Deadly Little Secrets Part 8

Years later, Linda brushed away tears. "I will forever live with that. I knew better. I gave my child advice, and I should not have done that. I did not follow the rules I teach. You should never tell people what they should do."

Chapter 19.

As the week progressed, Kari continued searching for answers. Although Matt scoffed at her suggestion that he had changed, she was certain that something was very wrong. The next morning, Wednesday, she wrote Matt an e-mail that contained the first clue that she was starting to consider the possibility that her husband was unfaithful. "Haven't heard from you, so I thought I would say, HI! Maybe you are busy with your girlfriend. :) I love you."

"YEAH, Babe," he answered. "I was hooking up with my girlfriend. (By the way-what is her name anyway?) :) Love you very much."

Apparently, Matt had finally acquiesced, and they'd made love the night before. Yet Kari had noticed that Matt had even changed s.e.xually. "Well," she said. "I thought that maybe you have been learning all those crazy moves you did last night some place. [sic] :)."

"You know it, :-)," Matt said, brushing off the insinuation. "Tomorrow I am going to go buy an item or two for FRIDAY!!!!!"

"Why, was that not enough?" Kari asked.

"I am going to shock you," he answered.

s.e.xually, Kari had always been a modest person, one who didn't wear revealing clothes. She talked of s.e.x as her "wifely duty." But she was trying to save her marriage, and Matt understood that. In the past, she'd been the one in charge, but his withdrawal changed that, and he seemed to enjoy his newfound power. The next day he e-mailed: "I got a couple of needed items [for their romantic liaison on Friday], but I will have to get a couple more . . . I will be ready."

"What in the world do you have planned?" she asked.

"NOT GONNA TELL YOU :-)," he e-mailed back.

"You suck!!!!!!!!!" she replied.

When she asked for a hint, he answered, "You will like it."

That week, the TAKS scores came in, and Kari was elated. Every child in her cla.s.s had pa.s.sed. Despite the good news and the s.e.xual banter with Matt, however, she continued to act on edge at work. "She said there were problems at home," says a friend. "She seemed upset. It was odd for Kari. She was usually so bubbly. She even said she thought she was having panic attacks."

The tension in the house on Crested b.u.t.te must have been palpable, to the point that even Kensi felt it. On Thursday, March 30, Kari called Linda and told her that she found a note of Kensi's, one in which the child said she felt unloved and that her parents treated her like "c.r.a.p." Sometimes, Kensi said, she felt as if the only ones who loved her were her swimming coach and Grammy and Paw-paw, Linda and Jim.

"I need to find ways to make Kensi feel better," Kari said. "I need to do some special things with her."

"Bring Grace here, and you and Kensi do some things alone," Linda suggested. "I'd love to have Gracie, and it'll give you an opportunity to find out what's bothering Kensi."

Kari agreed.

The spring semester was half-over, and that afternoon, Kari's thoughts were on the coming fall. Eyeing the possibility of a change, she e-mailed the princ.i.p.al at Midway Middle School, where she'd heard about a language arts job opening, asking to be considered. "Middle-school students have always been my favorite," she wrote, telling him about her cla.s.s's hundred percent pa.s.s rate on the TAKS test. "I would love to talk with you about this position . . . I really connect with this age group."

The following morning, Friday, Matt called Vanessa from Crossroads, at 10:22. They talked for approximately fourteen minutes.

Later that day, at Spring Valley Elementary, Kari stopped in to talk to Shae. While her fellow teachers had sometimes asked Kari to pray for them, this time it was different. "Would you pray for me?" Kari asked. "I'm going out on a date with Matt tonight. I want it to go well."

"I will," Shae agreed.

"I hope he doesn't want to tie me up or do something stupid," Kari said.

Startled, Shae wasn't sure how to take it but decided that Kari had to be joking.

That evening, Linda and Jim babysat while Matt and Kari went out. The following day, Shae called Kari. "She didn't mention the date, but she seemed a little down," Shae would say later. "It sounded like it hadn't gone well. We talked for ten minutes or so, and she had to hang up. I thought Matt was probably there, listening."

