Rebecca was six years old, and she didn’t understand what was going on.

 

The day had seemed normal.  At one point, it had been fun.  Mom had made her toast with scrambled eggs on top, which was Rebecca’s favorite.  Billy was busy at the table trying to finish a project for class today.  He was always waiting until the last minute.  Most of the dining room table was covered in poster board, markers, and glue.

 

Later, she would hear from reporters on TV that she lived in a quiet, peaceful community, but Rebecca didn’t know what they meant by that. She had always lived here. And it didn’t seem very quiet to her. There were always cars zooming past on the roads, trucks honking their horns and her brother never seemed to shut up. He thought that because he was in 6th grade he was so smart. But he wasn’t. Rebecca knew all sorts of stuff he didn’t: stuff about dragons and spaceships and all the great inventors who had changed the world.

 

Billy used to say that stuff was stupid. Stupid stories for stupid kids. But Rebecca didn’t think they were stupid; she loved them.

 

Daddy kissed her on the forehead before he left for work that day. Normally she didn’t see him in the morning; he was supposed to be at work while it was still dark out. But he told her it was fine and held her close. Rebecca felt warm and happy.

 

Rebecca wouldn’t ever stop letting Daddy kiss her.  She liked the way his big whiskers scratched her forehead, she liked the warmth of his lips.  She wanted to be a carpenter like Dad when she was older.  But whenever she said so, her parents told her it was wrong.  Aim higher, they told her.  You ought to end up better than your old man.

​

But Rebecca liked her Old Man, she liked her house and her Mom.  She even liked Billy when he wasn’t being a jerk.  Why would she ever want to leave?  This was everything she really cared about.

 

That afternoon, the reporters came and Mom locked the door and wouldn’t let anyone answer the phone. It rang a lot before Mom finally took it off the wall. Grandma came over.

 

Billy was upset, Rebecca could tell because he was quiet, and he only ever shut up when he was angry with someone. She tried to ask him what was wrong, but he wouldn’t tell her. At six o’clock, he went upstairs and locked himself in his room. Mom wanted to force him to sit with the family, but Grandma wouldn’t let her. She said that Billy needed space. Rebecca asked why.

 

Both of them, her Mom and her Grandma, they looked at Rebecca as if she were an alien. A little stranger who didn’t belong. They wouldn’t answer at first, but Rebecca began to whine and kept asking why everyone was so upset. Why had she been taken home from school early? Why were there cars on the lawn?

 

Mom started to cry.  Grandma put her arm on Mommy’s shoulders, whispering in her ear. No one had answered her, but Rebecca knew that she should stop. She didn’t want to see Mommy cry, but she wanted to know.

 

Grandma left Mommy and took Rebecca into the living room, sitting her down on the comfy chair that Daddy always sat in as he read the paper.

​

What have you heard, the old woman asked, her eyes wet and glimmering in the faint light. What do you know?

 

Rebecca didn’t know anything, and she said so. Grandma nodded, the way Mom did when she was about to say something she didn’t want to. The way she nodded when she’d told Rebecca that her cat Cuddles had gotten run over. But they didn’t have a cat anymore, so Rebecca knew it couldn’t be that.

​

Where’s Dad? she asked Grandma, he could explain it to her. He always knew how to tell Rebecca anything because he treated her like a big girl. He was honest with her, he told her anything. But he wasn’t here now, and she wished he were.

​

Your dad’s not comin’ home, Grandma said.

 

Why? Rebecca asked. Will he be back tomorrow?

​

Your daddy, he did a bad thing Rebecca. He did a terrible thing.

 

Like what? Because if he says he’s sorry-

 

A terrible thing, Grandma said, the kind you get punished for. The kind you go to jail for.

 

There was silence, a long quiet as Rebecca tried to understand. What did her Dad do, and why would they take him to jail for it? Didn’t they know he was her dad? He was a nice man, didn’t they know that?

​

He won’t be coming home, Grandma continued, because after he did the bad thing, after he hurt those kids…he did the same thing to himself.

