The Daily - The Sunday Read: ‘Their Son’s Death Was Devastating. Then Politics Made It Worse.’

Episode Date: November 3, 2024

A sheriff’s deputy arrived at Nathan and Danielle Clark’s front door on the outskirts of Springfield, Ohio, in September with the latest memento of what their son’s death had become. “I’m sorry that I have to show you this,” she said and handed them a flier with a picture of Aiden, 11, smiling at the camera after his last baseball game. It was the same image the Clarks had chosen for his funeral program and then made into Christmas ornaments for his classmates, but this time the photograph was printed alongside threats and racial slurs.“Killed by a Haitian invader,” the flier read. “They didn’t care about Aiden. They don’t care about you. They are pieces of human trash that deserve not your sympathy, but utter scorn. Give it to them … and then some.”“They have no right to speak for him like this,” Danielle said. “It’s making me sick. There must be some way to stop it.”This was the version of the country the Clarks and their two teenage children had encountered during the last year, ever since Aiden died in a school bus crash in August 2023 on the way to his first day of sixth grade. The crash was ruled an accident, caused by a legally registered Haitian immigrant who veered into the bus while driving without a valid license. But as the presidential campaign intensified, former President Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, began to tell a different story. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Hi, my name is Eli Saslow, and I am a writer at large for the New York Times. I write a lot about the big tension points in the country, which means over the last year, I've been writing often about conspiracy theories and also anti-immigrant hate that has become definitive in this election cycle. For this week's Sunday Read, I'll be sharing an article that I wrote about the Clark family in Springfield, Ohio. A few months ago, a man named Nathan Clark went to a community meeting and stood up and said that his son was killed in a bus crash that was caused by a Haitian immigrant. His son's death inspired a wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric and hatred in Springfield that metastasized into the presidential election.

And all of this hate and cruelty and suddenly bomb threats to Haitian churches and all of this violence, born in some ways out of their son's death, was abhorrent to them. And so the father of this child had gone to a community meeting and had said, please stop the hate. This is not what we want for the memory of our son. And because he had gone and said this, some of these racist groups were now threatening his life after his own son had died in this accident. As soon as I saw this father stand up and give this speech in this video online, which millions of people saw, I felt like I want to write about him.

This is somebody whose child has died and has been through an unimaginable year. And now he has the courage to stand up and to try to tell people that they are misrepresenting his family and his son. And so I started reaching out to the family trying to see if I could come spend time with them and learn more about what they'd been through and what that was like. When I was in Springfield I was far from alone there. The Proud Boys were there marching, the KKK was there during some of the time that I was there for a rally, this neo-Nazi group called the Blood Tribe was marching through the streets with Nazi flags and standing in front of the Republican mayor's house and screaming for

him and his children to come outside. The Clark family has lived inside that. Not only had they lost their child, not only had his death been co-opted or twisted, but also now, because they had said, please stop doing this in the memory of our son, they were receiving death threats and they were on the other end of that hate. These flyers with racist slurs and Nazi insignia were being not dropped off just in Springfield but also in their own driveway with pictures of their own 11-year-old son, sometimes with little talk bubbles with him being made to say things that were racist or hateful.

I have three kids myself, and spending several days with the Clark family as they were processing the grief about their own 11-year-old, of course, was hard. I dreamt about their family and what they'd been through and my own kids mortality for days and weeks afterwards. And so one of the joys, honestly, one of the restorative parts about spending time with

them is that there also have been moments where they've been amazed at other people's capacity to care, to empathize, to be courageous and giving in really difficult moments. And being with them as they made some of those discoveries also sort of reaffirmed so much of my faith in what people can be and how we can care for each other. So here's my article. Our audio producer today is Tally Abacassis. The original music that you'll hear was written and performed by Aaron Esposito.

