Lori Desmarais gently ran her palm over the grain of a handcrafted wooden bench that had just been delivered to her Dunbarton home on Sunday, feeling every ridge and curve under her skin.
She sat down and tears welled in her eyes. The bench was made from the pin oak that once stood outside the Steeplegate Mall in Concord, right in front of the Zoo Health Club. Seven years ago, beneath that same tree, her 21-year-old daughter, Zoe Desmarais, was shot and killed by her boyfriend, 22-year-old Alexander Thorne.
“I don’t have to go there anymore because I have it here now,” said Desmarais. “It was a god ugly tree, but it’s beautiful now.”
For years after Zoe’s death, Desmarais made a quiet trip whenever she found herself in Concord. She would pull into the parking lot outside the Zoo Health Club, the gym where her daughter loved to train, and sit in her car with her eyes fixed on the pin oak just beyond the doors.
On the day the tree was cut down in Oct. 2025 to make a keepsake for her, Desmarais finally did what she hadn’t been able to in all those years — she got out of the car and walked into the gym where Zoe had spent so much of her time.
“That was the day. It was a healing day for me,” said Desmarais.
Paul Decarlo, a New Hampshire woodworker, carved Zoe Desmarais’s name on the back of the bench. GEOFF FORESTER / For the Monitor 
A pillow with a photo of Zoe Desmarais sits on the handcrafted wooden bench. Paul Decarlo, a New Hampshire woodworker, carved the bench out of the tree where her daughter, Zoe, was killed at the Steeplegate Mall. GEOFF FORESTER / For the Monitor 
Paul Decarlo, a New Hampshire woodworker, carved Zoe Desmarais’s name on the back of the bench in her honor. GEOFF FORESTER / For the Monitor
Turning the tree into something lasting fell to Paul Decarlo, a New Hampshire woodworker and juried member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen. The request came out of the blue from a member of the Desmarais family he’d never met, and he knew nothing of their story.
But once he heard about Zoe, Decarlo said, he felt a strong sense that he was meant to build this piece for the family.
“They’re wonderful people, and they’ve been through a lot, and if this piece of furniture can help provide them some comfort in some way, that’s what I’m here to do,” Decarlo said after he dropped the bench off at Desmarais’s Dunbarton home.
He named the piece “In Memory of Zoe.”
But getting to the final piece of furniture took months. The wood had to dry slowly, and Decarlo then needed to work out how much of it could actually be used, since pin oak is structurally weak and prone to flaws.
For the backrest, he used individual branches from the tree where Zoe took her last breath, leaving them in their raw, natural form.
When the bench arrived, Desmarais watched her family take turns sitting on it, each person pausing to remember her daughter. One of Zoe’s aunts settled onto the seat and said, “Just for you, peanut.”
Then, Desmarais set two sunflower cushions on it, each with a photo of Zoe taped to the front, so her daughter would be there with her.
“Every year I try to find a different way to honor her,” Desmarais said, her voice cracking as she gazed at the bench. “Now I have this. I think Zoe would approve.”
