According to those who were there, Cooper is too overwhelmed with tears to speak much at first. She pulls herself together for a moment, enough to say she is sorry and that she knows being sorry is not good enough. She gives no excuses. Around the room, each family member speaks about the crash and what the loss of a wife and a daughter and a sister and an aunt means to them. They say the hole in their lives will be there forever.
Cooper listens closely.
She does not turn away. She cries through most of it. At one point, she says she carries spiders out of the house rather than hurting them. Elaine's father tells her he had asked for the meeting to help him feel, through the pain of losing his daughter, as though he could do something positive. Elaine's mother says the wreck had taken her daughter and made such depressive changes in her husband that it feels as though he also has been taken from her.