The last time Cathie Hilston was happy — truly happy — it was just after 7 p.m., one year ago today.
She was one of eight members of the Akron Bicycle Club on their regular Thursday night jaunt through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and they paused momentarily on the crest of a Brecksville street.
Her boyfriend, Jim Lambert, ever attentive because she was the only woman in the group, asked how she was holding up and whether she wanted him to keep pace with her.
“No, no, I’m good,” she reassured him. Then he kissed her and returned to his place as co-leader of the convoy as they began their descent down Snowville Road.
The last time Rebecca Billings was happy — truly happy — it was just after 8 p.m., one year ago today.
The physician resident was having one of her busiest shifts ever at Summa Akron City Hospital, but she’d found five minutes to spare for a quick early celebration of her midnight birthday.
If she couldn’t be with husband, Matthew, and their then-10-month-old daughter, Evelyn, she’d be content with a Starbucks coffee and a chocolate chip muffin. It tasted wonderful.
She had no idea that as she ate it, her husband lay dead in Brecksville, on a road called Snowville.
One year later, Cathie Hilston and Rebecca Billings are still trying to learn how to live in a world without their partners.
Matthew Billings, 33, who joined the bike club for that fateful ride last Sept. 17, died on-site when a pickup truck driver who said he was blinded by the setting sun turned left at Dewey Road, plowing into the group.
Lambert, 52, would die a week later from his injuries, never regaining consciousness.
Three other cyclists were injured, including Hilston, who suffered a torn aorta, a collapsed lung, 10 broken ribs, a broken scapula and a broken clavicle.
Her physical injuries were no longer obvious as the two women recently sat at a picnic table at the Ledges, a national park site that played a special role in both their lives. This is where Lambert brought Hilston on their first date hike. This is where the Billings took engagement and maternity photos.
This is where past memories give them strength enough to talk about their year, and they use their suffering to plead with drivers to pay attention to the road and respect their fellow travelers.
“When you sit in the driver’s seat, you are taking on a huge responsibility,” Billings said, her voice cracking. “Matt and Jim and the other cyclists had every right to be there that night. They were doing nothing wrong. Put down the cellphone and get rid of the distractions, because the two men that we lost were the loves of our lives.”
Building a life together
Rebecca Billings, 31, grew up in Peninsula, and that’s where she returned with Matthew after meeting him during her undergraduate studies at the University of Toledo.
The couple married six years ago and settled into a full life, buying a home in North Canton and adding baby Evelyn to their family in November 2014.
Rebecca’s residency at City Hospital was time-consuming, but when they could put a few days together for a vacation or long weekend, they would plan activities around Matthew’s love for the outdoors.
Last summer, they took their first vacation as a threesome to the Great Smoky Mountains, where they hiked, swam and talked at length about what future adventures awaited them.
When it came to cycling, however, Matthew was on his own. Rebecca felt clumsy and uncoordinated on a bike, so Matthew rode several days a week with other bike enthusiasts. He’d logged nearly 12,000 miles in four years, without incident.
Concerned for his safety, Rebecca once asked him why he preferred riding on streets to the park trails. Too many families on the trails, he told her. Mothers pushing strollers. Couples walking dogs. It was much safer for him to share the road with cars than for pedestrians to share the trail with bikes, he said.
Days before he died, he bought a tag-along bike trailer for Evelyn, an enclosed attachment that would allow him to pull her on some of his rides. He picked out a baby helmet decorated with kittens.
He couldn’t wait to introduce his little girl to his passion, but the manufacturer’s directions said not to use for a baby younger than 1 year old.
Friends suggested he simply install a car seat in the tag-along and take Evelyn out right away. No, he said. He’d follow the rules and wait until after her first birthday.
Love for outdoors
Lambert was an architect in the Akron office of Braun & Steidl, a Kent State University graduate and a resident of Cuyahoga Falls.
He had a reputation for his hard work ethic, a wry sense of humor and friendliness.
But what stood out to Cathie Hilston, 49, when she first met him was his love for the region and its parks and trails, an affection he shared with everyone he met.