A sheriff's deputy arrived at Nathan and Danielle Clark's front door on the outskirts of Springfield, Ohio last month with the latest memento of what their son's death had become. I'm sorry I have to show you this, she said, and handed them a flyer with a picture of Aidan, 11, smiling at the camera after his last baseball game. It was the same image that Clark had chosen for his funeral program, and then made into Christmas ornaments for his classmates. But this time, the photograph was printed alongside threats and racial slurs.

Killed by a Haitian invader, the flyer read, "'They didn't care about Aidan. They don't care about you. They are pieces of human trash that deserve not your sympathy, but utter scorn. Give it to them and then some." Nathan reached into his pocket and squeezed a piece of Aidan's old blanket that he kept with him

to help stave off panic attacks. Danielle buried her head into Nathan's shoulder and folded the flyer into tiny squares. "'They have no right to speak for him like this,' Danielle said. "'It's making me sick. There must be some way to stop it. We're checking the flyers for fingerprints, the deputy said.

They put them online and dropped them off all over the neighborhood. It's awful. It's grotesque. Once upon a time, it would have surprised me, Nathan said. But nothing's off limits anymore. We keep hitting new lows." This was the version of the country the Clarks and their two teenage children had encountered during the last year, ever since Aidan died in a school bus crash in August 2023 on the

way to his first day of sixth grade. The crash was ruled an accident caused by a legally registered Haitian immigrant who veered into the bus while driving without a valid license. But as the presidential campaign intensified, former President Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance began to tell a different story. They said Aidan's death was a murder committed by an illegal as part of a border bloodbath in another American community that had been invaded, conquered, and taken over by migrant criminals from the dungeons of the Third World.

In the past five years, as many as 20,000 Haitian immigrants have moved to Springfield, a town of about 60,000. The bus accident became a flashpoint at city meetings, where pain and frustration about the city's shifting demographics turned to anger, and anger often escalated into fear-mongering and racism that put Springfield at the epicenter of a contentious election. All of it was antithetical to what the clerks believed and to the compassion they'd admired most in their son. Please, stop the hate Nathan had said at a city meeting in September, but instead some

of that hatred had turned back against them. Icy stares from neighbors, cruel Facebook messages, the public doxxing of their phone number, letters about being, quote, immigrant-loving race traitors, and a recent death threat relayed by the FBI. The best thing you can do is stay out of the city, the sheriff's deputy told them. She said the Proud Boys had another march scheduled for the upcoming weekend. A neo-Nazi group called the Blood Tribe was planning to demonstrate in front of the mayor's house.

During the last few months in Springfield, there had been acts of vandalism at Haitian churches and more than 30 bomb threats that evacuated municipal buildings, forced the city's hospitals into lockdown, and required state troopers to stand guard in front of local elementary schools. We're setting up 24-hour protection for you, the deputy said. We'll leave a car stationed in front of the house. Nathan looked past her to the cruiser in their driveway, where Aidan had sometimes set up a vegetable stand

to sell his homegrown zucchini to neighbors and where he'd kicked a soccer ball that last morning while he waited for the bus. They'd spent every moment since trying to understand what happened after that bus arrived. And now they were also trying to make sense of what was unfolding beyond the driveway, in a country that seemed increasingly sinister and unfamiliar.

These hate groups aren't going to come bother us out here, will they? Nathan asked. It's hard to know anymore, the deputy said. I hope not. Is there any decency left? Nathan said. We'd at least like to be able to protect our son's memory.

They had done everything they could to preserve Aiden's presence within the house since the accident, leaving the decorative red lights on in his bedroom and his sandals perched at the top of the stairs, just as Aiden had done when he rushed out to the bus. That was his zucchini replanted in the garden, his handwriting tattooed on their forearms, and his ashes stored inside a custom-made soccer ball in the living room, where they'd often warned him about throwing balls and playing outdoor sports inside. Their older children were already more independent and focused on friends, but Aidan was still young enough to prefer his parents' company, crawling into bed with Danielle on Sunday

mornings and trailing Nathan back and forth when he mowed the lawn, like a shadow in the grass. Their days had unfolded in a running conversation, so Nathan kept going alone into the garden they had built together to talk to Aiden and then wrote letters to him to archive memories before they disappeared. "'You said the word delicious way more than anybody I know, Nathan wrote. You could whistle and you loved rubbing it in my face that I couldn't. We would debate which one was better, left twicks or right twicks.

