Always Watching

on the doorsill as I led him into the house. Please, don’t let it be Lisa. Don’t let her be dead.
    I made my way to the kitchen table, pulled a chair out, and eased my body down. I put my elbows on the wooden surface and rested my mouth against my fists, pressing my lips into them, trying to stop the scream building there. I was aware that my legs and hands were shaking, but peripherally, like a doctor assessing my condition. Shock, you’re going into shock. I was already a stranger to myself.
    I searched for words, made them come out my mouth. “What happened?”
    “Early this morning there was a fire at the commune and—”
    “My daughter?”
    “We don’t know.…”
    I started to moan into my hands, a low, keening sound. Shock cocooned my body, everything slowing down.
    The officer said, “I can call someone for you.”
    “Tell me what happened.”
    “It might be better if you had a friend—”
    “Tell me.” I bit out the words, anger and tears mixing on my face.
    So he did.
    *   *   *
    There were only a handful of survivors. Two members had escaped through a broken window—one, a female staff member, was in the hospital with a bullet wound, the other was suffering from third-degree burns. The man who took care of the grounds had been down at the far end of the property mowing the lawn, so he’d also been spared. Another surviving member had been coming back from a horseback ride and was still in the distance when Joseph pulled up. She continued to the barn and began to take off her horse’s saddle. There was silence for a while, and then gunshots.
    Terrified, the girl had hidden in one of the stalls, with no way to call for help. She’d been watching the building with horror when she heard a loud whoosh and saw flames shoot out of the windows, quickly consuming the wood siding.
    A few moments later, there was an explosion, and every building was engulfed in flames. The girl had released all the animals, then hid in the field until the police and fire trucks arrived.
    It took them hours to put the fire out. At least one hundred and fifty people had died, twenty-five of them children. There might have been even more casualties but there hadn’t been any workshops or retreats running at the time.
    The members who died had all been locked into the meditation room, herded like sheep for a slaughter. Joy was the surviving member who’d been shot. She’d helped Joseph gather everyone, but when Joseph grabbed her keys and locked them all inside, then said he needed gasoline, she realized something was wrong. She’d tried to stop him, but he’d shot her and left her in the hallway. She’d crawled to her office and barely made it out the window before the gasoline had ignited some chemicals kept in the storeroom and triggered the explosion.
    The police didn’t know what happened to Joseph and whether he was still on the loose. It was going to take months for them to identify the bodies. Joy had tried to list all the members that she knew for sure were in the meditation room, but Lisa wasn’t one of them. Joy couldn’t remember seeing her at all that morning or in the previous two days; nor could the other survivors. She was missing.
    I kept staring at the officer, watching his mouth move as he explained that there were resources available to me, but nothing was connecting.
    I put my head down on the table and sobbed.
    *   *   *
    The days after the fire were a haze of jumbled images and memories. There were moments where I’d be standing in my kitchen, staring at my hand clutching the soapy sponge, trying to understand. How could Joseph have killed all those people? How could I be washing dishes and doing laundry when my daughter was still missing? I knew grief would shield you from the worst and leak the pain out in small doses, but I remember thinking, No, this is as bad as it can get, surely it can’t hurt more than this . But it could, and it did.
    Most days I’d walk slowly around my house, feeling as though my entire body was beaten and bruised, trying to accomplish simple tasks. I’d break it down into moments: put on slippers, pull on housecoat, brush teeth. Then I’d stare at the woman in the mirror, and grief would spill out of my mouth in strangling gasps.
    I’d dealt with death before, understood its process. But the loss of so many, combined with the agony of waiting to hear if Lisa was one of the victims, was something I never could’ve prepared for. And I cried