What Comes After

"That's the norm," says Tony, watching the traffic. Already, they can see cars with Tech flags and Hokie Parent bumper stickers, the pre-football procession making its way southwest. Leslie loved this, loved all of it. She loved the games and the cheers and the spirit. She would call her father as he was driving down on game days, asking when he would be there.

Holly wonders if they should give the scholarship to a single student once every four years so that they could pay all four years for each student. Tony says no. "The idea is to help as many people as possible."

The West Springfield High School scholarship will be funded in large part with money from the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, a charitable fund established as Tech was being inundated with donations to help victims. Initially, says Elizabeth Flanagan, Virginia Tech's vice president for development and university relations, university officials thought the money could help with families' expenses. But when they didn't hear right away from needy families, they decided to set up 32 scholarships in memory of the dead and established a Web site with photos and biographies of the victims.

Holly and Tony had no objection to the way the fund was being allocated. But other families suspected Tech was using the shooting to fundraise, or saw the scholarship plan as a way to recruit students using money given in the names of their dead children. Mostly, though, families resented not being consulted.

"There were several of us that felt that, if it was donated to Tech for the families, the families should have a say," says Tracey Lane, whose son Jarrett was slain and who worried about the families of the five faculty members who were killed, all of whom had lost a breadwinner. Perhaps some families could use the money for a more immediate purpose.

In July, the university suspended its plan and enlisted Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who distributed the massive public fund paid to families of the September 11, 2001, victims, to come up with a new one. The first thing Feinberg did was get together with the families to gather their input. "The more you can meet with families, and the more you can engage them in a dialogue, the more they have a vested stake in the outcome and are likely to feel they have been treated fairly," says Feinberg, who fielded a great deal of anger at the university and found that family members were gratified simply to have someone take their questions.

Feinberg would eventually give $180,000 to each family who lost a child or spouse, and lesser amounts to the wounded and traumatized. Holly and Tony decided to use some of the money for the West Springfield scholarship and the rest for a scholarship at Tech in Leslie's name.

But the standoff over the fund exacerbated the divide between the university and a number of the families, who were also anxious about the review panel appointed by the governor to investigate the causes and consequences of the shooting. In the first public meeting, the head of the panel, retired Virginia State Police superintendent Gerald Massengill, expressed support for the police officers who had responded to the shooting, saying, "I think we know enough about the response to know it was very effective." This prompted some family members to fear that he was not objective and had already reached a conclusion. As more public meetings were held, one Centreville father, Joseph Samaha, whose daughter Reema was killed, sent out an e-mail inviting families to attend a private meeting to air their concerns.

Holly wanted to go. Tony didn't. He believed other family members were entitled to any and all emotions, but he was reluctant to be perceived as part of a group of "angry parents." Holly was leery, too. "People don't take it seriously when they think you're emotionally disturbed and angry and throwing out demands." But she was curious, and so they went and listened as Samaha asked, "What do we want?"

Some family members were concerned about the charity fund; others wanted a family member on the review panel. Holly thought many of their issues were valid, though she was skeptical when a lawyer and, later, an outside "security consultant," began issuing statements to the media that purported to speak for parents. She worried that public opinion might turn against family members if they were seen as being motivated by money. And, in fact, people began to write letters to newspapers criticizing families. "They only dishonor and disgrace the true victims in whose names they purport to act," one reader wrote the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. At Tech, Flanagan says, they

received some contributions to the Hokie Spirit Fund earmarked, "My preference is for it not be used for the families."

Once they'd met to talk, the Tech families grew more organized, creating a comprehensive e-mail list, a kind of listserv for the horribly bereaved. Some were too grief-stricken to participate, but others used it regularly, offering not only complaints but consolation. As Peter Read, who lost his daughter Mary in the massacre, puts it: "You're all there sharing the seventh circle of hell."

After the carbon monoxide incident, Holly e-mailed one of the other mothers to tell her how shaken she was. "If I have ever needed a force to help see me through, it is now," Holly typed.

"I will be praying for you," the mother e-mailed back.