You loved talking to scam callers. You would get really close to my face and just awkwardly stare into my eyes. You thought that was hilarious. At the same time, the rest of Springfield was memorializing Aiden too. just awkwardly stare into my eyes. You thought that was hilarious." At the same time, the rest of Springfield was memorializing Aiden too. More than 1,500 people came to his funeral, many of whom the Clarks didn't know, and dozens of people began lining up to speak on his behalf during the public comment session at city meetings. They said they wanted justice for Aiden, retribution for Aiden, enhanced traffic enforcement for

Aiden, increased police presence for Aiden, English-only signs at Walmart for Aiden, workplace immigration raids for Aiden, mass deportations for Aiden, to take Springfield back for Aiden, none of which reflected what the clerks wanted or believed. They'd worked hard to seek out diversity in rural Ohio. Danielle taught kindergarten on the outskirts of Dayton at a low-income elementary school where her students were black, white, Hispanic, Ukrainian, and increasingly Haitian,

and where she specialized in working with children who had multiple disabilities. Nathan taught fourth grade in a nearby farming community transformed by a wave of Turkish immigrants, and as cultural tensions reverberated through the town, he requested to have Turkish students placed in his class. He put a sign up above his classroom, talking Turk, and asked the students to teach him a new word each week. When he started to notice large groups of Haitian immigrants moving into Springfield a few years ago, he signed up for Duolingo to learn phrases in French and Haitian Creole.

He wrote to a friend in city government, asking if he knew of any summer jobs teaching English to Haitians. I'm pretty sure I can help, Nathan wrote. It wasn't until a few days after the crash that Nathan and Danielle learned the driver, Hermonio Joseph, was also an immigrant, a Haitian who had flown to South America and crossed in 2022 from Mexico into Texas where he'd requested asylum and been released into the United States with temporary protected status. The Clarks were angry about many things after the accident. That Joseph had been driving with an invalid Mexican license. That he was seemingly tired or distracted on his way home from the graveyard shift at

an Ohio manufacturing plant. That his minivan crossed over the center line as he went around a curve. That his recklessness forced the school bus off the road, down an embankment and onto its side. That prosecutors said his maximum sentence for involuntary manslaughter was only 11 years. But it never occurred to the Clarks to extend their anger onto an entire population of immigrants, and they were haunted by the idea that one of their own elementary students might think they approved of the hostility and bigotry rising in the local and national news. Let us grieve in peace. Take this picture down, Nathan

wrote in a comment on Instagram after Trump's campaign posted a photo of Aiden which it never took down. Don't come at me or my family regarding your stereotypes. No border crisis, no illegal aliens, no anti-anything crap," Nathan wrote on his private Facebook page. "...We do not want our son's name associated with the uninformed majority that vocalized their hate," he said at Joseph's trial. And when none of that changed the discourse, Nathan called the one politician he still trusted most, Rob R Rue, the Republican

mayor of Springfield who also ran a local funeral home. It was Rue who had brought in a restorative mortician from Cincinnati to work on Aidan after the accident and then given the Clarks full access to his funeral home so they could sit at Aidan's side, touching his hair and holding his hand for the better part of three days because they couldn't stand the idea of leaving him there alone. Rue knew as well as anyone how much they had suffered, so when Nathan asked in early September if he could make his first statement at a city meeting, Rue offered to bring the Clarks into the building through a private entrance and then called them to the podium first. "'I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a sixty-year-old white man,' Nathan said

