Looking only forward
No explanation has been forthcoming to explain why Kerby Revelus snapped one spring afternoon. There are only questions, the kind that leave his anxious survivors awake at night.
"It's been very difficult for us," his mother, Regine, said in an interview last week. "Sometimes, I can barely get out of bed in the morning."
The basic facts are simple. One afternoon in March, Kerby, 23, attacked three of his sisters with a knife. Two of them, Bianca and Samantha, died in the assault. Nine-year-old Serafina was stabbed but survived. Kerby was shot to death by Milton police officers who answered the call. Neither parent was home at the time.
The days that followed were a blur. Kerby and his two sisters were laid to rest in a joint funeral at Jubilee Christian Church in Mattapan. After considerable soul-searching and debate, which included consultation with at least one psychologist, Serafina attended the funeral.
His parents, Regine and Vronce, have done their best to return to normal. That is difficult, they say, when you have no idea what normal is. Their new normal consists of church services, therapy appointments, and attempts to piece their lives back together.
They haven't lived in the house on Belvoir Road since the day of the attacks, and they don't intend to. Home now is a series of relatives' homes; they are attempting, in a tough real estate market, to sell one house and buy another.
They want to live close to where they lived before, but not too close.
The complicated nature of their tragedy comes through when they talk about their five children, living and dead. (Daughter Jessica is 21 and lives on her own.) They speak of all of them with parental warmth and devotion, making no distinction between Kerby and his sisters.
In their eyes, all their deceased children are victims. They just have no idea what, exactly, Kerby was a victim of.
Not long before he attacked his sisters, Kerby spent five months in jail. But his parents insist that he was not violent.
They freely admit that they have no real insight into what prompted his attack. Tellingly, they occasionally lapse into present tense speaking of him, as though the end of his life was a bad dream. His mother says he was depressed because he couldn't find a job, but that doesn't explain all that happened.
"I ask myself and ask myself," Vronce said softly. "But we leave everything to God. He loved his sisters so much. That's why this is so unbelievable."
Vronce and Regine are both Haitian immigrants. They knew each other as children in Port-au-Prince and were reunited as teenagers at Boston English High School. In the late 1970s, the Haitian kids tended to cling to one another. Vronce and Regine giggled at being described as high school sweethearts, and say they aren't sure what year they got married, as if their union had been preordained.
Their attorney, Ernst Guerrier, insists that they bear no malice against the Milton police and are contemplating no action.
"They believe [the officers] behaved heroically," Guerrier told me. "They think they probably saved Serafina's life."
Saving Serafina is the focus of her parents' lives now. She is doing as well as anyone could expect, they say. She has nightmares, and doesn't say much about what happened, outside of therapy. But she just finished the school year and they say she is coping well.
The rest of their effort is devoted to looking forward. They plan to return to work relatively soon, and hope a new home will forge a new beginning.
They are carrying on, with the support of a network of friends, admirers, and church members.
But normal is a word they don't use anymore. As Regine put it, "We take it one day at a time."
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 