Holly's grief remained overwhelming. The void was so total, the loss so punishing and absolute. Leslie's absence was there every morning when she woke. She would miss a turn while driving and realize people were honking at her. She was distracted all the time.

At home, Leslie's dog, Winnie the Pooch, a 10-year-old Australian cattle dog who slept with Leslie when she was growing up, still got on her bed every evening and lay there, waiting. Leslie's room was full of cardboard boxes; her things from college had been boxed and sent home by the Salvation Army. At times, Holly thought the only thing keeping her going was worrying about Tony and Lisa. And when she was so down she thought she'd never surface, Tony would talk her through it.

Holly missed her daughter so badly. She worried about work trips she had taken, time with Leslie that she had missed. She comforted herself with the thought that Leslie had once written a paper describing her mother as the bravest person Leslie knew. She regretted the time she had punished Leslie, when she was very young, for taking household money to buy a book. She took her to the brig, a military jail, and is haunted by the memory of "that tiny face, looking through the bars."

Not long after the shooting, she had a dream where she asked Leslie to appear to her. "I begged her to come visit me. I needed to see her one more time. She did, but then she said she had to go away, and I wouldn't see her again."

HOLLY HAD TO FIND ANOTHER WAY TO STAY IN TOUCH WITH HER DAUGHTER. Several years earlier, Holly, a fine arts major in college, had taken up painting. At first, she bought some black paint on sale and painted mostly in black and gray. But now she was afraid of so much darkness and decided to do a series of paintings of the places Leslie loved. In each, she would paint a figure of Leslie.

Her studio is a room in an industrial warehouse complex in Alexandria. One afternoon, Holly was there, painting Seattle's Pike Place Market, one of Leslie's favorite places. Holly had painted a close-up of a produce stand, above which she planned to paint a forearm resting on a crate. In the crook of the forearm, she would paint Leslie's face.

Leaning against the wall were more canvases in various stages of completion. One depicted the Seattle Space Needle, surrounded by the city skyline. "She's right there, just a little person in the shadow," said Holly, pointing to a doorway. She also was painting a Vancouver suspension bridge, using a photo of Leslie and Lisa, as girls, standing together in the middle. And the Tidal Basin in cherry blossom season, with Leslie running through a crowd. While she paints, Holly thinks constantly about her daughter. "I am so afraid I am going to erase parts of Leslie."

It could be hard, though, to find a respite in which to paint. Holly continued working and following the progress of the review panel. She and Tony had attended one meeting where panel members expressed deep frustration at the fact that state and university mental health professionals who had treated Cho were refusing to make his records available, citing the dead killer's privacy. This deeply alarmed Holly. As an inspector general charged with investigating government waste, fraud and abuse, she knew it was almost always possible for an investigating body to get the information it needs. "I wear investigations like a second skin," says Holly. Kaine eventually gave the panel the authority to see the records.

In addition to the panel's discussions, there were conference calls, e-mails and meetings. The families met with interest groups advocating for gun control or better health care for the mentally ill or campus safety. There were meetings to discuss the fate of Norris Hall. Science fiction writer Michael Bishop, the father of a faculty member, Jamie Bishop, who was killed, had proposed turning Norris Hall into a center for the study of peace and crime prevention. Each new event or issue brought a flurry of e-mail traffic. Tony did not participate in the e-mail chatter, feeling that it kept the pain alive. But Holly did.

Talk of a lawsuit had loomed as a possibility from the first day. Some legislators were considering trying to set up a state compensation fund to forestall lawsuits.

Toward the end of the summer, family members were invited to meet with lawyers from Bode & Grenier, which won a settlement in a wrongful death case after the Columbine school shooting. Tony wanted no part of such a meeting, but Holly wanted a "fix" of seeing other parents.

Arriving early, she and some others agreed that all they wanted was to hold people accountable for the massacre. While they needed to pursue a settlement to pay the lawyers, it wasn't money the families were after. But then one of the lawyers arrived, saying he had flown in from out of town. "I bet your arms are tired," Holly joked, and he didn't laugh. She sat there looking at his shoes and thinking they looked frayed, and that the whole thing did reek of money, and who wanted to be represented by someone without a sense of humor? After several hours, she left.

