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Moscow, Idaho

D ean Eckles chose this date deliberately. The first Wednesday after Thanksgiving is Chapter Day, when Greek life reconvenes on campus. “We knew the fraternity and sorority community was going to turn out massively for this,” Eckles said.

It’s snowing. It’s really snowing. Seven or eight inches.

He cannot believe his good fortune. He used the weather as an excuse to move tonight’s candlelit vigil for Ethan, Xana, Maddie, and Kaylee indoors, inside the Kibbie Dome. But the weather isn’t the real reason he made the switch.

Chief Fry told him last week that it would be much harder to secure the venue, maybe impossible, if it was outside. The Kibbie Dome has magnetometers at the entrances. It’s entirely possible the suspect may try to show up. They need to be ready.

So Eckles gave up his vision of an iconic outdoor ceremony and notified the students of the change—but he cited the weather as the reason, not wanting to scare anyone.

Idaho’s governor, Brad Little, is also coming.

Eckles arrives an hour early to go through last-minute checks.

He sees a crowd of about thirty young people all dressed alike.

Despite himself and the gravity of the situation, he chuckles.

They’re undercover FBI agents. “I don’t know who told ’em to dress like college students,” he said, “but they all looked like lumberjacks… plaid shirts, blue jeans, and boots.”

Still, Eckles immediately feels better. He doubts anyone can get past this bunch.

He’s not yet met any of the victims’ families, and soon some begin to arrive.

The Chapins barely make it in time due to the weather. Even without snow, the drive from La Conner to Moscow is a good six to seven hours.

I-90 is closed, so Jim takes Highway 2. “I don’t even know why it was even still open. It was just me and a couple of other people on the road,” he said. “It’s heavy snow. Crazy. I wouldn’t want to do that again.”

Stacy remembers that other awful drive from La Conner to Moscow just two weeks earlier. And she remembers something else. She wants to make an apology.

“I really chewed out someone on your staff that day,” she tells Dean Eckles when they shake hands, recalling the angry phone call.

“I know,” he tells her with a smile. “It was me.”

The Chapins are ushered through a separate entrance and up to a press box, sky-high, where they can watch the students filing in.

And where they can be surrounded by FBI agents.

From this height, Hunter sees the Sig Chi brothers, all dressed up in coats and ties, walk to the front. He’s instantly touched. “I knew my fraternity was coming, but I didn’t know how many of them,” he said. “But every single person came.”

He asks Jim and Stacy if he can go stand with his brothers. They ask law enforcement. The answer is yes, but with a caveat: He has to take his FBI detail with him. A young woman with long, shiny black hair, clad in boots, jeans, and a green plaid shirt, follows him.

The Sig Chi brothers are confused to see Hunter with a stunning woman who does not take her eyes off their friend for even a fraction of a second.

His brothers don’t believe that she’s an FBI agent until she sees they are all looking at her and she flashes her badge.

The shocked expressions on their faces is something Hunter Chapin savors.

A moment of fun in an otherwise bleak universe.

When the service is about to start, Stacy and Jim head downstairs, agents in tow, and meet Steve and Kristi Goncalves.

Steve is practicing his speech on behalf of Kaylee and Maddie, but he stops to shake hands. He shows Stacy a photograph on his phone of a man with glasses.

“Have you seen this guy? It’s Maddie’s dad, Ben Mogen,” he says. Steve seems surprised that Ben is there to speak about Maddie. Maddie was raised by her mom, Karen, and her stepfather, Scott Laramie. They had full custody. So Steve has never met Ben.

But Karen and Scott Laramie, grief-stricken, are skipping the vigil. So are the Kernodles. Maddie’s grandmother—Deedle, as Maddie called her—later said that she stayed home out of fear.

But the vigil is televised, so even those who are absent can watch. After introductions from Dean Eckles, Stacy Chapin takes the stage. And in her inimitable, articulate style, she finds a way to touch everyone there.

Her message is about life, not death. She draws a portrait of the Chapin family, a family, she says, probably not unlike any of theirs.

They play games; they eat dinner together when they can; they listen to country music; they spend their weekends following their kids to various sporting events.

She tells the students she’s not going to dwell on that awful night.

No one can change the outcome. Ethan would want them all to carry on.

To keep pursuing their dreams and reaching their goals while cherishing the time they have together because “you can’t get it back. ”

Steve Goncalves is up next. With his wife, Kristi, by his side, he strikes a soft tone as he describes himself as the girl dad constantly amazed by the perspectives of his daughter.

He talks about Kaylee and Maddie’s friendship, taking comfort in the fact that the two besties died together.

But he also makes Kaylee and Maddie a promise: “We’re gonna get our justice,” he says toward the end.

That night, the Chapins’ chief concern is the well-being of the Sigma Chi brothers.

Since November 13, their fraternity house has been besieged by media knocking and drones flying overhead.

(Even on this visit, Stacy’s best friend, Susie DeVries, who has come with them, wakes up in her hotel to find what she later realizes is a member of the press washing her window.) Part of honoring Ethan’s legacy, Stacy and Jim believe, is looking after the fraternity brothers he meant so much to.

So Hunter messages the house in a group text that the family is coming over to be with them and they need to put their phones in a basket and pull down the blackout shades. There’s money, he says, for pizza and beer.

They gather in the lodge. In the same room where Ethan and Xana spent their last night partying.

Cocooned in a safe space, far from prying eyes and lenses, insulated against social media, the brothers, still in their suits, and the Chapins stay up all night talking about Ethan. Laughing. Some of them get extremely drunk. Some of them cry. Nobody cares.

They are living on borrowed time, safe for just one night to let rip. This is their moment of catharsis, their moment to connect, remember, and treasure Ethan, and they are going to make the most of it.