If ever someone needed the love of a family, it was Mary Kay. She had been arrested, lost her job, run out of money, and was alone. Her four other children were dispatched to live in Alaska, Washington, D.C., and Tempe, Arizona, with relatives. Her hostile husband, living with his cousins in Bonney Lake, was around enough to make things as uncomfortable as possible. And all Mary Kay had was Michelle Jarvis and Beth Adair. Mary Kay spent the first night out of the hospital with Beth, the music teacher from Shorewood. She hadn't wanted to spend the first night at home alone. Michelle came up and drove her to Normandy Park the next day.
The house was a mess. The kitchen floor was so dirty, it could have been plowed. Boxes were everywhere. Michelle cleaned up, filled the refrigerator, and made casseroles for the freezer. She tried to put some order back in Mary Kay's life. Things had slipped so far in the months since she became involved with the mystery student. Or had they? Michelle reminded herself that the only glimpses she'd had of Mary Kay's life with Steve in Seattle had been school pictures, and the orchestrated photographs of the family dressed in matching sweaters in front of a perfect Christmas tree nestled in a drift of gorgeously wrapped packages.
This place was not only in utter disarray, it was dangerous, too. Carpet tack strips had been left along the walls and in the doorways from the day the Letourneaus decided they wanted to refinish the hardwood floors. When Michelle stepped on the tacks for the second time, she asked Mary Kay how she could live like that.
Mary Kay shrugged it off. It wasn't a problem.
“What about your kids? You let them run around the house like this?”
“Oh, they learn to avoid stepping on it.”
Michelle was astonished. A mother of three, she wouldn't have dreamed of leaving such a hazard and having such a cavalier attitude about it. It would have taken only a couple of hours to pry off the most dangerous tacks. But Steve and Mary Kay hadn't bothered.
“There were other things that were much more important.” she said later. “Which is kind of the Schmitz mentality. You keep up appearances at all cost.”
One other thing surprised and worried Michelle during her stay at the house in Normandy Park. Steve Letourneau was still around. Mary Kay had led her childhood friend to believe that Steve had already left the residence. But during the week that Michelle was there, Steve returned several times and each time tension filled the air. Mary Kay repeated her concern that she feared additional rage when “he saw… the black hair, and the olive skin… ” And at one point, Steve's anger at the situation and his apparent hatred for his wife frightened Michelle enough to pick up the phone and threaten to call the police.
In many ways Mary Kay was her own worst enemy. Maybe it had always been that way. But her defiance of the court order stipulating no contact with Vili troubled Michelle. Yes, Michelle could concede, the two had feelings for each other, but “feelings” wasn't enough. Whenever Mary Kay got off the phone with Vili, Michelle met her with an icy stare and a word of warning.
“You are playing with fire and you better knock it off.”
Mary Kay didn't care. She was going to do what she wanted to do. She deserved it. It was her chance at happiness.
“She ignored me, like she always does,” Michelle told a friend later.
After a week of cooking, cleaning, and worrying, Michelle took Mary Kay and Audrey to a restaurant for a last meal together. After they ate, they watched the sun set and sipped Grand Marnier. Audrey slept soundly and Michelle told her friend she thought she had been blessed with such a good baby. Both cried as they said their good-byes. Mary Kay trusted that she'd never go to jail, and in time, the whole problem would be sorted out.
“I'll be all right,” she said.
There was a hole in the neighborhood when the Letourneau kids were gone—and never coming back. Ellen Douglas was left with the difficult task of supporting her son and daughter through a crisis that had reached out and abruptly snatched their best friends. She knew how tough Mary Kay's arrest had been on her son and daughter, but she knew that whatever their pain and confusion it had to be a billionfold for Steven, Mary Claire, Nicholas, and Jackie. With Audrey's birth and their parent's divorce inevitable things had to feel very unsettling.
Ellen would never forget how excited ten-year-old Mary Claire had been on the phone because she and her siblings were going to Washington, D.C., to go to school—and they were leaving right away. They'd be living with their Aunt Liz. After school was let out, they'd be visiting other relatives, including their father's in Alaska.
I'm sure this is cool, Ellen thought as she listened to Mary Claire burble on about the new school without a clue about what was to come, but there's something going on that you haven't allowed to sink in. Life as you know it is falling apart…