so weird!" but go right along with her. They wouldn't catch anything, but they'd roll on the ground laughing.

Grown now, Leslie had become a young woman of many facets. A serious photographer, cross-country runner and inveterate traveler, she had gone with Holly to London and Jamaica and had traveled by herself to Argentina and Ecuador. She was the kind of girl who grew her hair long and cut it off to make wigs for cancer victims; the kind of girl who went to Louisiana to clear debris and rebuild homes after Hurricane Katrina. And she was a planner, like her dad. She had recently mapped out, on a calendar, the next five years of her life. She planned to join the Peace Corps after graduation and then the Foreign Service.

Sometime after Holly closed the e-mail from Leslie, a colleague stopped by her desk and said, "Holly, there's been a shooting at Virginia Tech, and two people have been killed."

Holly turned on the news to see what had happened, never imagining it would involve her daughter. She was stunned to see that the crawl at the bottom of the screen said 20 were dead; at first she thought that "20" must be a typo and that the real number must be "2." Soon, though, it became clear that what had taken place was some sort of mass shooting. Watching, she saw that it had occurred in an engineering building called Norris Hall, and she reflected with relief that Leslie didn't take engineering classes. But when the numbers started getting higher -- and when her calls to Leslie's cellphone went unanswered -- she felt a sense of foreboding. She called Tony, who was also calling Leslie and not getting through. "I said, 'Honey, take the Metro over here; we're driving home.'"

Tony was downtown at the Veterans Administration, where he works as a program manager. He and Holly had met in 1985, when both were Navy lieutenants stationed in Alaska. Holly, who had had a brief, unsatisfactory marriage years earlier, was attracted to Tony's stability, as well as to the fact that he was her intellectual equal, never threatened by her outspokenness. "He's predictable, and I need that," says Holly, who loved the Navy for the same reason: the regularity of what she calls "three hots and a cot."

A year after their marriage, they had Leslie, a miracle child -- Holly suffered from endometriosis and had feared she could not have children. A year later, Lisa was born. "The best days of my life were the two days I had my babies," says Holly.

After they were born, Tony was scheduled for a deployed tour, which meant nine months of each year spent at sea, while Holly, as a woman, was more likely to get shore duty. Her assignments made more sense for a family, so Tony transferred into the reserves and took jobs with the federal government as they traveled for Holly's career. They went from Alaska to Washington to Georgia to Germany and back to Washington, the kind of life that drives a couple crazy or glues them together. In their case, it was the latter. Back in the Washington area, Holly and Tony would drive to Ballston together every morning and e-mail during the day.

On April 16, Tony took the Metro to his wife's office. By now, the Blacksburg area was inundated with calls to Tech's nearly 30,000 students. Still unable to get an answer, they figured the phone lines must be jammed. Lisa, who was in her first year at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, also was trying to call her sister. The girls were very close, best friends, really, having come to rely on each other during so many moves. Lisa was the more creative and emotional sister; Leslie was methodical and even-tempered, but capable of sneak attacks, such as brushing the dog's teeth with her sister's toothbrush.

As the hours went by with no word, Holly and Tony told themselves Leslie was helping somebody -- that would be like her -- or had left her cellphone in her room. Or maybe she was injured. Tony called every hospital in Roanoke and Blacksburg, as well as a university number that was flashed on the news, but when he finally got through, there was no information.