Griswold — Every once in a while, Eric Lindquist is able to grasp a moment of happiness.

He goes out on Pachaug Pond, travels to warmer waters with his friends or makes his family's waterfront cottage feel more and more like home. But sooner or later, the dark memories creep back and eat away at him.

Sometimes it's something a friend mentions, or something he overhears at a party, that in an instant takes him back to the most unimaginable day of his life.

"I could be having a blast and then I will get hit with it, someone says something and all of a sudden it's in the back of my head eating me alive, the memories creep into my head and the emotions that they bring and I just fall down the rabbit hole," he said last week.

That rabbit hole always leads back to Dec. 20, 2017.

On that Wednesday morning, Lindquist woke up to learn that life as he knew it would never be the same — his parents and his family dog, Skylar, were dead. The house his father had built from the ground up had been burned to the ground, and his younger brother was missing. Over an agonizing few weeks, investigators would piece together the heart-wrenching chain of events in which his mother, father and younger brother were murdered during a home invasion turned arson.

Since then, he said he feels like he's been on a four-year-long roller coaster of grief.

"I'm still on the roller coaster, and the ride is not anywhere near ending," he said.

The 31-year-old said he doesn't think the ride will ever end because "there's no justice in a case like this."

As a jury deliberates the fate of the man charged with killing his family and turning his world upside down, Lindquist said that although he has faith that the jury will do what he thinks is the right thing, nothing will feel like justice.

"A guilty verdict is still a disappointment," he said Thursday in a hallway at New London Superior Court as the jury, one floor down, deliberated the murder and arson charges levied against Sergio Correa.

Correa, a 30-year-old man from Hartford, faces 14 charges connected to the murders of Janet, Kenneth and Matthew Lindquist and may serve life in prison without the possibility of parole if he is convicted. His adopted sister, Ruth Correa, is charged as an accomplice and has signed a plea agreement with the state. She took the stand against her brother last month and described in chilling detail the mayhem they unleashed on the Lindquists.

Eric Lindquist and many members of his family — including half sister Danielle Nichols, who is Kenneth Lindquist's daughter — and a group of close friends have packed the courtroom nearly every day of the lengthy trial, sometimes becoming visibly emotional or needing to step outside when testimony became too much.

Jurors started their deliberations on Friday morning, one month to the day after the trial began, after hearing hours and hours of gruesome testimony from more than two dozen witnesses who mapped out cell phone GPS locations, read desperate text messages sent by Matthew Lindquist in his final hours and detailed graphic autopsy reports.

Lindquist said the trial has caused him to relive the horror that unfolded around him four years ago and that he often, on quiet, gloomy days, still finds himself in the throes of grief.

He'll have a moment where he thinks 'I should call Mom and catch up,' only to realize he can never do that again, he said.

After spending countless days in the same courtroom as Correa, Lindquist said he's come to look at the alleged murderer as "soulless."

"I consider him a defective human being," said Lindquist in a matter-of-fact tone.  "He might be human biologically, but he doesn't have any soul, he doesn't have a conscience. I see an empty frame with no life inside — you're just looking at an empty shell."

Lindquist said he thinks he and his family might feel justice if Correa faced a more severe punishment than life in prison, where he feels it is unfair that he'll have access to TV and internet.

"I think if the punishment were appropriate for the crime I think that would help us feel as if that at least there's been some justice," he said.

He wishes Correa could face a lifetime in solitary confinement.

"It's absolutely preposterous to have someone who did what he did, the way that he did it, and be entitled to anything less than solitary confinement," said Lindquist. "If that were the case, and he was sleeping on a piece of plywood on a concrete floor, at least that would be closer to justice."

Lindquist, who works as an environmental analyst for the state Office of Policy and Management, has taken nearly 120 days off from work —  many unpaid — to attend nearly every court proceeding. His dedication to seeing the case through to the bitter end has cost him a lot.

"That's time I could've spent building my career, my social life," he said.

But he does it to support his family, and to hopefully empower himself to advocate for future victims of homicide.

When he isn't in court, he said, he tries to remain positive and focus on the things that bring him happiness. He thinks about the memories he'll make in his family's cottage, planning parties and picnics with his loved ones. He focuses on his hobbies and plans tropical vacations with his friends.

But Lindquist said he doesn't think he'll ever live a day where he won't feel bitter.

"Even if I live to be 80 years old, I'm always going to feel bitter that some element of justice wasn't served," he said. "I'm sure I will have certainly learned to live with what happened, but I don't think that feeling will ever go away. I'm always going to feel as though I've been robbed of something major in my life."

The jury is scheduled to continue its deliberations Monday morning in New London Superior Court Part A, where major crimes are heard. Lindquist and his friends and family plan to spend as many days as it takes in the courtroom, awaiting the verdict.

t.hartz@theday.com