that day as Danielle stood next to him. "'I bet you never thought anyone would ever say something so blunt. But if that guy killed my eleven-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone. They make it seem as though our wonderful Aiden appreciates their hate, that we should follow their hate. This needs to stop, now." A police officer led them toward the exit as more speakers lined up behind the microphone. Are they going to take over our whole city? the next speaker said. We should have a no-vacancy

sign up, right now. How many more children have to die or be hurt? The diseases, the crime, they're using our community as a dumping ground, someone else said. But by then the clerks were back in the car, on their way home. Now there was a sheriff's deputy standing guard in their driveway. Another police officer drove loops around the neighborhood. The Clarks sat in their living room, trapped inside the house they'd bought out of foreclosure a few months after Aidan was born. They'd adopted a puppy and declared their family complete, but now the house was quiet

and even the dog was on medication for anxiety. What's that sound? Danielle asked as she heard the crunching of gravel coming closer to the house. Nathan lifted the shades and looked outside, but it was just the deputy returning from patrol. I don't want to be here anymore, Danielle said. Me neither. Let's go, Nathan said.

They drove their daughter, Madeline, to meet her cheerleading team at a football game an hour away, winding out of their neighborhood and onto the highway, passing signs that read, Save Springfield's Children, Stop Housing Illegals, and Mass Deportations Now. They got to the game and climbed into the bleachers, where they could see a state trooper keeping watch over Madeline, 15, on the sideline. One of Aidan's former basketball teammates handed water to the players. A girl who had survived the bus crash did cartwheels across the field. It's inescapable, Danielle said, and then she spotted someone else walking toward them

in the stands. The bus driver from that morning, whom everyone called Mr. C. He'd continued working for the school district after the crash, and he'd been assigned to drive the football team to its game. Beautiful night for a ballgame, he said, as rain soaked his hat and streaked across his glasses. It's not for the faint of heart, Danielle said. With all this wind and rain, the driving conditions were awful, he said.

We could have taken a boat instead of a bus. He smiled and went to sit a few rows away. The Clarks waved goodbye and turned to face the game, but now their minds were back on the bus, which traveled through their imaginations a dozen times each day as they traced over the last hours of Aidan's life, searching for a loophole that might change the end. He was always nervous about transitions like the first day of school, so he'd spent the previous evening prolonging his last hours of summer, lying on the trampoline in the backyard with Madeline, playing video games with his 19-year-old brother, Preston,

shooting water guns in the yard with Nathan, lounging on the couch with Danielle until bedtime. His anxiety sometimes turned into stomach aches and trouble sleeping, but Nathan sat on his bed and reassured him. He was a straight-A student. His classmates adored him. He loved going to school. There was nothing to worry about.

The school district had changed the bus routes for the new year, and Nathan woke up early to make sure he understood the schedule. He called the bus garage at six to confirm that Aidan was on the roster and that the bus would stop in front of their house. stop in front of their house. Maybe if I hadn't called the garage, he said now, and Danielle shushed him and squeezed his hand in the bleachers. It wasn't that, she said. We were doing our best to take care of him. It might have driven right by, Nathan said, but instead the bus had stopped in front of the driveway, and Aiden had boarded with his hair gelled to the side, wearing a squirt of

his brother's cologne. The Clarks had seen a picture from inside the bus in the seconds before the crash, with Aidan positioned in his assigned seat four rows from the back, relaxed and unaware that around the upcoming curve, a minivan was already drifting across the centerline at 60 miles an hour. The bus driver steered toward the asphalt at the far edge of the road, doing everything possible to avoid a crash. The minivan kept drifting and collided into the side of the bus, breaking its rear axle,

spinning it 180 degrees, pushing it down an embankment, and flipping the bus onto its top with 52 children on board. For everyone else, that moment had marked the beginnings of a recovery. The school district reopened three days later with vigils and community counseling. The bus driver helped injured children exit out the back of the bus and then summoned the courage to resume his route that same week. Twenty-six children were hospitalized after the crash, and 25 more were uninjured. But ultimately, 51 students returned to school, and one did not. No other family endured the Clarks' tragedy.