But she continued to bird-dog the review panel, motivated by anger at the university for failing to issue an immediate warning. She and other relatives concentrated much of their bitterness on Steger, saying that he had not apologized for Tech's missteps or even expressed sorrow for their loss. "Being president of Virginia Tech means never having to say you're sorry," one father sarcastically e-mailed the group.

While the governor had called Holly and Tony, met with them and even given them his cellphone number, they heard little from Steger personally. They did receive letters from his office informing them of steps the university was taking to improve security, and, toward the end of the summer, the university established an office of full-time staff members to help families as well as wounded and traumatized victims. Holly and Tony also received an invitation to call Steger at a designated time. They called and were put on hold. Then, for 20 minutes, they listened as Steger related the progress the campus was making. But, Holly says, "he never said he was sorry for our loss."

Told of this repeated complaint from victims' relatives, Steger says: "If they misunderstand that I feel sorrow or grief, it's a tragedy. I think about them every day."

Holly pinned her hopes for accountability on the review panel report, which was issued August 30 at a news conference in Richmond.

"We fully expected them to sugarcoat it," marvels Holly. They are in the midst of serious pregame traffic; around them are cars and trucks bearing Tech stickers and windsocks. Some have black ribbons and teardrop-shaped decals, in memory of the massacre victims.

"I didn't expect them to sugarcoat it," says Tony. He assumed the panel would do a good job. They were professionals spending an enormous amount of volunteer time trying to ascertain what had happened. Of course, they would do their best.

When the report came out, it was hard-hitting, singling out the university administration and the campus and local police forces for lapses. The killer, Cho, was an extremely troubled student who gave what the report called "clear warnings of mental instability." Yet despite many, many red flags, the "university did not intervene effectively."

The report also criticized the administration for failing to issue a quick warning after the two students in the dormitory were murdered. Had an early warning been issued, it is possible that "the total toll would have been less," the report stated. But it stopped short of calling for resignations. Nor did the governor demand that anyone step down.

Some family members were incredulous. "It is hard to believe nobody would be held accountable after you read that report," says Cathy Read, stepmother of slain student Mary Read. She and her husband are still weighing whether to join the lawsuit, which was announced the day the report was issued. At least seven families have signed on with Bode & Grenier to pursue the possibility of damages, and 20 recently filed notice that they may sue the town of Blacksburg, whose police force was also involved.

Holly, too, was incensed by the report's failure to call for Steger's resignation. "Had it not been for their decision not to act, my daughter would be here," she believes. She is tempted by the prospect of a lawsuit, not against Blacksburg, but possibly against the university and the state. She sees this as a way to continue probing for details, with the goal of fully understanding who was responsible for the mistakes. After all, she points out, the panel did not have time to investigate everything. Three times, Cho called the counseling center at Virginia Tech to set up an appointment. What was said in those three conversations, and what happened to the records of those calls, which are missing? He wrote an English paper that described wanting to shoot his classmates. That was not turned over to the panel until it emerged in news reports. What else was not turned over? And what about the policy committee that met after the first two students were killed -- what exactly was said in those two hours? Holly feels some people might know more than they've reported.

"You're saying they lied to the panel?" Tony asks her. They are past Christiansburg now.

"It's lying by omission," Holly replies. "I want them to interview witnesses. You've got to be able to give some of these people immunity. There's a lie in there somewhere. I can smell it."

And this has become their fundamental disagreement. Holly says a lawsuit may be the only way to hold people accountable, whoever made the crucial errors.

"A variety of mistakes were made," says Tony. "I think more mistakes were made prior to that day. Why was he there? Why did he have guns? Why did his parents send him to a big school when they had been advised [by a therapist who had treated him in high school] not to? The more facts you get, the more they point to mistakes by many, many people and organizations."

And Tony is horrified by the idea of filing a lawsuit seeking a monetary amount to compensate for his daughter's life; no amount could make up for the irreplaceable pleasure of being her parent. "To me, it's almost insulting to talk about a dollar amount. You could name the national debt. It doesn't equate to a person's life. It's not a satisfactory way to compensate for a loss."

