![]() And she’s all I have left.” In the following weeks, Angela told her story over and over to any friend who asked, as though she could contain it through repetition. Because vaccines were not yet available to children, she added, “Don’t bring George.” She paused, then explained, “It’s just-because of Agnes. I asked Angela if we could come by for a condolence call. The mother of one of George’s classmates said, “Their childhood ended on Tuesday.” Maybe I made his life worse.” I reassured him that nothing he did had caused the tragedy and nothing he could have done would have prevented it. He kept saying, “But why would he do that?,” and then he said, “I wasn’t always that nice to Trevor. I heard the news from another St. Bernard’s parent while I was buying groceries and rushed home to tell my husband, wondering how we would break the news to our son. ![]() “I said, ‘If he wants to have a date, he can have a date.’ They’re not holding hands, it’s O.K.” Trevor was elected class representative that same year, promising to have the recess deck refurbished and to get the boys more involved in helping the neighborhood’s homeless. “It was totally a big deal that he brought her,” Angela told me. ![]() He was precocious in other ways, too: he was interested in girls and, in fourth grade, brought a date to a school benefit. If he acted badly, teachers would say, “Well, Trevor’s like his namesake.” Trevor’s glittering intellect delighted many adults. Bernard’s, he wore Tristan Colt’s blazer, and longtimers at the school often drew comparisons between him and his other uncle, Trevor Nelson. When it was Trevor Matthews’s turn to attend St. Berkeley, became a top producer at “60 Minutes,” and was a doting husband and father with a wide circle of loyal friends. Trevor Nelson went on to be kicked out of multiple prep schools. He would gather kids in recess for a game called Kill, where they would chant and then Trevor would announce the name of the person who was going to be attacked. Bernard’s, athletic and academically brilliant but also a bully. Eleven years older than Angela and a child of her mother’s first marriage, he had been a charismatic presence at St. Eleven years later, Angela’s half brother, Trevor Nelson-for whom she named her son-died at thirty-four, when a hospital treating him for viral meningitis inexplicably administered a fatal admixture of drugs. He’d thrown a tantrum and been scolded, but the general conclusion was that his death was probably not a suicide. He was last seen sitting on the terrace ledge, before toppling over backward. Climbing through a window in the apartment, on the twelfth floor, he’d dropped carefully down to a terrace one floor below, from which it was possible to access a neighboring building, go down the stairs, and head out undetected. In 1992, Angela’s eight-year-old younger brother, Tristan Colt, fell to his death from the family’s apartment building. Bernard’s was shadowed by the memory of two uncles who had been pupils there and had both died young. They have a daughter, Agnes, three and a half years younger than Trevor Billy also has two sons, Trey and Tristen, from a previous marriage.Īngela grew up in New York in a Wasp family, and Trevor’s attendance at St. Trevor’s father, Billy Matthews, who works in finance, is affable and athletic. Her intelligence and the intensity of her character can make her intimidating, but she is also given to acts of tremendous kindness. Trevor’s mother, Angela Matthews, a driven intellectual-property lawyer in her early forties, studied ballet and still carries herself like a dancer. “I remember seeing his mother’s anguish and just wanting the path for her son to be a little less hard. “By first grade, he was already awash in a sea of conflict,” one parent said. Parents complained, and Trevor was frequently disciplined. “Trevor was in trouble more than everyone combined,” a classmate recalled. In second grade, he tried extracting cash from other boys by threatening to spread embarrassing rumors. Trevor terrorized the smaller kids in the class, and, if they pushed back, he would try to get them in trouble. At my son’s seventh-birthday party, Trevor bit another boy on the ear so hard that the mark was still visible when that child next went to school. He could be charming, generous, and humane. In first grade, he was already reading adult narrative nonfiction. Trevor was perhaps the brightest kid in the class. Bernard’s, a private boys’ school on the Upper East Side. My husband and I first met Trevor Matthews when he and our son, George, started kindergarten together at St.
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