Nobody else understood the totality of their loss, which made it even more infuriating when people started to politicize Aidan's death and speak up on their behalf. They have no freaking clue what we think, Danielle sometimes said. They don't have the faintest idea what it's like. The football game ended. The bus driver walked out of the stands to load the bus and stopped by the Clarks to say goodbye. Duty calls, he said. He smiled at Danielle and patted Nathan on the shoulder, and they looked

at him and thought about Aiden's last moments and the questions they were too afraid to ask. Good to see you again, Nathan said. You guys too, the driver said. Take it slow out there. Get home safe. A few days later, Nathan peeked out the window shades in the living room and saw a car that he recognized idling outside the house. He gave a thumbs up to the deputy in the driveway, unlocked the front door, and walked onto the porch to greet his friend, Keith Justice, a local pastor. I didn't know I'd be breaking into Fort Knox, Justice said, and Nathan told him about

the hate groups in town, the marches, the flyers in their neighborhood, and their recent conversations with the FBI. Your son gets killed, and now you're getting death threats, Justice said. A lot of things don't make sense to us lately, Nathan said. This country's going crazy, Justice said. He sat down in the living room, where he'd first come to meet the Clarks a few days after Aidan's death. The Clarks rarely attended church, but their children knew Justice as a youth mentor and

a local basketball coach, which was how Justice had found himself presiding over Aidan's funeral. Standing in front of 1,500 people in a moment of grief and anger, trying to hold together a fracturing community as one of the few people of color in the room. Justice had spent most of his life in Columbus coaching inner-city basketball teams and working at Honda for 28 years until a co-worker introduced him to a country church outside of Springfield. He eventually moved to rural Ohio and joined the church, where the congregants welcomed him as one of the first Black members and later made him a pastor. But lately he heard some of his new neighbors

parroting Trump's language about immigrants, referring to them as illegals, invaders, or animals. There were yard signs not far from the church that shared lies about Haitians eating pets and spreading diseases. This election is bringing out all the prejudices, he told the clerks. It's a story as old as time. They're coming after what's yours. They want your jobs and your women. How do you deal with that? The ignorance and the fear, Danielle asked. How do you deal with that? The ignorance and the fear, Danielle asked. I keep opening up my arms, Justice said. I save as many as I can and the sea takes the rest.

The sea's angry right now. It's raging. We haven't watched the news in 14 months, Danielle said. I don't want to see people tearing each other apart. I hate what we're becoming. I try to think of it as an opportunity, Justice said. Which side of history am I going to stand on? He told them about a Haitian pastor

who was trying to start a new congregation near Justice's church in New Holland, Ohio, a farming community of about 500 people on the outskirts of Springfield. Some residents had suggested a protest, but justice decided to invite the pastor out for lunch. He asked the pastor about what it was like to be living in Ohio as a Haitian in 2024.

And the pastor told him about bomb threats at other Haitian churches, children who were afraid to go to school, and congregants who drove 50 miles to buy groceries because they didn't feel safe going out in public near Springfield. Justice promised to help, and the following Sunday he stood in front of his own congregation and introduced the Haitian pastor as a brother in the Lord. Together they started raising money for the new church.

I want to be on the side God ends up on, Justice said. I don't care about politics. I don't even vote. What I care about is compassion, loving my neighbor. That's how we feel, Danielle said. And you lost the most, Justice said. But that side, the righteous side, it wins out every time." You really believe that?

