"I love you," the 16-year-old cried out to his brother as he lay in a grassy ditch, pinned under the weight of their minivan. "I love you, Lane."
It all happened so fast.
Monday was supposed to be just like any other day. The mother spent the afternoon shopping with three of the kids, but Lane had his annual physical scheduled for 3:30 p.m. When she stopped home to pick him up, she ran inside, just for a minute. When she came out, the Dodge Caravan that she had parked at the top of her gravel driveway was 50 feet away, poking out of a steep embankment. Luca, 12, was in hysterics. Lark, 4, and Felix, 2, were in their back seats, unable to grasp what had just happened.
Lane had tried to get into the van when, with his younger brother and sisters inside, it started to creep downhill, straight toward a street humming with fast-moving cars. After grabbing the steering wheel through the driver's-side door in an attempt to pilot his siblings to safety, Lane scampered behind the hulking van, threw all his strength against two tons of automobile, but was pulled underneath. He was killed looking out for his family.
"He died a hero," said Lane's grandmother, Carolyn Bradley.
"He saved my life," Luca said.
What caused the van to roll downhill is unclear, as investigators are still sorting out how the accident unfolded, said Trooper Mark Ceipel, a State Police spokesman.
Lane ran outside to the van just as his mother went inside the house. The engine was off, the van was in park and the keys were in the ignition. The rear sliding door on the driver's side was locked, so Luca reached over from the passenger's seat and tried to turn the ignition on, thinking that would trigger the electronic door locks. When that didn't work, she turned the keys back the other way.
"That's when it started to move," Luca said.
Luca watched as her brother backpedaled down the driveway and alongside the van. She saw him pull open the driver's-side door and twist the wheel left and right, but quickly lost sight of him once the van moved toward the ditch.
"I saw him there ... it was just awful ... just awful," Reid said. "It feels like a dream. You expect to eventually lose people in your family, but not one of your younger brothers. Not like this."
Lane's family gathered Tuesday at his Blue Barns Road home to mourn. Until rain started to fall late in the afternoon, they had propped a homemade Mother's Day collage of Jennifer Rowe's kids on the front steps. Lane is pictured in the middle, sandwiched between Luca and Felix, his light-brown hair falling against his wire-rimmed glasses. He's smiling and holding up the "you" in collaborative sign that reads "We love you very much."
"I see a lot of myself in Lane," said his father, Bob Rowe. "He was funny. He would dance. He would do anything to always make you laugh. He was just a great kid. He had a lot of promise."
Lane, who started middle school this year, was third oldest of five kids. He enjoyed spending time at his grandparents' home in the Catskills. He loved basketball and looked forward to one day sprouting as tall as Reid, who taught him his jump shot in the driveway. He cracked jokes that sometimes only made sense to him, was known to spontaneously break into a dance — his energetic renditions Michael Jackson moves were well-known, Lane's father said he loved music and wanted to play the flute. He watched over his younger sister and brother like a mother hen. He had just started sixth grade.
"Sometimes we'd fight or argue about stupid stuff," Reid said. "And you look back on it now and wish you had never done it. You never know when someone's going to be gone."
Services for Lane will be held at 1 p.m. Thursday at Burnt Hills Methodist Church. In the meantime, the kids are staying home from school and Jennifer Rowe will be away from the nearby hair salon she runs. Everyone is still figuring out what comes next. No one has slept much.
Bob Rowe thinks about times like this past summer, when he took Lane out to the Cape Cod. They stayed in Dennis, a popular town that stretches from Cape Cod Bay to the Atlantic. Every summer they would spend time collecting all the bottles they could find, deposit them, split the cash and splurge. This summer, Lane spent it mostly on treats, like fudge. His father said the boy gave most of it away to his family.