When Kari picked up the girls, Linda asked how the evening had gone. "It could have been better," Kari said, sounding a little evasive. Linda thought about Kari, how she liked to feel in control in her life. Whatever was going on with Matt was throwing Kari off kilter. But Kari collected the girls and was quickly out the door.

That afternoon, Kari, with Matt and the girls in tow, had her hair done by Basy Barerra. Kari had come for a cut and color, but Basy didn't have Kari's color in, so they made another appointment for later in the week. While Basy cut Kari's hair, Matt sat with the girls. As far as Basy could tell, Kari seemed in relatively good spirits, talking about the diet she was on with her fellow teachers. Kari had dropped fifteen pounds.

The following day, Sunday, Kari stood before the congregation at Crossroads. As the pianist played, Kari did sign language along with the music to MercyMe's "I Can Only Imagine," a song that wonders what it would be like to be with Christ forever. On the surface, she appeared well.

Yet that afternoon, Kari called a fellow teacher saying she was having a difficult day, fighting off the panic attacks that had by then plagued her for more than a week. At times, Kari said her heart raced, and she felt her blood pressure climb. Still suffering, later that day, Kari e-mailed to officially let the school know she wouldn't be in the next day.

What was behind the attacks? That same day, Kari sat down with her Bible open.

Since Ka.s.sidy's death, Kari had poured her heart out on the pages of the green leather-bound Bible Matt had given her. At times, she'd prayed to have her dead child returned to her. At other times, she'd dreamed of someday seeing Ka.s.sidy in heaven. This day, Kari's prayer didn't involve Ka.s.sidy. On this day, Kari was frightened.

The s.p.a.ce on which Kari chose to write was below Galatians 6, near a quote that read: Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

"Peace! Lord, grant me peace. Calm my soul," Kari wrote. "I feel like I have so much worry, and I can't get a hold on it. Lord, be the center of our relationship."

Then Kari wrote something truly alarming: "Lord, I am asking you to protect me from harm. I am not sure what is going on with Matt, but Lord help me find peace with him. You are so mighty, Lord. I love you."

There was a time when Kari questioned what had happened when Ka.s.sidy died, wondering aloud if her child would have lived if she'd been in the bedroom instead of Matt. Over time, she'd seemed to convince herself that her fears were unfounded. Yet if that thought remained, even in the shadowy recesses of Kari's mind, could it explain why she might wonder what Matt could be capable of doing to her?

The next day, Monday, Kari and Matt went to her doctor. The account Kari gave to friends and family afterward was that first a physician's a.s.sistant examined her. She told him that she wasn't depressed but anxious, and asked for a prescription for Xanax, an antianxiety drug. Linda had an old prescription for it, one she hadn't used, and Kari had tried one of the pills and liked it. Since it worked, Linda had urged Kari to get her own prescription, to help take the edge off the attacks. But when the doctor came in, he asked Kari if her attacks could be hormonal. When she said no, the doctor wrote a prescription for Celexa, an antidepressant.

"Kari told me that she told the doctor she wasn't depressed, she had anxiety," Linda would say later. "But his response was that depression could rear its ugly head as anxiety. She asked him for something short-term, to get her through the stress she was under, but he said, 'Let's just try this,' and gave her the prescription for the antidepressant."

On the way home, Kari called Linda as Matt drove, telling her mother about the physician, complaining that he hadn't listened to her. Furious, Kari said that she'd torn up the prescription on the way out of the office. But then, as the conversation continued, Kari described how when they'd stopped at a stop sign, she'd opened the door to get some air. Matt had grabbed her. "Mom, Matt thought I was going to jump," Kari said, laughing as if it were the funniest thing Matt could have done.

Although Kari sounded amused by what had happened, Linda worried. She knew Matt and Kari were going through a difficult time and that there were things Kari wouldn't feel comfortable discussing. "She wouldn't tell me anything truly bad about Matt," Linda says. "She wouldn't want me angry with him." Linda thought that Kari needed someone she could trust to confide in.

