again, until his blood was soaked into the soil. But still
his memory remains ingrained on the course. Byrne, for
one, can’t shake the image of his mangled face. Other
members are taking self-defense classes and learning
to use firearms. “I’ll think about it the rest of my days
here,” says Dianne McPherson, who accompanied Byrne
to the crime scene and for weeks afterward couldn’t
bring herself to play the 10th hole.
That sort of pain, though, may be most profound
among those who loved Siller the longest. “You live all
your life, you count your blessings and you think how
good your life has been,” says his father, Gene. “Then
this happens, and you really question things.”
Sharon Siller aches when she thinks about how her
son died, how frightened he must have been. The depth
of her love matches the depth of her grief. Her daughters
worry that she and her husband, both now over 75,
are irreparably damaged. They routinely turn down
lunch invitations from friends, avoiding uncomfortable
questions. Some days Sharon will seem particularlymorose, and Gene will have to cajole her out of the sor-
row. The next day, the roles reverse.
Then there’s Ashley. Occasionally, these days, she ven-
tures into her walk-in closet and collapses near her dead
husband’s hanging array of bright golf shirts and slacks,
wrapping her arms around them as she sobs, clinging
to little bits of fabric. Really, she is hanging on to the
image that she wants to savor, of the man who strolled
downstairs each morning in a bold outfit that matched
the pride he took in his work, who conveyed contentment
in the path he’d chosen. She’ll nuzzle the clothes and
shut her eyes and will herself to remember that Gene.
Sometimes, though, she pictures the other Gene. The
one who was so poorly pieced together that she thought
she’d wandered into the wrong room at the funeral
home on July 9. Gene, always cautious, used to tell his
wife that if she ever found herself in danger, and he
wasn’t there, she should turn and run. Gazing later at
his cold body, Ashley realized that a chunk of his rightthumb had been sewn back on; she figures that in his
last moments he had turned to run, holding up a hand
to shield himself. Sometimes she can’t stop herself from
thinking about that Gene.
She tries instead to remember their talks, late into
the night, at the pirate-themed bar her husband years
ago built in their basement. Now, she returns only
occasionally to “Gene and Ashley’s Arrrggg Bar,” but
her favorite place in the world feels empty. More often
she finds herself in that cluttered home office, with
the piles of paperwork, a widow’s endless checklist.
There she makes call after call, from a script achingly
familiar to anyone who’s ever carried the burden of loss:
Hi, my name is Ashley Siller. My husband, Gene, recently
passed away...
She’s grown accustomed to forcing a smile. At board
meetings for the grant, and at public events such as
the tournament, she hides behind the polished façade
of a corporate sales rep. In photos from a fall vacation
to Disney World—a trip she planned with Gene before
he died—she’s beaming. Those smiles, though, exact a
toll when she returns to an empty home and peers out
from behind the mask. “I’m totally a disaster,” she says.
“I’m really, really broken.”
In trauma therapy she learned that when Gene diedher amygdala f looded her brain with stress chemicals,
making it difficult to think linearly or solve problems.
She finds herself perpetually caught between the present
moment and the trauma of July 3, as if it has all been one
relentless day. Her mind drifts when she tells stories.
She still refers to Gene as if he’s alive.
She even thinks about her husband in the present
tense. During his time at Pinetree, Gene always made
it home for dinner. Now, as Ashley cooks supper and the
clock creeps toward 7 p.m., she still waits for the side door
to swing open. For her boys to dash to their impeccably
dressed father. For Gene to fill the room with the warmth
that’s gone missing. Her eyes shift from the clock to the
door, the clock to the door. But it never opens.
Amid such melancholy, she holds tight to small com-
forts. Like: Ashley’s therapist told her, to great relief, that
the foundations of character are cemented in a child’s
first seven years, give or take. Ashley is confident that
78 Gene will live on within Beau and Banks—his steadiness,
PINETREEAshley has grown accustomed to forcing a smile,
but those smiles exact a toll. “I’m totally a disaster,”
she says. “I’M REALLY, REALLY BROKEN.”