Both brothers wanted to win, but Aaron also wanted to carry the whole town on those big shoulders, to win the Super Bowl and bring the Lombardi Trophy back home, to make strangers laugh and neighbors feel like family. Ziogas says Jonathan would sometimes blow past him in the hallways, pretending not to know him. Aaron, though, would say hello even if he’d never met you. He wanted to make everybody laugh.

“He had a very big heart,” Jonathan says. “That’s what’s craziest about all this. There is a disconnect. He would open up his arms to anyone.”

Is this it? The first snowflake? Is this a hint at why Aaron ended up in an industrial park, standing over Odin Lloyd’s bullet-riddled body? Is it possible that Aaron embraced the people he should have shunned, or that when his father died suddenly in 2006—when the person he loved most was taken from him—it was such a shock to his soul, such a personal rejection, that . . .

“ . . . I wish I had all those answers,” Jonathan says. “I don’t know. I just know he cared about people. And some of the people he cared about, I wasn’t too fond of. I didn’t think they were the best for him at that stage in his life. But he cared so much. He really did. It’s very interesting. . . .”

He pauses, as though he’s turning the thought over in his head, examining it from all sides.

“ . . . how much he cared.”

Jonathan cares too. You can tell within 10 minutes of meeting him. But he does so with caution. “I respect everyone,” he says, “but I’m not going to be caught in certain situations. That’s the difference. I surround myself with people who aren’t going to have a negative influence on me. I’m like: I’m not even getting involved.”

At Bristol Central, Jonathan walks back upstairs. The school’s official policy in regard to Aaron Hernandez has been deletion. No pictures, no trophies, no sign of the best athlete ever to walk these halls. But memories cannot be deleted. Sixty-seven-year-old athletic director Bob DeSantis, who coached both boys as well as their father, approaches with a CVS envelope stuffed full of pictures of the Hernandezes.

The first time Jonathan visited Aaron, he was nervous. He surveyed the lobby, taking measure of the kind of people who visit prisons. Now he’s one of those people. He wonders what others think when they see him.

“The Hernandez family has had a great impact on Bristol,” DeSantis says. “Their father—the earth, the moon, the sun and the stars set on those two kids. Unbelievable.”

Jonathan’s uncle Vito—Dennis’s brother—comes by too. He works here.

Jonathan: “I’m going up to Mass to see Aaron tonight.”

Vito: “I gotta go see him. I haven’t even gone yet.”

Jonathan: “I forgot the dress code.”

This has bothered Jonathan since he arrived from Texas a day earlier. Visitors at Souza-Baranowski may not wear jeans, shorts or work boots. Jonathan forgot. He has borrowed dress pants and shoes, but he is worried that the shoes are too casual and he won’t be allowed to see his brother.

Vito: “Is it easy to go in?

Jonathan: “It’s super easy.”

But he knows Vito probably won’t go. Truth is, the drive to Souza-Baranowski is super easy—about two hours. Going in is not. The first time he visited Aaron, Jonathan was nervous. He surveyed the lobby, taking measure of the kind of people who visit prisons. Now he’s one of those people. He wonders what others think when they see him.

Iowa City; Winter 2015

D.J. is a stoic at work, acting strong for his players, focused on Iowa football. But at night he lies in bed crying, gripping his pillow as hard as he can. He dreams that he’s in the industrial park on the night of the murder, only he’s playing all the roles: He is Odin, he is Aaron; he is dead, he is alive. He wakes up in a sweat, crying uncontrollably. He has one recurring nightmare so stark that he starts screaming, only to have his mother wake him and say, “It’s going to be O.K.” . . . except that his mother isn’t really there. He has only dreamed that. He is still sleeping. He is trapped inside a nightmare inside a nightmare inside his life.

Prosecutors are saying that Aaron, along with his friends Ernest (Bo) Wallace and Carlos (Charlie Boy) Ortiz, orchestrated Odin Lloyd’s murder. D.J. knows Bo, of course, but who is this Charlie Boy? D.J. sees his picture on the news and thinks: That guy? Still, everybody’s guarding their corner, and Ortiz’s lawyer says there is “a good possibility” that D.J. introduced Aaron to Carlos when they played freshman basketball together. (Actually, D.J. and Carlos were never even on the same team, but this dubious, unconfirmed connection led to this USA Today headline: CARLOS ORTIZ’S ATTORNEY: AARON HERNANDEZ’S BROTHER IS LINK. Both Wallace and Ortiz would eventually be convicted on charges of accessory to murder after the fact.)