 

He hurt people? Rebecca asked. Why did he do that?

 

No one knows, hon, no one knows. But your Daddy, he isn’t coming home. He’s gone.

​

Rebecca knew the word gone. She knew it because Dad had taught it to her. Cuddles was gone. Grandpa Morris was gone. Gone was bad and Grandma said that Daddy was gone too. She didn’t want to lose him, but he had told her a while ago that once you’re gone you can’t come back. For the first time, Rebecca knew why everyone was sad. She loved Daddy, too. She didn’t want him to be gone.

​

*      *      *

​

When Rebecca was eleven, a few reporters came to town. They were polite at first; they didn’t say anything to Mom or to Bill or her. But after a few days of asking around, they finally came to the Morris’.

​​

They asked Mom to speak with them, and she did. Rebecca distrusted reporters.  She remembered how cruel they had been five years ago. It was a hard thing, learning what her father had done. But that was over, they had moved on. Rebecca didn’t understand why they were coming back now.

​

They cornered her the next day as she was walking home from work at the middle school craft shop. They asked her how she felt about her father.  She told them the truth. They asked if she ever thought of him and she answered, not often. What they asked after that was too painful, so painful that she had refused to answer. Now that she was older than most of the victims, what did she have to say to those who had lost their kids in the attack? Was she sorry about what her father had done?

 

That night she went home and thought about Dad for a long time, about the kids he’d killed and what it must be like to be one of those families. Rebecca had seen one of the girls in the market sometimes, one of the ones who’d survived. They never looked each other in the eye, they just walked on by pretending they didn’t see each other. Rebecca didn’t want to think about it anymore. Why would anyone care now? Why, after all this time, would they come back?

​​

She asked Bill. He was a Junior now and he seemed to know a lot about this stuff. It had been five years ago and Dad was dead. He’d killed himself and that should ahve been the end of it. But Bill told her that some people liked to have perspective on these kinds of things, that it helped them understand it better.

​​

Rebecca understood it just fine, and she said so. Dad had killed those kids, he’d murdered them. No one knew why. And for months, no one had left the family alone. The reporters had been everywhere: her school, her church, even outside the playground she used to go to on the weekends with her friends. They’d even come to the funeral. She’d missed three weeks of class because of them. Dad had gone nuts and he’d killed those people. Rebecca used to like him back then, but she’d been a dumb kid and she didn’t really know him. How could she have?  He'd really been a creep, hadn't he? Rebecca knew that now.

 

She was glad he was dead.

​

*      *      *

​

Rebecca was lying own in the back of Jason’s Buick. They were done now, the warmth still inside her strangely comforting. It felt like something she remembered from long ago, but she couldn’t remember what. She was seventeen, and she and Jason had been together for six months.

 

She used to love him.

​

The first time they made love, she truly felt that she would spend the rest of her life in his arms. But now, only a month later, she realized that those feelings had been naïve. She did not love Jason and she wasn't going to spend the rest of her life with him. In a year or so, she'd go off to college and she'd leave him. Maybe she would find love in college, or maybe not. She didn’t care either way. She just knew that Jason was not the person she was going to spend her life with.

​

He was a kind boy and he did care for her. But he was only a boyfriend, and she knew that she would have others. He was fine for now. They could be together and she enjoyed herself.  But Jason never planned to leave Holloway, and her future was somewhere else.

​

It felt good, to be wrapped in his arms, to pull him closer. It felt good when they fucked. But she knew that she would never love him again.

​

*      *      *

​

It was raining the night that Chris proposed.  As she accepted, gleefully, Rebecca’s tears were washed away in the pattering drops that fell on her cheeks. She held him, and they talked throughout the night about the future they would spend together. He couldn’t stay long because he had to student-teach tomorrow, but she didn’t mind. He kissed her before leaving and the tingling on her lips felt so good.  She hoped it would feel that way forever.

