Do you believe what Dad says about me? I wanted to ask. Do you
believe I’m dangerous? But I didn’t. Luke worked for my parents, and
without an education, he needed that job to support his family. Forcing
him to take a side would only end in heartache.
Richard, who was finishing a PhD in chemistry, had come down
from Oregon with Kami and their children. He smiled at me from the
back of the chapel. A few months before, Richard had written to me.
He’d said he was sorry for believing Dad, that he wished he’d done
more to help me when I needed it, and that from then on, I could count
on his support. We were family, he said.
Audrey and Benjamin chose a bench near the back. Audrey had
arrived early, when the chapel was empty. She had grabbed my arm
and whispered that my refusing to see our father was a grave sin. “He
is a great man,” she said. “For the rest of your life you will regret not
humbling yourself and following his counsel.” These were the first
words my sister had said to me in years, and I had no response to
them.
Shawn arrived a few minutes before the service, with Emily and
Peter and a little girl I had never met. It was the first time I had been in
a room with him since the night he’d killed Diego. I was tense, but
there was no need. He did not look at me once during the service.
My oldest brother, Tony, sat with my parents, his five children
fanning out in the pew. Tony had a GED and had built a successful
trucking company in Las Vegas, but it hadn’t survived the recession.
Now he worked for my parents, as did Shawn and Luke and their
wives, as well as Audrey and her husband, Benjamin. Now I thought
about it, I realized that all my siblings, except Richard and Tyler, were
economically dependent on my parents. My family was splitting down
the middle—the three who had left the mountain, and the four who
had stayed. The three with doctorates, and the four without high
school diplomas. A chasm had appeared, and was growing.
—A YEAR WOULD PASS before I would return to Idaho.
A few hours before my flight from London, I wrote to my mother—as
I always did, as I always will do—to ask if she would see me. Again, her
response was swift. She would not, she would never, unless I would see
my father. To see me without him, she said, would be to disrespect her