By Liza Mundy
Sunday, November 11, 2007

HOLLY ADAMS WAS THINKING THERE WAS NO POINT IN COOKING DINNER -- her husband, Tony Sherman, had called to say he was running late -- when the phone rang again in her Springfield kitchen. Holly picked it up, assuming it was Tony or their 19-year-old daughter, Lisa. It was a Sunday afternoon in mid-August, and Tony and Lisa were in Blacksburg, Va., getting Lisa moved into a new apartment before the start of classes at Virginia Tech.

But the person on the line was a man Holly did not know, a Tech administrator calling to give her some disconcerting news.

"I'm very sorry to tell you this, but there's been another incident," Holly remembers him saying. "It may involve your daughter, Lisa. We didn't want you to hear it on the news."

I'm very sorry to tell you this, but there's been another incident. The call was shocking, yet it felt, to Holly, sickeningly inevitable. Holly had been beset by dread ever since Lisa enrolled at Virginia Tech, where, almost exactly four months earlier, on April 16, 2007, Holly and Tony's older daughter, Leslie, 20, had been shot and killed along with 31 other students and faculty members in the worst campus massacre in the nation's history. Before the shooting, Leslie had persuaded her younger sister to transfer to Tech so they could attend college together. Afterward, Holly urged Lisa to reconsider, but Lisa felt she owed it to her sister to honor their plan.

Now, Holly thought her worst fears had been realized and that she had lost her remaining child. "I hate Virginia Tech! You can't take my other daughter from me!" she remembers screaming at the caller, who urged her to calm down, explaining that there had been a carbon monoxide leak in Lisa's apartment complex. Some students had been hospitalized, but they did not know which ones.

Holly hung up and frantically dialed Tony, who told her the leak had been discovered before they'd even arrived at Lisa's apartment, and everything was fine. They hadn't told Holly because they hadn't wanted to cause her more anxiety than she was already feeling.

Holly wasn't sure she believed him. She called Lisa for the reassurance of hearing her voice. When Lisa didn't answer, she panicked. "It was just like when I was trying to call Leslie," recalls Holly, who with terrible force was transported back to the morning of April 16. "Oh God, oh God, oh God," she remembers thinking as she redialed Lisa's number. And then Lisa answered and apologized for worrying her mother, and they both, Holly says, started to cry.

"Tony and I decided, after that, that if anything happens again, there would be no secrets," says Holly, a slender woman of 53, with short blond hair and an arc of stud earrings encircling one ear. She's recounting the episode as she sits in the back seat of the family minivan, with coffee and a suitcase of acrylic paints to keep her busy. It is early, a Saturday in September, just after 5 a.m. The houses they pass are dark and quiet. Tony, 48, is in the driver's seat, wearing jeans and a maroon T-shirt. They are en route to a Tech football game, a fact that astonishes Holly. For her, the Blacksburg campus has become a heart of darkness. It is the last place on Earth she wants to visit.

"This is setting me back," she says, memories overwhelming her as they head south on Interstate 81 and begin to see the ridges and slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the valleys covered with a low-lying mist. And yet she also murmurs, "Leslie loved this view so much."

The drive to Blacksburg -- like the carbon monoxide scare -- is one in a series of aftershocks that Holly has endured in the months since the Tech massacre. Each day, it seems, brings a new reminder, a fresh source for relived trauma. If it's not a sudden call, it's a package. This past week, a detective sent Holly a rose quartz ring that Leslie bought on a trip to Argentina, which was in the book bag she carried the morning of the shooting. Holly wept when she saw it -- Leslie had given her a necklace made of the same stone -- and slipped it onto her own finger.

Yet amid so many triggers for grief, there is hardly time for grieving. On top of her private ordeal -- the ultimate loss, for any parent -- Holly, like the other relatives of Tech victims, has been consumed by the massacre's legal and political aftermath, a ceaseless barrage of demands on her time and emotions. She and Tony and scores of other bereaved family members have attended innumerable public meetings and ceremonies. In some cases, family members have testified before the state panel investigating the shooting or appeared on Capitol Hill to lobby for stricter gun laws. They have weighed in on plans for memorials or have feuded with the university over how to use the millions of dollars donated to help them. Along the way, these families have come to be seen by some as a monolithic unit: an angry group of grief-stricken, not entirely rational people.

But, in truth, the Tech families are not united, either in their anger or their loss. Some have made public statements of support for Tech, saying no one could have predicted or prevented the attack. Others have allied with Tech in launching a volunteerism campaign in honor of victims. But a number of families are exploring a lawsuit against the university -- and, by extension, the state -- for failing to issue an early warning after the first two students were killed that morning. And then there are those who remain torn, among them Holly Adams, who is attracted by the idea of a lawsuit and the accountability it might bring, but finds herself at odds with her surviving daughter and her husband, both of whom have made peace with the place where Leslie lived, studied and died.

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?

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.

