The rest of the day is a write-off. I try to concentrate on some papers from work, but all I can think about is that yellow police tape. It might as well have been wrapped around the entire neighborhood. We are marked now. A killing has occurred in our midst and we will never be the same. This is personal.

I call the police department that night, but they still aren’t giving any details. When I ask if I should be concerned for my safety, the woman who answered the phone assures me I have nothing to worry about. Still, I lock the doors, block them with kitchen chairs and leave the lights blazing all over the house. The cat sleeps beside me, more for comfort than protection. I don’t sleep.

The next day, at the grocery store, the headlines scream to me: DOUBLE MURDER ALARMS RESIDENTS. I do have something to worry about. One victim was a retired nurse who welcomed new neighbors with a plate of cookies. The other was her tenant, a sweet-faced retiree who was last seen at a St. Patrick’s Day dance. They had been bound, slashed, shot, stabbed. Her elderly dog, Cuddles, had wandered the house for days before a friend found their bodies. The end of two quiet lives is described in black and white, along with the price and location of the house, information about their families and the requisite comments from passersby. Sickened, dazed, I try to shop. Everyone around me seems pushy, hostile, on edge. After placing three of the same item in my cart, I decide this is a useless venture. I leave my cart in the aisle and exit the store.

My husband arrives home from a business trip. Instead of hello, I greet him with the newspaper. He is visibly upset. He looks at the retiree’s photo and recalls seeing him at the local deli, where he was a regular. I remember him now from a recent trip to buy bagels, a quiet man with a nice smile leaning against the counter.

We talk and we worry. We worry about the children on the block who use the school bus that stops in front of the murder site. We worry about a killer on the loose and my safety. My husband suggests I learn to use a gun, and we argue. I remind him that the only time I fired a shotgun, the force blew me backward onto the ground, to the horror of relatives who dived for cover. We argue on, stressed, tired, snapping at each other. I begin to cry because it all seems too close and too horrible. Then he holds me. We decide to get a Weimaraner and a fence. We hope the cat won’t mind.

We take a walk and notice that several neighbors have placed flowers on the lawn of the murder site. I run to the store and buy a bundle of daffodils, and we lay them beside the other bouquets. For some reason, seeing the flowers makes me feel better. For me, the world has become divided between those who leave flowers and those whose actions necessitate our bouquets. The flowers cry against the senseless taking of two lives, against the loss of a neighborhood’s innocence, against an evil that has drenched our small world. They are our voice and a tribute to those we have lost.

At night, my husband and I try to sleep, but sleep does not come easily. Every sound, every creak, speaks volumes. The next morning I pack my peanut-butter sandwich, clean and wipe off the knife and then slip it into my purse. I am anticipating my arrival home later that day, and the knife makes me feel safer.

Driving to work, I hear the bulletin. The 23-year-old man suspected of murdering my neighbors has been killed in a shoot-out at an ATM machine. He was using their bank cards and might have tortured them to get their code numbers. Sentenced to 10 years in 1993 for arson and other offenses, he had been released after four years on the condition that he attend a Bible-study and drug-treatment center. He immediately went on the lam, allegedly killed the couple, then bought a new van with their savings. When police approached him at the ATM, he fired his sawed-off shotgun– believed to be the same gun used against my neighbors–into the leg of a detective. As he fell, the officer fired one shot through the man’s head.

I almost hit the car in front of me. It is difficult to steer when you are cheering. With a dark heart, I think that death could not have happened to a more deserving man. I suppose that when murder hits this close to home, a dark heart is a regrettable residual. As details emerge, I hear with relief that the detective is fine and that he and the other policeman are being hailed as heroes. They have brought peace of mind back to our town.

That night I finish the deferred food shopping. Behind me a child begs to hold the frozen-vegetable package her mother has pulled from the freezer, but the mother softly refuses her. “It’s too cold for your hands. Listen to your mother, she knows best,” the woman says to her daughter. I laugh, and the woman smiles at me. It feels good to laugh.

Outside the grocery store, my eyes are drawn to the sight of hundreds of Canadian geese flying in several honking V formations overhead. As I look around the parking lot, I see groups of people, all ages, all colors, all neighbors, all looking to the sky. We are weary, we are saddened, but still, we are here, looking to the sky.