My fingers hit something else that felt book-like, and I pulled it out, hoping for more of Anna Karenina, or perhaps one of her journals. Our mother had been an inveterate journal-keeper, and, for as long as I could remember, she had chronicled her life in a series of notebooks. She guarded both their contents and location with extreme secrecy; I would only spot a journal in the wild when she had it in her hands, curled up in a chair by the window, lounging on the front porch swing, or, sometimes, holed up in the playhouse behind our house. Lanie would sometimes uncover them, but she never told me where. In the dark months after she had left for California, I had torn apart her bedroom looking for them, hoping they might contain some explanation of why she left or where she had gone. I never found them.
Instead, I extracted a thick pamphlet, its bright yellow cover torn and stained, its pages dog-eared. This book, whatever it was, had been well-loved. My stomach soured as I read the title: The Official Handbook of the Life Force Collective: Ideals and Practices for All Members. I almost threw the book down, but curiosity overtook me. This might be the best chance I had to learn more about the cult that had consumed my mother, to understand why she had left us for them and never once looked back.
Gritting my teeth, I opened the book. After the title page, the first full page was dominated by a glamour shot of LFC founder Rhetta Quinn. From the gloss on her hair and the smoky eye makeup, I suspected it was one of her former headshots. I resisted the urge to curse at her image and turned the page.
What We Believe, it said in bold-faced letters at the top of the page.
We believe in the restorative power of the sun. We believe in the energy it instills in us, and we believe that we are vessels of that energy. We believe that it is our duty as human beings to cultivate the energy bestowed upon us by the sun, the giver of energy and thus the giver of life.
I didn’t have the patience to read any more of the hippy-dippy manifesto, not when I had lost my mother to its inane worship, and I flipped the page. A Brief Biography of Our Founder, Rhetta Quinn, accompanied by another glamour shot. This time, I couldn’t help but spit some choice words.
“Josie?” Aunt A asked, looking up from some photographs. “What do you have there?”
“This,” I said, handing it to her. “The Official Handbook of the Life Force Collective. Check out the two huge pictures of Rhetta Quinn before you’re even five pages deep. What an egomaniac.”
Aunt A frowned as she began flipping through the book. A few pages in she stopped, spots of angry color rising in her cheeks.
“I can’t do this,” she announced, dropping the handbook as though it had burned her. “I’m sorry. I know I said . . . but I need a break. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” I said, feeling guilty for handing her the book that had so upset her. “Are you okay?”
She nodded brusquely and headed for the stairs. Her abrupt departure was so unlike my normally calm aunt that I wondered what it was that she had found so objectionable. Was she as frustrated with Rhetta Quinn as I was, angry that this woman was tearing apart families for what seemed like an ego trip?
But when I picked up the book from where it had fallen, splayed open to Chapter 1, I saw that wasn’t the source of her displeasure. Chapter 1 was (rather clumsily) titled We Are Your Family Now. Plus, Helpful Hints for Disassociating with Non-Member Persons (Including Blood).
But even worse, the word best had been written in the margin in my mother’s distinctive handwriting. I had no idea what she meant by that, but I could only imagine, and, given the context, it made me feel slightly sick.
I shoved the things back inside the box and decided to take a run to clear my head. But because I am nothing if not a glutton for punishment, I scrolled through the #Reconsidered hashtag as I climbed the stairs to change. According to Twitter, a special episode of the podcast had been uploaded that morning. Against my better judgment, I downloaded it and queued it up for my run.
Excerpt from transcript of Reconsidered: The Chuck Buhrman Murder, Episode 4: “All About Erin,” September 25, 2015
Who was Erin Buhrman? That’s the question on everyone’s mind, so I decided to devote a special episode to her. We’ll be back on Monday to our regularly scheduled programming.
Erin Buhrman was born Erin Ann Blake in Elm Park, Illinois, in 1966, the daughter of a farmer and a first-generation American of Irish heritage, the second of three children. As far as I can tell, Erin had a generally happy childhood . . . until January 1978. That was when eleven-year-old Erin was playing with her eight-year-old brother Dennis near a frozen pond on the family farm. Somehow, Dennis fell through the ice and drowned. According to local legend, Erin went in after him and nearly died of hypothermia.
Sarah Spicer, a former classmate of Erin’s, spoke with me about how Dennis’s death affected Erin.
SARAH:
Erin used to be my best friend. I was a farm kid, too, so we had that in common. She was so sweet and silly, always ready to tell a joke or play a prank. But everything was different after Dennis died. It was like the life had just been sucked out of her. I don’t think I ever saw her smile again. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s not. She became a completely different person.
Erin may never have wholly recovered from losing her brother, but she did smile again. After graduating from high school, Erin enrolled in Elm Park College. It was there, of course, that she met her future husband, Chuck Buhrman. While some may have disapproved of the relationship—Chuck was, after all, her professor—those close to Erin saw it as a positive. Jason Kelly, Erin’s former brother-in-law, remembers being pleased at the impact Chuck was having on Erin’s life.
JASON:
Chuck was the best thing that ever happened to Erin. By the time she met him, I’d been dating Amelia for three years or so, and I don’t think I saw Erin smile, really smile, once during all that time. Then she started dating Chuck, and all of a sudden she was smiling and laughing and telling jokes. Terrible jokes—she had no sense of comedic timing, but she was trying.
She started baking again, too. A always talked about how much her sister loved to bake when they were kids, and then she stopped when their brother died. Shortly after she and Chuck started dating, we had them both over for A’s birthday. Erin brought over this cake she’d made. It was a horrible cake, just awful. She’d made some sort of serious error in the measurements, but she was so damn pleased with herself for baking again that we all raved about how great it was. Then she took a bite herself and realized it was practically inedible, and we all kind of held our breath, wondering how she was going to react. She just laughed until she cried. I remember how happy A was that night, thinking Erin was returning to her old self.
Erin and Chuck were married two years after meeting, and their twin daughters were born the following year. Jason hinted at some dark periods for Erin in the intervening years, saying that he knew sometimes his wife would be worried about her sister’s mental state, but in general, he reported that life in the Buhrman household was happy and uneventful.
Then, in 2000, Erin and Amelia’s beloved parents were killed by a drunk driver. I was told that this event plunged Erin into a depression. She became withdrawn and her mood swings became sharper and more prevalent.