Meanwhile, Lisa heard from a friend who attended Tech, saying Leslie had been seen that morning walking to Norris Hall. This news contributed to their mounting panic. Where was Leslie? What had happened to her? Then, at around 9 p.m., they heard on the news that families of deceased victims would be informed in person by local police. So they called a Fairfax County police station and asked if they knew anything about Leslie. "They didn't say yes or no, and that's when we knew," recalls Holly. Almost immediately, there was a knock on the door. "And I remember Tony screaming with anguish."

Holly remembers little more of that evening. She was weeping, and Tony was weeping; they wept separately, wept together. At some point, Tony called Lisa and told her that her sister was dead. She, too, screamed. Close friends called and asked to come over. Holly said no, but they came anyway, and she remembers sobbing with her head in a friend's lap. Lisa caught a ride to Roanoke, and Holly's nephew drove down and brought her home. In the very early morning, Lisa crawled into her parents' bed. The three of them got up early, no one having slept, and wondered what to do. No one from the university had called.

They'd heard on the news, however, that families were gathering in Blacksburg for a memorial service, so Holly's nephew drove them there. On campus, they managed to find a parking spot near the Inn at Virginia Tech, a conference center designated as a meeting place for victims' families. It was directly across from the place where hundreds of reporters and camera crews were congregating. This was an act of very bad planning, as a review panel appointed by Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine would later note. "Families had to travel a labyrinth of cameras and microphones to reach the front desk at the inn," said the review panel's report, which criticized both the university and the state medical examiner's office for the "disjointed, unorganized" way family members were treated. Neither Tech nor the state assigned a trained public information officer to stay on site and keep the relatives informed. Moreover, the report said, the "communications nightmare . . . remained unabated throughout the week following the shooting," which "compounded the pain and trauma."

Holly's family walked straight into the chaos. She, Tony and Lisa were led to a volunteer, who asked them to fill out a form giving Leslie's name and identifying features. Then, "we just sat and waited" for positive identification of Leslie's body or any scrap of information, says Holly. In the chairs around them were other sobbing people who, they assumed, were family members of the victims. From time to time, a police officer or unidentified administrator came into the room to make an announcement. By now, it was known that the gunman, a 23-year-old Tech student named Seung Hui Cho, had shot two students in West Ambler Johnston dormitory at about 7:15 a.m. Police had suspected the female victim's boyfriend and were pursuing him when, about 2 1/2 hours later, the real killer initiated the full-blown massacre in Norris Hall. Some family members were already asking police and Tech administrators why no campus-wide warning had been issued as soon as the first two slain students were discovered, but they didn't get an answer. Holly and Tony sat, numbed and stunned, while some parents asked whether they might identify their children's bodies. The medical examiner told them dryly that there was no point.

"She was real matter-of-fact," recalls Holly. The impression given was that "their faces had all been shot off."

Some family members demanded to see Tech's president, Charles Steger, who had chaired the committee that decided not to issue an immediate warning after the first shootings. But President Bush and Gov. Kaine were en route for a convocation ceremony, and Steger did not visit families at the conference center that day, though he had been there on Monday and would return again on Wednesday.

"This was the worst mass killing ever in the history of America on a university campus," Steger says now, explaining the confusion and saying there was no way to prepare. "We're not an emergency management agency or whatever." He points out that he was inundated by calls from government officials and media and that he gave interviews to five television networks on Tuesday morning. The university itself was so traumatized, he says, that it was "victims helping the victims." And, he says, he was concerned for the well-being of the entire campus and believed the convocation was necessary to "help with the grieving and healing process."

For her part, Holly felt it was too early for a memorial service, that the campus was being rushed into "closure" before families had time to grasp what was happening. When she asked someone at the conference center whether there was a space cordoned off for family members to attend the convocation, she was told, incorrectly, that they would have to stand in line with thousands of others. Furious, Holly found a television, and she and Tony watched from afar the event honoring their daughter and 31 others.

It was during that ceremony that the poet Nikki Giovanni, a Tech professor, issued her now-famous rallying cry: "We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech." Holly couldn't believe it. Somehow, the ceremony was turning into a pep rally, an expression of support for the school rather than of grief for those who died. "For crying out loud, who put her on?" she asked Tony, who tried to calm her. Holly still feels this way: "My daughter's dead, and you are goddamned Hokies!"

At the end of the day, she and Tony went back to Springfield and tried to absorb the idea of life without Leslie.

THEY RECEIVED LITTLE HELP IN RETRIEVING LESLIE'S BODY. Holly remembers trying to call a phone number they had been given by the university, but getting no answer. A group of Tech employees were appointed to serve as liaisons to families and did their best. But they were dealing with confusing logistics in addition to their regular jobs, and Steger acknowledges that the task was too much. "That's an area that did not work well," Steger says. "The messages we thought were getting to families did not get through."

Once Leslie's body was transported to Northern Virginia, Holly asked the funeral director if the damage from bullet wounds could be sufficiently repaired so that they might have an open casket. He assured her it could. They had to order flowers, choose a program, decide on a grave site. To Holly, the logistics were so surreal that she had the wild thought, "Can't we just hire a party planner?"

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.

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.

"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.