"Why don't you go see Bristol again," Linda said, suggesting the counselor Kari had seen for a year after Ka.s.sidy's death.

Later that day, it would appear that Linda was right; Kari wasn't telling her mother everything. That afternoon, Kari called Jill, who was driving home from work. Kari was sobbing as she said, "I think Matt's having an affair."

Shocked, Jill, who knew only the side of Matt he'd shown her as a friend and her pastor, scoffed. "Kari, be real. Matt loves you. He wouldn't do that."

But Kari wouldn't stop crying.

In Dallas, Jill turned the car around and started driving toward Waco. "I'm coming," she said. "I'll drive right over."

"No," Kari said. "Just pull over and wait. I'll call you back."

Jill did as instructed, and minutes later Kari called back. "I'm okay. You don't have to come. I'll be all right. I have to teach at Tarleton tonight. Don't worry."

"Let me come get you," Jill said. "Please."

"No, no, no," Kari answered. "I'm okay. I'll call you tomorrow."

That night, at the house on Crested b.u.t.te, something else happened. Two days earlier, Kari had written in her Bible, asking for G.o.d's protection. On that Monday night after returning from teaching her cla.s.s, Kari saw something that frightened her.

In the bedroom looking for a pen to grade papers, she opened Matt's calf-colored leather briefcase, which he kept next to the bed. Inside, she saw a toothpick container filled with crushed pills. Why would he have that? When she confronted him, Kari would later say that Matt told her that the pills were from WCY, saying that residents sometimes didn't take their pills and spit them into his briefcase. But she must have wondered if that made sense. Why would they be in a powder form? Who'd crushed them?

The next day at school, Tuesday, Kari complained about an upset stomach and mentioned that she wondered if it could have been something she'd eaten, perhaps strawberries she'd had with breakfast. At 8:20, Matt e-mailed: "Hey, hope you have a good day. Try to keep from becoming anxious . . . Love you."

Nearly an hour later, she e-mailed back. "I'm doing fine. Sorry that I freaked out this morning. I guess my mind is just going crazy. I started thinking about what if this, what if that. Anyway, I am doing better, and I am trying really hard to relax."

A while later, Kari e-mailed her mother, asking for advice about the final she was preparing for her evening college cla.s.s. The test was a month away, but Kari was making plans. "I've come up with two ideas," Kari wrote. "One: how to develop a job from the bottom up. Two: above plus they will have to video a job interview . . . What do you think?"

When Linda responded, she said they both sounded great. She also suggested that Kari had no reason to worry about either the final or the interview for the middle-school slot she'd applied for. On top of everything else, Kari had an appointment with Midway Middle School's princ.i.p.al and hiring committee scheduled for that coming Friday. Kari was prepared, but with so much going on in her life, she sounded nervous. "You'll do well," Linda said. "Believe in yourself. You're a great teacher."

The emotional roller coaster Kari was on climbed that morning out of the abyss that held her fears. Perhaps Matt had professed his love as he consistently did in his e-mails. Or perhaps it was just Kari being Kari, fighting off her own doubts, attempting to convince herself that the man she loved, a man who claimed a profound connection to G.o.d, couldn't be having an affair and that she had no need to fear him.

Whatever the reason, at 10:34 Kari e-mailed Matt, suggesting they meet for dinner. She'd promised the girls that after school she'd take them to rent The Chronicles of Narnia, which had just been released on DVD. In her e-mail, Kari wrote: "I do want you to know that I feel a lot better about us. Do you? I know we have had a b.u.mpy few weeks, but I feel that we are much closer now. How about you? You probably think I'm crazy, but I promise I am really trying to work on it. I think after yesterday it really scared me, and it knocked me back into focus of what I need to be doing. Am I better? No. I have to work on some things, but don't we both? I just want you to know that I love you very much, and I am sorry for making you feel like I don't trust you."

What was she referring to? What had frightened her? The crushed pills? Had she accused him of planning to hurt her? Was that why she'd apologized for making Matt feel as if she didn't trust him?

