During our trip to Baton Rouge a few weeks ago Lindsey told me that Expo, a showcase for engineering students to present and display their project inventions from the past year, was coming up. Lindsey, in her very Lindsey way, had built a coin-operated miniature guillotine that chopped stickers off a roll and dispensed them out of a slit in the front. She had talked about it for months and I was excited to see her creation in action.
Preoccupied with grief and the investigation and work and…well, that’s all there really is, I’d forgotten about the event until Vanessa texted me a few days prior. She said she was going and asked if I wanted to join.
Yes, definitely. I’ll drive. It will be bumper-to-bumper afternoon traffic heading to Boulder, which favors the comfy, automatic Ford F150, but we’ll take the red Vanagon. Lindsey finds the white Ford truck repulsive and this is her day.
I picked up Vanessa around 4:00 to try to slide in before traffic rendered the highway a parking lot. Dark afternoon clouds rolling off the mountains created a patchwork of the sky with the blazing Spring sun making occasional appearances over Highway 36 and off towards the Flatirons, our destination. We talked sparingly at first but soon the conversation turned to the investigation, to what we know and don’t know, and to all the questions with no answers and all the theories conjured by friends and family (and complete strangers,) about how it all fits together, or doesn’t, and about how difficult it is to sit on our hands and struggle to find patience in this purgatory.
I was surprised by how much more information she had than me. She pays more attention to things in general, retains information better, and has a brain trust of friends and family working with her; in my mind they have a windowless room with photos, diagrams, maps, and thumb tacks, blooms of red string lines connecting it all. (More likely, they have a group chat and a lot of meals together.)
Regardless, our conversations about the case always seem to end without an ending. We never get to a point of anything definitive with the investigation; however, we are always definitive in how much we miss Megan, how much we love her, and how certain we are that she didn’t do this to herself.
Divorced or not, we take comfort in one another’s presence; only three people on Earth know precisely how this all feels: Vanessa, Lindsey, and me.
Coming over that final rise on Highway 36 before the descent into Boulder Valley once made my heart rise with pride. With CU’s red-orange roofs nestled beneath the skyward Flatirons, this place was almost magical–a symbol of the future, of college life, of the next step–for Lindsey then for Megan.
But now I see the place and I think of February 2025, of a cold and bitter day when I came over that rise and just knew. I think of CU and CUPD and BCSO and I become enraged. I have fought with myself over how pointless it is to hate a place, or an institution, or an organization. Why give it the energy? And it is never far from my mind that Lindsey has made this place her home and she has thrived here. She deserves all the love and respect in the world for how she’s taken this town as her own.
On this day, Boulder welcomed us with what we’ve come to expect. Low, deep gray clouds hanging before the Flatirons, a mist shrouding the tops of CU’s beige buildings. Mother Nature always knows when we’re coming. Snow, wind, frigid temps, sleet, rain…She shows us no mercy.
The Atlas building, site of the Expo, is up Colorado Avenue. I took a left from 28th and passed that street—I can’t remember the name, it doesn’t matter, I refuse to look it up—where CUPD’s building sits to the left, where Hallett Hall looms further along on the right, and felt a weight pushing down on my shoulders. My stomach turned over.
College kids walked the sidewalk and waited for crossing signals or stood at the bus stop. Others rode scooters or bikes; all seemed excited, even on this gray afternoon with rain threatening, to be finishing up with exams, excited for their summers. Excited for their futures.
I drove up as far as the street would allow and dropped off Vanessa so I could go find parking. I doubled back down Colorado to the little church parking lot and pulled the red van into a spot near the street. I recalled parking Pigpen in this lot, right next to this spot, for a Dead & Co. concert several years prior. Different times. That version of me thought being sober at a Dead show was “hard.” He had no idea what was coming.
Walking up Colorado, an old timer among college kids, I felt nauseous, hot, claustrophobic. It was chilly and starting to sprinkle but my jacket smothered me. I happened to look to my right and saw the “Buff Walk.” This is where Megan was last seen alive on camera. To my left was where she walked from Hallett Hall and where she crossed the street, alone on a cold Sunday night.
I couldn’t get enough oxygen; I paused and straightened up and took several deep breaths. I hoped nobody noticed. But why would they? It’s just a dude with a white beard having trouble getting up the hill.
Do not faint. Do not freak out.
Everybody says “you’re so strong” but they don’t see you now, do they?
Keep walking. Keep breathing.
Today is for Lindsey.
I found Vanessa waiting in front of the building; the raindrops were coming a little more frequently now.
—
Excited students, parents, professors, and patrons packed the Atlas building; throughout the hallways were presentations of scientific displays and projects with proud inventors showing off the fruits of their years’ work. I grabbed a program and we found where Lindsey was presenting. Down a hallway and into a lab we found her, answering questions about her invention and giving a demonstration.
Lindsey beamed. As I watched her interact and speak, the smile on her face, the lightness, was something I hadn’t witnessed in months. She was in her element, among her tribe, doing her thing. Being Lindsey.
Watching her, for a tiny spark of a moment, I felt as I did the first time I held her on the Sunday afternoon when she was born, in awe of her vitality and immersed in the purest love for her.
She looked over and grinned, eyes bright.
“Hey! It’s going great,” she said as we came in for hugs, “I’m having trouble with the electric motor overheating when it pulls the blade back to the top but overall going well!”
A man and his son walked up. “Check it out! A sticker guillotine!” Said the man, pronouncing the “L’s.”
“Gill-a-teen.” I bit my tongue.
