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Moscow, Idaho

J im and Stacy Chapin continue their walk in the new, cold dawn.

They pass by the Sig Chi house again. At the gate on Nez Perce Drive, they stop, shocked by what they see in the parking lot.

The brothers are leaving the house en masse, flocking like birds caught in the winter snow rushing to head south. When they spot the Chapins, they put down the belongings they’re clutching. One by one, the brothers hug them as if their lives depend on it.

Everyone here knows Stacy and Jim, because Ethan and Hunter were the lifeblood of the house. Even when Ethan was barred from living on the premises, he’d made a point of showing up to help with recruitment during Rush Week, working harder, putting in longer hours, than any of them.

For the worst of reasons, the dean has cleared campus. Though Thanksgiving break, to which they have all been looking forward, is coming early, none of them has any idea what the future holds—or if they’ll ever return to this house, to this school.

“Their moms had called them home,” Stacy later said. “They were broken, all of them.”

This moment of togetherness, of solidarity in the face of fear and shock, is a foreshadowing of the way Stacy Chapin will handle the loss of her son in the weeks and months to come.

She will fight to unite the living when she cannot bring back the dead.

That morning, early, it isn’t just the Sig Chi brothers who are packing up. There is a mass exodus out of Moscow despite the snowstorm that is descending.

The kids who were hunkered down in the Best Western all go home. Classes are canceled. Anyone who can leave, does.

Stacy and Jim go back to the hotel.

They, Maizie, and Hunter pile into the Chevy Tahoe and begin the winding two-and-a-half-hour drive up the hills to their second home in Priest Lake. Thanksgiving is always their last visit of the year to this house. The weather makes it too dangerous to get here in the freezing months.

Even now, it’s hairy. Snow is blanketing the roads, and it’s not clear what’s streaming more, the white flakes outside or the tears rolling down the faces of the car’s passengers.

Jim later can only remember that his mind was anywhere but on the road.

Just outside of Coeur d’Alene, before the steep climb up into the mountains, they hear sirens. Of all things, they are being pulled over.

Jim rolls down the window when the state patrolman approaches.

“It was our son that was one of the kids who was killed,” he says.

The officer blinks. “I’m so sorry,” he says. There’s no mention of whatever driving infraction Jim might have committed. “Just get there safely,” he tells Jim.

Stacy is taken aback.

(“It was a profound moment for all of us,” she later said. A reminder that there was good in the world and that they needed to focus on the living.)

Jim grips the steering wheel. And starts the engine.

They head on up, up into the mountains, to be alone with their grief.