Eight minutes later, Matt responded: "Oh, I have nothing to work on-hahaha. I do agree. I love you."

Despite telling Matt that she was better, that she believed their relationship was improving, around noon Kari followed the advice from her mother and called Bristol and left a message. When Bristol called back, Kari asked for an appointment. "How about four o'clock?" Bristol asked. "I have an opening."

"Perfect," Kari said.

When Kari e-mailed Matt to tell him about the appointment, because as usual he'd said he'd go with her, it was evident that the tension in the marriage hadn't truly eased. "Is that going to put you out?" she asked.

His response sounded angry. "STOP!!!!! Stop judging what I say. Just hear what I say. I said I will meet you at Jo Ann's by 4 p.m. It is not a problem. OK?"

"Matt, YOU STOP IT!!! I wasn't judging you. I was just making sure it wasn't a bad time. GOSH, I CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT. I try to put your feelings first and I get my hand slapped. Sorry."

Three minutes pa.s.sed, and he responded: "BABE-I am so sorry-I guess I was judging your statement. I am sorry! I CAN & WILL meet you and the girls at Jo Ann's office. OK? I am NOT trying to slap your hand. I promise."

That afternoon, the e-mails flew back and forth, Matt saying he felt like he walked on eggsh.e.l.ls around Kari but insisting that he didn't want to make her feel bad. "I am sorry. I hope the meeting with Jo Ann will help." He then suggested that Kari see a counselor through his work, but she replied: "Thanks but no thanks. I don't want to come to your work to get help. I can do it on my own."

A little before four, Kari and the girls arrived at Jo Ann Bristol's office in downtown Waco. When Matt walked in, he sat with the girls in the waiting room, while Kari went inside the private office to talk to the therapist she hadn't visited in six years, not since a year after Ka.s.sidy's death.

a.s.sessing Kari, Bristol noted her patient's appearance. Kari was well dressed, her hair combed, her makeup on. That was important, an indication of how Kari felt about herself, one that showed she cared about how she looked. As they talked, it became apparent that much was going well in Kari's life. She was proud of her success with her new diet, mentioning that she was down seventeen pounds that morning. All was well at work, and Kari talked excitedly about her job interview that coming Friday. When the conversation turned to Kensi and Grace, Kari sounded proud, saying both girls were doing well in school.

If Bristol was confused about why Kari was there, she ultimately focused on the reason. "Kari said there were problems in her marriage," Bristol would say later. "That morning, Matt left the house without saying he loved her. He wasn't interested in her s.e.xually and had no desire to be with her that way."

"I've talked to Matt about getting our marriage on track," Kari confided. "But he said, 'Now you're ready, but I was ready for a long time. It will take me a while to catch up.' "

As she talked, Kari brought up the e-mail Matt had sent, the one in which he accused her of being responsible for their daughter's death. Away from Matt's prying ears, Kari told her counselor about her anxiety attacks, including the incident in the car, when Kari had opened the door and Matt grabbed her. "We were stopped. I just needed air," Kari said, laughing at the idea that Matt thought she might jump. Bristol asked Kari if she felt at all suicidal, and Kari said, "No."

Then the conversation took a strange turn, as Kari confided in Bristol about the night before, when she'd found crushed pills in Matt's briefcase. Kari said she'd confronted Matt, and he'd told her that the pills had come from WCY, but Kari admitted that she didn't believe him. "I asked him what they were, and he said, 'Why do you want to know?' I told him, 'Jo Ann will want to know.' " Worried about the pills, Kari said that she woke up in the middle of the night and went looking for them. While she was looking Matt walked in and asked what she was doing.

"I told him, 'I'm looking for the pills because Jo Ann will want to know what they are.' " At that point, Kari said Matt told her that he'd gotten rid of them and that he'd reported to WCY what the residents were doing.

There was more. "I think Matt's having an affair," Kari said. "And I think Matt's planning to kill me."

"Would you say that again?" Bristol asked.