​​

She didn’t have many female friends on campus.  She spent most of her free time with the guys on the campus's Theater Set Crew, joking with them as they passed a joint between them. There were girls she knew who were nice-enough, sure, but they were immature and annoying. They giggled incessantly and were too always anal; they didn’t understand how to have a good time. They were uptight liberal blowhards who discussed politics all day without understanding for a second what the hell they were talking about. Sometimes Rebecca agreed with them, sometimes not, but she never agreed with the way they talked about it. They treated politics like a game. With the guys at Set Crew, Rebecca could relax and be herself. That was where she had met Chris.

​

She spun the small ring on her finger, feeling the metal irritate her delicate skin. She liked it; it made her feel special. It made her feel like she’d finally accomplished something. She was twenty-two now and she was ready to get out of the dorms. She was ready to get a job, though she didn’t really know what she was going to do.

​​

She'd started college with an eye on a law degree, finding herself fascinated by the criminal mind. But there was too much procedure, the work was too dry. Her next major, sociology, had been numbers about nothing, all gussied up so people could pretend they were important. Now she was majoring in psychology, barely picking up enough credits to graduate on time, but she didn’t connect to the material the way she knew she should. She'd been enthralled at first by the way a mind does and does not work, but eventually it all become dry statistics like everything else.

​​

She would find something. Chris was going to grad school, and she would probably move to wherever he went and find a job there. She called her brother a couple hours later, and he listened as well as he could as he drove home from his office. William worked in Washington now, but he wasn’t part of the political machine. He was a family attorney; he specialized in custody and reconciliation. He congratulated her and told her to call tomorrow; Bridget would be waiting for him and they were going to a play tonight, so he had to get ready. He would have more time to talk tomorrow.

 

Congratulations Becca, he said, I’m glad you found somebody. Mom would be proud of you.

​

Rebecca agreed and said goodbye. She took a deep breath, thinking of her mother. It had been two years now and she still didn’t believe it sometimes. Her mother, normally so sad, so morose, had become so lively near the end. The Doctors told Rebecca that it happened a lot, especially in cases where the patient knew for so long that death was coming. So often, they really came alive in ways they hadn’t in years, or sometimes ever. It had been a long time since Mom had been happy, and the change was jarring. Rebecca was glad Chris had been there to support her when Mom finally passed. It had been a strange time

 

Yes, Rebecca thought, Mom would be proud of her. Mom’s only regret would be that she was missing the wedding. There would be no one to see Rebecca off, no one to help her plan, no one to give her away. And for the first time in years, Rebecca thought about her father.

 

*      *      *

 

Rebecca returned to Holloway, Ohio in the spring. She smelled the freshly spread manure and knew she was home. It had been seven years since she’d been here, seven years since she’d walked the streets of this small town that had once seemed so large.

​

Chris had called again, but she deleted the message without listening to it. It was over.  He just had to accept it. They’d been growing apart for a while now, and she needed space. It wasn’t that she hated him; she wasn't even mad at him. She just didn’t love him anymore. She no longer recognized the man that he had become.​  Grad school took up so much of his time, and work took up so much of hers. In the end she had to move away from it all; away from the city, away from him.

​

She walked down Main Street, looking into store windows and watching the people inside. No one noticed her. Or if they did, they didn’t remember her. Before her mother died, Rebecca hadn’t come home often. She’d enjoyed college too much. She had become a stranger in her own town. She was no longer one of the townsfolk. She no longer belonged here.

​​

What would they say if they knew she was back? Folks around here always used to whisper behind her back, ever since she was a little girl.  She remembered the way it felt, always being watched.  There goes the Morris Girl, they would say, the one whose father killed those kids in Garrettstown Elementary. She used to pretend that she didn’t hear them, used to imagine she was somewhere else where no one knew who she was.  She supposed that's what she loved about the city, the fact that she could walk around and know that no one cared who she was or where she was going. ​Now that she’d been there, she found herself coming here again, in front of the store her father had once run.

​

It was closed now; it had been ever since. No one else wanted to buy it and there were other buildings open for rent. Morris Family Carpentry was still visible, the once-vibrant colors faded almost to the point of illegibility.