Hilston, from Girard, met Lambert in 2010 during the Sweet Corn Ride, a local bike tradition in Richfield. They started dating, cycling together and hiking frequently, often accompanied by his teenage son, Ryan.
A year later, Hilston left the Youngstown area and moved to Cuyahoga Falls to be closer to the man with whom she sensed a future. She found a job as a web developer, and the Akron area started to feel like home.
“Jim took me to all the different places and showed me everything that was great about this area,” she said. “Hiking the [Summit County] Metro Parks, biking through the national park, lunch at the Winking Lizard. He made me love this area because he loved this area.”
By summer 2015, the couple decided it was time to move in together. Hilston began making plans to leave her apartment.
Their final ride
On Sept. 17, 2015, Lambert, Hilston and Matthew Billings met with five other Akron Bike Club riders at Deep Lock Quarry, one of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park’s many trails. It’s where they always started their trek, although they would take turns picking different routes.
This day, someone outlined a path that would eventually end up in Brecksville before returning to the valley. It was a route they’d taken many times before.
As veteran cyclists, they all knew how to read their environment, Hilston said. They even made the decision that when they reached Snowville Road, they would travel east so that the drivers behind them would have the setting sun at their backs. That would make it easier for the cars sharing the same side of the road as the bikes to see the riders ahead.
The friends stopped frequently to chat and hydrate. They took such a break at Snowville and Brecksville roads, then pushed off for the next leg, Matthew Billings leading the group with Lambert close behind.
Just two minutes later, a pickup truck traveling west on Snowville suddenly turned left onto Dewey Road at the very moment Billings and Lambert entered the intersection. The two men were struck directly. Hilston and two other riders — Bill Kotich of Solon and Brian Kincaid of Stow — couldn’t stop and careened into the truck.
Timothy J. Wolf, 42, of Brecksville, was charged with two counts of vehicular homicide. In February, a Garfield Heights jury found him not guilty. A civil lawsuit is pending.
Riding solo
After the accident, Rebecca Billings left her North Canton home and moved in with her parents. It took nearly six months before she could return to work, and she found it too overwhelming to care for a growing toddler on her own.
Because she didn’t witness the tragedy, she never had the opportunity to speak to the jury, the judge or the defendant. She wrote out a victim impact statement but was unable to deliver it because of the acquittal.
“I feel like at times we are still barely staying afloat and now that my partner is gone, I can’t fathom how I can do this on my own,” read her unspoken words. “I still have moments where the pain of losing the love of my life is incapacitating, moments when I can’t hold back tears, my stomach twists and knots, my heart races, physically hurting as if breaking further.
“In these moments, I am reduced to a fraction of who I am. I have to remind myself to breathe.”
After the accident, Hilston returned to work as soon as possible, hoping it would be a distraction from her physical and emotional pain. It wasn’t.
“I wanted to feel normal, but you can’t force normalcy,” she said.
She’s back to riding. She’s even taken the very route the bike club took that fateful day. She’s still uneasy around traffic and doesn’t find the act of riding particularly enjoyable, “but I knew Jim would have wanted me to continue,” she said.
While her reason for moving to this area is gone, she has no plans to leave: “Everywhere I look, Jim is here. He left a piece of himself everywhere. I don’t want to leave him.”
On the first anniversary of the fatal accident, the Akron Bike Club plans to take a memorial run in honor of their lost members. Hilston will join them.
Billings will wait for their return with chocolate chip muffins.
That sweet birthday muffin she enjoyed one year ago haunted her for a time.
“It was something I felt terribly about, that I was eating that muffin and Matt was already dead,” she said. “Now I like to think of it as a birthday present, a little piece of joy that Matt sent me before my world came crashing down.”
Sometime in the coming months, little Evelyn will take her first bike ride, pulled on the tag-along trailer and wearing the helmet with kittens that her dad picked out for her.
Billings isn’t sure how or when. She doesn’t ride, doesn’t even have a bike. But she’ll figure it out.
“The thought of her not getting to experience him is really hard for me,” she said. “So I try to do things he would want us to do. It’s really important for me that she grow up the way he would have wanted.”
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.