Nathan asked. Of course. What other choice do we have? Justice said. I really hope you're right, Nathan said. Sometimes, when despair clouded Nathan's thoughts and anxiety tightened its grip around his neck, the best way to keep from suffocating was to go for a drive. Nathan went out to his truck, rolled down the windows like Aiden had always done, and

breathed in the damp fall air. His therapist had talked to him about a technique called intentional grieving, and now he gravitated to places that reminded him of Aiden—passing by the accident site, circling around his elementary school, and stopping at the baseball field where he played his last game. Nathan parked and walked across the infield. He'd spent the past months helping coach his son's former team, returning to the dugout to sit alongside Aidan's friends and help them through their own grief, believing that the things that hurt the most were also the most healing. He'd never had a close relationship with his own father. He was a child of divorce,

and he considered it the great success of his life that he'd built such a nuclear family. He'd met Danielle in high school when they were working at big lots, and they'd gone to college together at Wright State, become teachers, and devoted themselves to their kids, saving for annual vacations to Myrtle Beach and planning weekly theme night family dinners. But grief was isolating, and each of them handled it differently.

Preston took time off from community college, internalized his thoughts, and sometimes found reasons to cancel his therapy sessions. Madeline wanted to know everything about the bus crash in the same way that she'd always known everything about Aidan, her confidant, so she began asking for police documents. Danielle's grief was an all-consuming physical trial. Not day-to-day, but breath-to-breath, she said. She had always considered herself an extrovert, but for months after Aidan's death, she rarely left home.

She forgot words, lost track of time, needed help getting into bed, and didn't feel safe driving by herself. A few months after the crash, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. So she underwent a double mastectomy and stayed out of work for a year. Nathan had gone back to work after a few months, returning to the same classroom where he'd taught for 20 years.

He craved routine. He wanted to spend his days in a place where children still laughed and argued and thrived, even if it meant he often cried on his drive home. Now he left the baseball field and drove onto the farm roads behind their neighborhood. The walnut trees were dropping their leaves and the horses were beginning to grow out their winter coats. Aidan had loved the onset of cold weather, which meant family board games and hot tea.

Nathan and Danielle sometimes teased him for having the predilections of a 75-year-old. Meatloaf, gardening, nightly word search puzzles by flashlight, and weekend estate sales. The two of them had spent their Sunday mornings driving to sales all over Springfield so Aiden could barter for old baseball cards. Nathan drove past the stately mansion and thought about their last estate sale together a few weeks before the crash. He could tell right away that the sale was a dud, but Aidan liked to explore, so they walked around the house until they ended up on a converted sun porch. There was a gigantic map of the world covering an entire wall, and Aidan noticed dozens of

pins placed across the continents. The pins marked places the family had visited, and Aidan started to read some of the countries out loud. Australia, Madagascar, China, Antarctica, India, Turkey. He had never traveled farther from home than the 12-hour drive to Myrtle Beach, but he was open to the world, curious about it. They stood in front of the map for several minutes and thought about the immensity of the planet and the places they might go. Then Nathan took a picture of the map, and they left. It started to rain, and Nathan rolled up the windows of the truck and drove alone back

into their neighborhood. He turned a corner onto their block and noticed a second police cruiser parked in front of their house. Standing inside their living room was the sheriff's deputy the Clarks knew best, John Loney, a school resource officer who had been one of the first people to arrive at the crash that morning. He'd accompanied the Clarks to arrive at the crash that morning. He'd accompanied the clerks to support them during the funeral and the trial, and now

he'd come to retrieve one of the racist flyers from their neighborhood so he could help with that investigation. He told them he'd spent the morning downtown, tracking white supremacist groups as they marched with Nazi flags to the mayor's house and chanted about Haitians and crime and savagery. It was more of the same, Loney said. That's every weekend now. It gets to a point where you start to lose faith in the goodness of people, Nathan said.

I know what you mean, Loney said. He told them how a few white supremacists had gone to the accident site to film a video, and they'd shared lies about the crash online. "'It burns me because that place should be sacred,' Loney said. His voice broke, and he paused to catch his breath. "'I'm sorry,' he said. "'I have no right to get emotional compared to you guys, but it pisses me off.'