​​

She drove by her old home and saw some children playing in the front lawn. A little boy was on the tire swing she used to jump on. The tire swing her father had made her. Would their parents let them play on it if they'd known that's who'd chained it to the tree?

​

A long time ago, when she was very little, she had cried on that swing for hours. Her father had died and people were angry. It seemed so far away now, so distant. Rebecca could hardly believe it was real, even as it sll came rushing back into her mind. She could still remember the creak of the old branch overhead, the feel of the rubber on her wet cheeks. Sitting alone in her car, Rebecca cried for ten minutes before finally driving away.

​

She didn’t have anywhere to drive to, she just drove. For a long time, she cruised the back roads. It was so quiet here, so calm.  Peaceful.  It hadn’t felt that way in so long, it hardly seemed real. Now, it felt uncomfortable. There was so little noise. No music blaring, no jets overhead, no honking traffic all through the night.

​​

After an hour of driving, an hour that had passed in an instant, Rebecca found herself in front of the old elementary school. Not the school she had gone to, that was closer to home. This…it was here that her father had killed seven children. The youngest was only five, the oldest just thirteen. A teacher had been wounded, as had six other children eating lunch at the time. After unloading his rifle, her father had put a pistol to his temple and blew his brains out in the middel of the school cafeteria. Her dad, Jonathon Morris, had murdered seven children before killing himself. For years, she wondered why he had done it.

​

She had never been inside this place before. The school was closed now.  A new building had been built shortly after the incident.  The cost didn't matter; everyone was happy to leave the old building behind. Rebecca stood outside her car and she realized that she wanted to go inside.

​​

It didn't take long to find an unlocked door.  She pushed it open and stepped over the threshold.  It was dark, and everything was draped with a a thick layer of dust. Some broken tables still sat in a few rooms, but most were empty.

​

It didn’t take long to walk all of the halls. It was a small school. The cafeteria was almost as empty as the rest of the building, and a small hole had appeared in one of the far corners of the roof. Sunlight filtered in, allowing Rebecca to see the floating particles that flitted through the air.

​

Twenty years ago, this place had been filled with blood.

​​

Twenty years ago, the life Rebecca had hoped to have had ended. She hadn’t been here. She hadn’t known why he did it, and she still didn’t. Her entire life had been defined by what happened in this spot two decades before, but this was the first time she'd ever come here.  Everything changed when she was still too young to even understand what was happening. No, she corrected herself. She had understood one thing, one word: gone.

 

She had known that her father was gone.

​​

Rebecca could feel him now. She could remember his kind smile and his loud laugh. She was so young when he’d died, she had never really known him. During most of the really important events of her life, he had been gone. Standing in this spot, she still didn’t know why her father had done it, but for the first time in twenty years, Rebecca felt a bit of that warmth come back into her life.

​

Going to her knees, she cried.

​​

*      *      *

​​

Six months after coming back to Holloway, Rebecca reopened Morris Family Carpentry.

 

She had always liked working with her hands. She loved the feel of jeans and a flannel shirt clinging to her sweat. She loved the smell of cut two-by-fours. They reminded her of a better time, a better place; when the world was more innocent than it had become. Working here, Rebecca felt comfortable for the first time in...a long while.

​

In the workshop, Rebecca was no longer the daughter of a madman. Like herself, the people of Holloway had forgotten who Rebecca Morris was until she had come riding back into town. And now that she was an adult, a different person, they no longer knew her as just the girl who belonged to the kid-killer.  It took a few years to fully settle in, but every day along the way felt like it brought her closer to where she was supposed to be.

​

Of course, there were still some who talked about it.  She could tell sometimes.  It was mostly kids and teenagers, furtive whispers about the woman who owned the wood shop and how her dad had killed a bunch of people once.  There was even a rumor among some that she had kept dead bodies in the shed behind the shop.

​

But Rebecca no longer cared.  Her father's ghost couldn't hurt her anymore.  He was dead.  he was gone.  The people in her life who really mattered knew that she was more than who her father had been.

​

She was her father's daughter, yes, but she was a new woman, too.  And she was finally home.