"I think Matt's having an affair," Kari said. "And I think Matt is planning to kill me."

Yet as soon as she uttered those words a second time, Kari did what she'd done throughout her marriage when it came to suspicions about her husband-she quickly made an about-face. "No, he's not. That's ridiculous. I know better than that," she said. "Matt would never do anything like that. He wouldn't."

Listening to Kari, Bristol apparently accepted that her patient hadn't really meant what she'd said because she took no action other than to make suggestions for things Kari and Matt could do together, exercises to help them become closer. One was that Matt and Kari put in writing the things they loved about each other. A second was to rekindle the flame by indulging in the things they enjoyed when they had first met.

Despite that brief interlude when she'd confessed her fears, Kari insisted she was well, saying she was in a better place than she had been in the past, "with regard to the sorrow over Ka.s.sidy's death." In fact, Kari felt so at peace with the loss of her daughter that she repeated what she'd told Linda: "I'd like to work with other parents who've lost children. I think that may be my calling."

As the last of their minutes together clicked off the clock, Kari talked again about her girls, how she wanted to spend more time with them. Yet when the session came to an end, Bristol was concerned enough about what Kari had said to ask her to call on Friday, so they could talk on the phone if Kari was still having obsessive thoughts about Matt.

When they opened the door, there stood Matt Baker, the subject of Kari's fears, in the waiting area with Kensi and Grace.

Later that afternoon, Kari called Jill. "Kari said she felt more optimistic about her relationship with Matt," says Jill. "She said she was trying to be more adventurous in the bedroom with him, but that he still wasn't interested. But she said that she really wanted to make the marriage work."

When Kari called Linda, she told her she'd talked to Bristol. Kari didn't, however, voice any of the concerns she'd confided in her therapist, and Linda, seeing the session as private, didn't ask any questions. Later, that was something else Linda would regret. "If Kari had told me what was going on, I would have pulled her out of that house by the hair," Linda says, shaking her head slightly. "I knew something was wrong, but she didn't tell me how bad it actually was."

Chapter 20.

At 8:04 the following morning, Wednesday, Matt e-mailed Kari: "Hope you have a good day. Love you."

Despite her a.s.surances to Jo Ann Bristol that she couldn't imagine Matt's hurting her, doubts about Matt apparently continued to plague Kari. Midmorning at Spring Valley Elementary, she again confided in her friend Shae while they were on the playground supervising during recess. Grabbing Shae's hand, Kari said, "I almost called you to come get the girls. I was thinking of leaving Matt. I think he's having an affair, and I found some pills. I'm frightened that Matt's planning to kill me."

Then, as she did with Bristol, however, Kari immediately retracted her accusations, saying, "But I know that's ridiculous."

As worried as Shae was, she decided not to push Kari to talk about it then. In three days, on Sat.u.r.day, they were planning to do a breast cancer walk with other third-grade teachers, and Shae thought that would be a better time to try to get Kari to open up. Shae had no way of knowing that Sat.u.r.day would be too late.

That Wednesday, when Kari talked to Shae would turn out to be a good day in at least one way; Kari's grandmother was battling cancer, and that morning she received the report they'd all been hoping for, that the doctors found her cancer-free. Kari appeared overjoyed as she told her friends. Although she complained of a headache, when she talked to Jill on the phone, Kari sounded upbeat. Perhaps her grandmother's good news made Kari feel better about life in general, including her marriage, because she then went on to tell Jill again that she was determined to work the problems out with Matt. "I'm going to do whatever I can," she said. Then she thanked her friend. "I really appreciate having you to talk to."

At 12:19, Kari e-mailed Matt, apologizing for not responding to his morning e-mail sooner, saying she'd been busy teaching math. She'd called earlier from out on the playground and said it was because she'd missed him. "I haven't felt like my heart is going to jump out of my chest today. That's good."

"Good-maybe your heart will only jump inside your body ;-)," he responded.

"I wish you would make my heart jump. :)," she answered.

When he replied, "I do," Kari corrected herself. "Sorry, I meant to say I wish I made your heart jump."