His son pulled a quarter from the jar sitting on the table and slid it into the slot on the front of the machine. The blade began to rise; Lindsey monitored on her laptop. The blade came down and sliced off a little sticker of a head, which spit out the front. The little boy smiled.
Lindsey thanked them then turned to us and said, “I wanted to have Elon’s head on the stickers but the stuff to make them didn’t arrive until this morning and I didn’t have time.”
More people came in and crowded around. I took a few photos, then Vanessa and I walked around to see the other exhibits. Lindsey had also built the wooden cabinet for a classmate’s music station; we went to the basement and met the guy she’d worked with and checked out his invention.
Back upstairs, Lindsey said the event was ending at 6:30. It was 5:15. We had walked around and seen most everything; the building was hot and stuffy. We needed to waste some time before we could all go out for sushi.
I turned to Vanessa. “Anything you need to do in Boulder? Maybe swing by the Sheriff’s Office?”
“Ha! No thanks. We could go up to the memorial?”
“OK. We’re here. We should.”
We hugged Lindsey and made plans to pick her up later. She turned back to her presentation and began speaking, smiling, explaining her project to a fresh audience.
Vanessa and I walked out into the even grayer afternoon; the rain had picked up. We walked back down Colorado, warmed by Lindsey’s enthusiasm and happiness. I looked up to the left and saw the giant CU logo looming high above the south end of Folsom Field.
“I fucking hate this place,” I muttered.
“I do too. But Lindsey is here and that’s all that matters.”
“I don’t know how she does it, stays in Boulder.”
“She was here before all of this. She doesn’t see it the way we do.”
“True. She was glowing in there. It’s great to see her really having fun.”
“Yeah, she’s always telling me she’s either in the lab or on her way to the lab. She spends a lot of time there. Seems to be her happy place.”
We passed the Buff Walk. Buoyed by Lindsey, I didn’t feel nauseous or dizzy. But I was ready to leave campus.
—
The rain grew heavier as we made our way up the canyon, discussing the trails and the route and how Megan could have gotten up there.
“None of it makes any fucking sense,” I said for the thousandth time since February.
At the memorial site, the rain fell harder, accompanied by a fierce wind through the canyon. We straightened up the area around the sign; all the Squishmallows, the Diet Cokes, and a camouflaged water jug (?) remained nestled in front. I looked at the photos of Megan on the banner. I’d seen these photos and this banner many times before, but perhaps it had been too long since I’d been up there because it all hit me as though it had just happened. A wave of sadness washed over me as I looked up at the canyon walls, jagged and stark and inanimate and not giving a shit about us.
Back in the van passing time, I said, “I wish she could just tell us what happened.”
“Yep. Me too.”
We both got out our phones and sat in silence as the rain intensified and the cold, heavy drops pop-popped off the roof of the van.
Eventually, Vanessa said, “you know, you could drop me off at Hapa Sushi for a glass of wine then go get Lindsey. I could get us a table.”
“Good plan. Let’s go.”
We barreled down the canyon in the hard rain. Passing the spot where Megan was found, I had the same thought I’ve had every time I’ve been up there:
I cannot imagine a scenario in which she ended up there of her own will.
—
On Pearl Street, the rain was now a deluge. I dropped off Vanessa and headed back to campus to pick up Lindsey. After a short wait, she hopped into the van and was still smiling, excited, happy.
We returned to Pearl Street, parked, and made our way to Hapa. Vanessa texted she had secured a table. The restaurant was bustling, full of patrons on a wet and chilly Thursday evening, drinking, talking, eating. We found our table, a four-top by the window. Lindsey and I joined Vanessa: three seats taken while the fourth, next to me, sat empty.
Lindsey talked about how much work they had put in over the past week to get everything ready. She glowed over the positive responses to her invention. Vanessa and I smiled and listened. We ordered entirely too much sushi, including Megan’s favorite at Hapa, the Orgasm Roll. When the giant platter came out, that roll was missing. Our server had missed it on the sheet. Or, as Vanessa said, Megan blocked it—that’s her favorite and if she doesn’t get to eat it with us, we can’t have it.
I could feel Megan’s presence in the seat next to mine. I could feel her funny comments and deadpan expressions, her unique and insightful observations about the room, the food, and the people. I thought of the first time we took Megan for sushi in Denver. She was four or five at the time. When the giant boat of sushi came out, she grabbed several choice pieces with her little hands and put them on her plate.
“No, Megan! You don’t get to just grab everything! It’s one at a time. Put all that back!”
As I thought of that first sushi night, Vanessa said, “remember the first time Megan came with us for sushi and just grabbed a bunch of pieces?”
We all laughed. And for an hour and a half in a crowded sushi restaurant in the middle of Boulder, the three of us—again the only three who know how this existence feels—were somewhat free from the darkest parts of it. We told stories about Megan, we talked about Lindsey’s classes and projects, we laughed about the past, and we ate too much sushi.
We did it like we used to do it when we were a quartet.
After dinner, we dropped off Lindsey at her apartment. We gave her hugs and “I love you’s.” We thanked her for being Lindsey.
Driving back down to Denver in the pouring rain, we again talked about the case, the lawyer, the sheriff, the detectives, the evidence, the details, the confusion, the anger, the powerlessness. We returned to our purgatory, our in-between world where there are no answers; there is only waiting it out, grinding through the grief, riding out the sorrow, and searching for–and sometimes finding glimpses of–light and meaning in all of it.
We will find meaning. We will find answers. We will find ways to guide others through their own purgatories.
And perhaps, in the end, we will save some other family from this terrible fate.
Joseph D Trussell 