"Settlements don't have to be money," says Holly. "It could be an apology. It could be putting together an institute in her name. It could be a bunch of things, none of them lining our pockets."

"I'm just on principle opposed to a settlement per se, some cash payment regardless of what it goes for," says Tony. "If it comes from the state, then the money comes from somebody, including my neighbors . . . I don't see that the people of the state of Virginia owe me. Why should my neighbor, who mowed the lawn for me [after the massacre], why should I take a dollar out of his pocket?"

Holly says maybe she could find somebody to take a suit pro bono. Maybe she could pursue it herself, seeking no monetary damages.

The problem with that, Tony says, is that pursuing the truth to its bitter end comes to dominate a person's life for years and years. He knows this from personal experience. When she was working in a different office, Holly filed an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint against a boss she maintained was harassing her. Therapists she was seeing to help her deal with the distress found that she was deeply affected, but the final ruling was not in her favor. Tony stood by her, but the outcome took a toll on her emotionally.

Other Tech families, he believes, have every right to pursue a lawsuit. Other families are justified in any action that seems right to them. He doesn't want to judge other people's choices. But he also doesn't want their own lives to be ruled by an obsession. "It's like a geometric expansion of the tragedy. I don't think that lawsuits will change anything. I think it will cause more depths of sorrow. The pluses will be outweighed by the minuses."

Holly reminds him that she promised Leslie she would pursue the truth about who was to blame for her death.

"The truth won't change the loss that occurred," says Tony. "I don't know what you're going to do with the information once you get it. I give [the panel] credit for their integrity. I think that if there was something significant, they would have put it in the report."

Beside them is a white truck with a Virginia Tech decal; near that is a maroon truck with a Tech flag. This is the point in the trip where, last year, Leslie would call Tony wanting to know when he might get there.

"When we get to this area and see how beautiful it is -- I know she loved it -- it gives me some kind of comfort to know I feel the same way she felt," Holly muses. She has been back to Tech only a few times: for the graduation, for a game a few weeks earlier. "Each time," she says, "it gets a little easier."

ABOUT 30 MINUTES LATER, HOLLY AND TONY CRUISE THE MAIN TECH PARKING LOT UNTIL THEY FIND A SPOT. It's 9:30 a.m., and the lot is full of tailgaters eating, drinking, playing beer pong. They get out food and Holly's suitcase of paints and carry them to a lot near a small lake known as the duck pond. Last year, Tony didn't tailgate. Instead, he would lunch with Leslie, watch the game with her, stay overnight in a hotel room and have breakfast with his daughter before

driving back to Springfield. This year, one of Holly's office colleagues invited them to the tailgate parties that his son, Joe Castle, a Tech alumnus, regularly holds.

At first, Holly could not bring herself to go to the games at all. The first game of the season, Steger invited family members of victims to his box. Tony went with Lisa. Some parents told the media they thought the university was trying to buy them off with a football ticket, but Tony disagreed. Others went with mixed feelings: Peter and Cathy Read drove from Annandale to honor their daughter's love for the school.

At that game, Tech's opponent, East Carolina University, presented a $100,000 check for the Hokie Spirit Fund, and the Atlantic Coast Conference gave $300,000. Afterward, Cathy Read was standing with two other mothers when, she says, Steger came over and greeted them. "If I could raise $400,000 this easily every day, my job would be easy," she says he told them. Cathy stood there with her mouth open, unable to think of a reply. Steger says he does not remember this conversation, and points out, "Those monies went to the families."

Today, Holly and Tony are greeted by their tailgate host, who has been here since 7:30 a.m. The grill is going. Tony and Holly mingle comfortably with the 30-somethings, and Holly becomes immersed in a conversation with Joe Castle's wife, Heather, about whether, after the shooting, NBC was wrong to broadcast a video mailed by Cho. At work, Holly and Tony sometimes feel like "symbols of sadness." People are afraid to approach them and don't know what to say. Here, among the people who lived the massacre, and are still living it, the shooting is part of a still-running conversation.

At game time, Tony walks to the stadium and meets Lisa. She is a lovely young woman with light brown hair and her parents' air of comfortable affability, wearing jeans and the obligatory maroon T-shirt.

