What Comes After

Both she and Tony are entitled to grave sites in Arlington National Cemetery, so Tony wrote to officials offering to give up his spot for Leslie. A site was granted without his having to relinquish his own, and they decided to hold the funeral at Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Alexandria, the church where memorial services for George Washington had been held, in honor of Leslie's love for Colonial American history. Lisa put together a slide show depicting a scene from every year of Leslie's life. Hundreds of people filed past the casket, some of whom her parents knew and others they didn't. One of Leslie's high school teachers sang to her in her casket. More than 200 cars, carrying friends, family, teachers and neighbors as well as Navy colleagues from around the country, traveled in an unbroken line to Arlington Cemetery.

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Before the funeral, Holly took a private moment with Leslie, who looked so beautiful and intact. She kissed her hands and face, and only then did she realize how extensive the reconstruction must have been to make her features look as they had. "It was like plastic," Holly remembers. "It was like she wasn't there."

Holly says she and Tony were so broken that Lisa had to make many of the decisions before and after the funeral. "Lisa was a pillar of fortitude," says her maternal grandmother, Gerry Adams. This gratified Holly -- "We are extremely proud of the way she held up for us" -- but also worried her. She didn't want her younger child to think she had to play the part of two daughters. She didn't want Lisa to transfer to Tech, either, but lost that argument early on.

"I've always kind of said, 'Honey, you know, I really don't want you to,' and she would say, 'I know Mom, but I can't let this person destroy my life.'" Lisa told her grandmother that at Tech people would understand what she was going through, "and if she were on another campus, everybody would point to her and say, 'There's the girl whose sister was murdered.'"

Holly, of course, disagreed. She could hardly bear to set foot on campus, but she did so in May for commencement, when the victims of the massacre, including Leslie, were awarded honorary degrees. Holly felt bad about how the presence of victims' families might make the graduating seniors feel. "We were a blotch on their happiness that day," she says, which bothered her because the student body had been so caring and supportive. Yet as she sat looking at the fresh young faces collecting their diplomas, she was struck by the fact that her daughter's would never be among them.

After the ceremony, Holly, Tony and Lisa were invited to a reception given by the school's international studies department, which had suffered terrible losses because of the number of language classes in Norris Hall that morning. There, Holly was told that one of the wounded students wanted to speak with her.

Leslie's classroom, Norris 211, had sustained the worst casualties. When Leslie's French teacher, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, heard gunfire, she asked a student to call 911. Since the classroom door did not lock, she tried to push a table against it. Cho pushed his way in, shot and killed her, then walked among the desks shooting students, sometimes at point-blank range. He left, reentered and shot his victims again. Twelve people were killed, and six were wounded. Cho, hearing police downstairs, then killed himself.

Among the wounded was Heidi Miller, 19, who had walked with Leslie to class that morning. Heidi had only recently gotten to know Leslie, who, she says, was always cheerful, always looking forward to something: a trip, a concert, a vacation. On their morning walks to class, Leslie "talked about her family a lot," Heidi says. "She would always talk about her sister . . . A lot of college students don't openly talk about their family."

By the time Cho blasted into the room, Heidi had fled to the back to lie down with some other students. She was shot in the leg during the rampage but kept her eyes closed while he was shooting, opened them when he went away and closed them again when he returned. During the pause, she could tell from the moans which students were alive and which weren't.

At the reception, Heidi asked Holly whether there was anything she wanted to know. Holly said she would like to know if Leslie had lived after being shot. "It caught me off guard a little bit," says Heidi, who assured Holly that Leslie had not cried out or moved and did not suffer. Holly, Heidi remembers, thanked her. "It did mean a lot to me," says Heidi, "I was glad that I could answer the question for her and give her any sense of peace."

Later, Holly would be contacted by a detective asking if she would like to know the full details of Leslie's death. Tony felt he knew enough, but Holly felt she owed it to Leslie to know everything about her last moments. The detective drove to Ballston and sat with Holly in a conference room at her office, where he presented a diagram of what had gone on in Norris Hall. Forensic evidence showed Leslie had been shot twice by Cho, both times from the back, indicating she was lying on the floor with her face to the ground. After either shot, the detective assured Holly, death would have been instantaneous.

"THIS IS WHAT I WAS THINKING ABOUT: the West Springfield High scholarship -- what happens the other three years?" Holly says to Tony as they drive toward Blacksburg. It is getting lighter; the sun has come up, and the rural Virginia landscape is a marvel of light and shadow. She is talking about a scholarship they have established at Leslie's high school that will pay for a year's tuition at Tech for a promising student. Holly is worried the recipient will have to pay for the next three years.