VISITING HOURS

A writer and professor’s account of the trauma she suffered in the wake of a murder committed by a close friend.

Defunct magazine editor Butcher (English/Ohio Wesleyan Univ.) met Kevin Schaeffer, the sweet-faced boy who would become her best friend, three days into her freshman year at Gettysburg College. They were kindred spirits who “enjoyed familiarity in all things,” found solace in each other for being social outsiders and knew “absolutely nothing of loss.” Then, less than two months before their graduation in 2009, Kevin suddenly snapped and stabbed to death his ex-girlfriend, Emily Silverstein. Like the rest of Gettysburg, Butcher was stunned. But what she found especially disturbing was that two hours before the murder, a normal-seeming Kevin had walked her home from an evening out. The aftermath of the murder caused chaos in the author’s personal life and relationships, yet she stubbornly refused to abandon her friend when almost everyone else did. Tormented by survivor’s guilt and eventually diagnosed with PTSD, Butcher became obsessed with the incident and with trying to understand the reasons behind her friend’s behavior. She scoured her memories and public documents for clues. What she discovered were dark truths about the nature of their relationship. Kevin was a depressive who had tried to commit suicide during his junior year. When he murdered his girlfriend, it was after he had stopped taking his antidepressants. Butcher had understood Kevin’s impulse toward self-destruction because she had experienced it as a young teen. Yet she had done nothing to help him. Ultimately, the author realized that her distress came from the fact that her best friend’s actions had presented her with a mirror image of her own heart. With equal parts horror and anguish, she understood that “the chain of events that led to Emily’s death [were] events that could happen to any of us.”

A gripping and poignant memoir.