The stands are full. After the massacre, Tech saw its applications soar to more than 19,000, and more high school seniors -- 5,150 -- enrolled than ever before. Ironically, the shooting seems to have raised Tech's profile.

Tony and Lisa stand for the game, which is traditional in the student section, and Lisa jumps up and down on the risers when the team runs onto the field, which is also traditional. During the season's opening game, the starting quarterback, Sean Glennon, didn't play well, and fans booed him. There is a new quarterback starting today. Lisa tells her dad that she saw Glennon on campus and how bummed he appeared to be.

They watch the game squeezed in with the other students, who have a cheer for every situation. After each score, a few women are tossed into the air, mosh-like, once for every point. Lisa hasn't been moshed yet because she's with her dad. She likes Tech. It's got more spirit than UNC-Wilmington, she says, and people are nicer and, oddly enough, for such a large campus, she has the feeling of being among family. But she's told her mother that she thinks of Leslie all the time.

At halftime, Steger announces the homecoming queen and king. He stands between two memorial ribbons that have been painted on the turf.

NEAR THE POND, HOLLY WORKS ON SOME SMALL STILL-LIFE PAINTINGS she plans to display at a county fair and worries about how her family will be affected if she ignores their objections and pursues a lawsuit. She thinks her marriage will survive whatever choice she makes. She and Tony are used to weathering disagreements, but she doesn't want Tony to be disappointed in her.

"I want Tony to continue to respect me, and if I participate in a lawsuit, I will lose his respect for me, and that's the same as losing him," Holly says, as she paints a group of tomatoes. "I don't want Lisa to lose respect for me, either."

And what if she decides to accept that her daughter is dead and nobody was held accountable? "Will it change my feelings toward him? Will I feel cheated?" She talks about how much she loves Tony and how his opposition to a lawsuit is exactly what she loves about him, how it is fundamental to his personality: his integrity, his aversion to joining the great American pursuit of compensatory damages.

"He doesn't want to be the lady who spilled coffee in her lap" and then sued, she says. "He doesn't believe in these lawsuits. He doesn't believe the taxpayer should have to pay."

Holly doesn't want the taxpayer to pay, either, but damages are how death and injury are compensated in our country. What other way exists, in American society, to force accountability and pursue an investigation, if not a lawsuit? A quarterback is benched, and not an administrator? Steger, she says, is "on my mind almost all the time. I would hang him in the town square."

But she worries it may take too much energy away from the work of reconfiguring their family. What does she owe Leslie? What does she owe Lisa?

The phone rings. "Where are you, sweetheart?" she asks. It's Tony, on his way back. Lisa has gone to tailgate with her roommate's family, Tony reports when he returns. He helps Holly pack up her paints. Holly hasn't seen Lisa but understands that she needs to hang out with her classmates and forge her own place on campus. She was home last week to see her parents, and she'll be home again next week. Holly feels the need to see Lisa more than ever -- "I call her or e-mail her every day" -- but doesn't want to hover. "It's hard," she says, "not to want to just put her in a cocoon."

Tony eats a bratwurst, and Joe Castle tries to persuade Holly to come to the next home game. "If Lisa needs anything, just let me know," he says, and clearly means it. That's the good part of Tech. That's the Tech Leslie loved. Holly and Tony get in the car and head home, and on the way back they talk about other things Leslie loved.

"Who was her favorite president?" Holly tries to remember. "Thomas Jefferson?"

"No, it was George Washington," says Tony.

They talk about where she got her love of other cultures. They talk about the time Nosy, the family cat, got bricked up in the wall by plumbers, who had to tear the wall down to get the cat out. They talk about how, when the sisters were adolescents, there was so much door-slamming that Holly and Tony took the doors off their hinges; how, after an argument, the girls would make up and emerge from one of their rooms looking conspiratorial.

They talk about their life with Leslie and Lisa until it's dark, just as it was when they left this morning, and the car is the only light, really, as a family tries to find a way forward.

Liza Mundy is a staff writer for the Magazine. She can be reached at mundyl@washpost.com. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article Tuesday at 11 a.m. at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.