Read Online A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention by Matt Richtel - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Matt Richtel
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colleagues in common.
Leila asked again to see the body. Someone made it plain to her why she couldn’t see it. Keith, her true love, was broken beyond anything imaginable.
A man handed Leila a Ziploc bag. It contained a broken cell phone and a GPS, his watch, his car keys on a chain with a small compass on it, and the brown leather wallet he had made in his high school shop class and carried ever since. In another bag, she received his black lace-up shoes and his dark socks.
“Where are his glasses?”
Gone. This was all of Keith that remained.
She couldn’t bring herself to eat. She didn’t pray. She had become something akin to a zombie. More visitors came to the house.
Megan showed up. Her life was already out-of-balance and now her dad was dead. When she was a little girl, she and Keith would go geocaching together. He’d wake her in the middle of the night and they’d use the big Deep Space Hunter telescope to look at a comet or other celestial event. They would throw the softball around in the yard. They played video games, the first being an early Star Wars game that they could play against each other after Keith used his wizardry to connect two computers together—an early, jerry-rigged, multiplayer game.
Megan looked up to him. “I wanted to be a rocket scientist, like my dad. That’s what I wanted to be, if I wasn’t going to make the Olympics.”
But things started to sour for Megan, and in her relationship with her parents, in high school. Maybe it was because she switched to a bigger school or maybe because she got her first boyfriend. Her grades dipped into the regular B’s, then got worse. She swam less. Then, partway through high school, she said she was raped by a boy who lived near the big church. The boy had plied her with beer, she recalls. Her recollections were fuzzy; they came in and out. In the end, nothing came of the allegations; she felt her parents weren’t supportive.
Her grades worsened. She stopped swimming, thanks in part to an injured shoulder. On her high school graduation night, not long before the accident on Valley View Drive, her boyfriend got down on one knee at a campsite and proposed. Megan went home to show her parents the ring; she said her mom didn’t approve. On the other hand, because of their souring relationship, Megan had asked her mother not to come to her high school graduation. As to her engagement, she said, her father seemed mostly supportive. “I don’t think either of my parents liked him,” she said of her fiancé. “My dad kind of went with it.”
Megan thought of her father as a tether, and he was gone.
She needed something to wear to the funeral. She was low on funds. Leila looked inside Keith’s wallet; as she suspected it would, it kept $100 in $20 bills—what Keith usually carried. She gave it to Megan to go with her aunt to the mall to buy something black.
Among the visitors to the house was Tom Higgs, Keith’s boss— putative boss, really, given that Keith was the guy at the office answering questions. When Tom got to the O’Dell’s, he saw Leila in the living room, shaking.
“She couldn’t focus,” Tom recalls. It was like trying to talk to someone who didn’t have a reason to take the next breath.
“CAN WE SEE HIM?” asked Jim Furfaro’s mom. She meant: Jim’s body.
The mortician nodded grimly.
Jim’s mom stood behind Jackie at Allen-Hall Mortuary. The Furfaro family made their visit shortly after the O’Dell clan.
Jackie already had her game face on, an almost impassive look, the grief held tightly inside. After falling apart, turning hysterical, when the officers first told her in the classroom at Utah State, she recovered her outward composure.
“In the end, I was embarrassed that I’d fallen apart in front of anyone who knew me. That isn’t my thing.”
After she told Cassidy, she put Stephanie to bed. The older girl, upstairs in her room, attempted to be brave herself, tried to sleep. She could hear
Leila asked again to see the body. Someone made it plain to her why she couldn’t see it. Keith, her true love, was broken beyond anything imaginable.
A man handed Leila a Ziploc bag. It contained a broken cell phone and a GPS, his watch, his car keys on a chain with a small compass on it, and the brown leather wallet he had made in his high school shop class and carried ever since. In another bag, she received his black lace-up shoes and his dark socks.
“Where are his glasses?”
Gone. This was all of Keith that remained.
She couldn’t bring herself to eat. She didn’t pray. She had become something akin to a zombie. More visitors came to the house.
Megan showed up. Her life was already out-of-balance and now her dad was dead. When she was a little girl, she and Keith would go geocaching together. He’d wake her in the middle of the night and they’d use the big Deep Space Hunter telescope to look at a comet or other celestial event. They would throw the softball around in the yard. They played video games, the first being an early Star Wars game that they could play against each other after Keith used his wizardry to connect two computers together—an early, jerry-rigged, multiplayer game.
Megan looked up to him. “I wanted to be a rocket scientist, like my dad. That’s what I wanted to be, if I wasn’t going to make the Olympics.”
But things started to sour for Megan, and in her relationship with her parents, in high school. Maybe it was because she switched to a bigger school or maybe because she got her first boyfriend. Her grades dipped into the regular B’s, then got worse. She swam less. Then, partway through high school, she said she was raped by a boy who lived near the big church. The boy had plied her with beer, she recalls. Her recollections were fuzzy; they came in and out. In the end, nothing came of the allegations; she felt her parents weren’t supportive.
Her grades worsened. She stopped swimming, thanks in part to an injured shoulder. On her high school graduation night, not long before the accident on Valley View Drive, her boyfriend got down on one knee at a campsite and proposed. Megan went home to show her parents the ring; she said her mom didn’t approve. On the other hand, because of their souring relationship, Megan had asked her mother not to come to her high school graduation. As to her engagement, she said, her father seemed mostly supportive. “I don’t think either of my parents liked him,” she said of her fiancé. “My dad kind of went with it.”
Megan thought of her father as a tether, and he was gone.
She needed something to wear to the funeral. She was low on funds. Leila looked inside Keith’s wallet; as she suspected it would, it kept $100 in $20 bills—what Keith usually carried. She gave it to Megan to go with her aunt to the mall to buy something black.
Among the visitors to the house was Tom Higgs, Keith’s boss— putative boss, really, given that Keith was the guy at the office answering questions. When Tom got to the O’Dell’s, he saw Leila in the living room, shaking.
“She couldn’t focus,” Tom recalls. It was like trying to talk to someone who didn’t have a reason to take the next breath.
“CAN WE SEE HIM?” asked Jim Furfaro’s mom. She meant: Jim’s body.
The mortician nodded grimly.
Jim’s mom stood behind Jackie at Allen-Hall Mortuary. The Furfaro family made their visit shortly after the O’Dell clan.
Jackie already had her game face on, an almost impassive look, the grief held tightly inside. After falling apart, turning hysterical, when the officers first told her in the classroom at Utah State, she recovered her outward composure.
“In the end, I was embarrassed that I’d fallen apart in front of anyone who knew me. That isn’t my thing.”
After she told Cassidy, she put Stephanie to bed. The older girl, upstairs in her room, attempted to be brave herself, tried to sleep. She could hear
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