"'It should,' Danielle said. I have no right to get emotional compared to you guys, but it pisses me off. It should, Danielle said. It's personal, you were there. Those were the hardest hours of my life, Loney said. And they began to talk about that morning when they each received an alert about a bus crash near the school. Nathan and Danielle were already at work, preparing their classrooms for the first day, and they

rushed to the fire station where the school district said it would reunite children with their families. The students were being held together inside and then released to their parents one at a time. Aidan didn't have a cell phone yet. Nathan and Danielle had no way to contact him. They stood with dozens of other parents outside the firehouse for ten minutes, then ten more. Nathan tried to force his way into the building to look

for Aiden, but a guard was protecting the door. The guard called the name of another father, one of the clerk's neighbors, and a few moments later they saw the neighbor walk out of the building with his son, who had cuts on his face. Oh, God, some of these kids are really hurt, Danielle said, realizing it for the first time. More parents were called inside. More children walked out.

The crowd thinned outside the fire station, and Danielle phoned her mother to ask her to start contacting hospitals. A few moments later, there was an announcement. Will parents who have not been reunited with their children come to the far side of the firehouse? The Clarks walked to the designated spot and waited. Five minutes later, they were still the only people there. What the hell, Nathan said.

Did he get kidnapped? Why can't they find him? And it occurred to him that it was probably just some bit of confusion with the bus roster, a clerical error related to the fact that he'd called the bus garage that morning. Aidan was fine. It would sort itself out. But then a police officer was asking if they had a recent picture of their son, and Danielle was showing the officer a photograph on her phone that she'd taken earlier that morning

of the family they had been, with her children squinting into the sun and smiling on the porch before they left for their first day of school. The officer looked at the picture, zooming in on Aiden, scanning down to his shoes, studying his face. It occurred to Nathan that the officer was stalling for some reason, and then she handed back the phone and said that she was very sorry, and that Aiden was dead. A part of my brain still can't process that, Nathan said now. I'm frozen in place. Certain smells put me there, Loney said.

The sweat. The diesel. We haven't really talked to you about that day, because it's so hard, Danielle said. I'm afraid to know, but I keep thinking about it. Where he was and how it all happened. The physics of it, Nathan said. I know he didn't suffer, Loney said. I know it was quick. He told them about how he arrived a few minutes after the crash and noticed backpacks in the road.

Water bottles, broken glass, and finally two students who had been ejected when the bus rolled and then caught under the roof. One was a girl who survived her injuries, and the other was Aiden, who was already dead. Me and another deputy, we went and sat with him on the grass, Loney said. Oh, Aiden, Danielle said. Oh, God. I held his hand, Loney said. I made sure nothing touched him. I talked to him and told him I wasn't going to leave.

Ambulances came and went. A news helicopter flew overhead. A fire crew arrived and said the position of the bus was unstable. They asked Loney and his partner to move for their own safety, but they refused. They stayed in place for more than an hour until the coroner came, and then they carried Aiden into the van. For a long time, I wondered if I was being punished for something, Loney said. To see this little boy on the first day of school, it broke something in me. But in a way, I'm grateful.

It broke something in me. But in a way, I'm grateful." You stayed, Danielle said, still making sense of it. You stayed right there with him. It speaks to your character, Nathan said. The fact that somebody was there to take care of him, Danielle said. Her voice trailed off, and she buried her head against Nathan's chest. Ever since the accident, they'd been consumed by the idea that Aiden was alone. Danielle had chosen to have him cremated because she couldn't stand to leave him behind in the cemetery,

and she'd turned some of his ashes into a necklace because she couldn't leave him alone in the living room each time she went to work. Knowing you were there with him, that gives me a tiny bit of peace about that day, she said. It was nothing. It was basic, Loney said, but Nathan reached over and squeezed his shoulder, trying to make him understand. In the moments that haunted the most, someone had responded to their son's death, not with callousness or self-interest or fear, but with compassion, with decency. That matters to us, Nathan said. Right now, it matters more than anything. you