Kate had, in fact, also promised to videotape Audrey's baptism with the idea that Mary Kay's parents and the BBC would get copies. One for love; one for money. But according to Kate and others, the video was confiscated moments after she shot it. The Globe was in town and had an exclusive on the story. That meant sentiments were shoved aside. No one was to take anything from the event. Nothing but memories.
“It felt like nothing must come in the way of the money that was being made from the Mary Kay Letourneau story,” James Kent said later. “There were people who saw this as a chance to make a lot of money, and I felt very disappointed by that.”
Lawyer Huff didn't deny that cash was being collected from the Letourneau story or from Audrey's baptism in particular. And, he said, if the air was tinged with paranoia at the blessed ceremony, there was good reason for it.
“I think Soona was worried about the pictures getting out,” Bob Huff said later. “Soona was trying to cool it on the baby pictures because she got reamed by the judge in selling photos. Also, I think she wanted to keep the photos because they were worth money. I think Mary's friend's sold some of those that Soona gave them later. Soona was real pissed about that.”
Meeting Vili and his family was eye-opening for Michelle. She and Mary Kay had spent hours in her Spyglass Hill bedroom dreaming of their lives and the men they would marry. Michelle had realized her dreams of a loving husband and three children. Sure, it wasn't exactly as she had planned, but it was close. But Mary Kay and this boy and his family seemed so far off the mark. It wasn't that Michelle didn't like or accept Vili. There was a side to him that she could see Mary Kay might have found appealing in her loneliness. Michelle's heart was touched when the fourteen-year-old put a white rose on a chair to symbolize Mary Kay's presence at what was to be a holy gathering. The three rings he had also moved her: one from Mary to him, his to her, and one for their baby, Audrey.
Michelle looked at his artwork back at the house, and like Kate, thought he was a talented artist, and some of his writings were “quite deep.” She could see how a woman falling apart might romanticize the boy and his abilities and what it all could mean to her.
But in reality, she knew, the boy with the stubby ponytail and shaved sides of his head was also a typical teenager.
“Then he turns on rap music where every other word is rap music with the F word.”
Michelle could see the family was doing the best that they could, or at least they seemed to be trying. Audrey was getting a lot of attention, a lot of love. But what common ground did Mary Kay share with those people? None that Michelle could see.
“They weren't raised at the same social level as Mary Kay was. We're talking poor people. There is a huge difference. This is not against the family. It is just the facts.”
A shopping trip for Doc Martens at the mall became a kind of bonding experience for Kate and Vili. But he was still so young, so awkward, that Kate could never find the right moment to ask the question that lingered in the back of her mind.
Will you wait for Mary Kay?
Finally, she broached the subject to Soona.
“I want him to be happy,” Vili's mother said with great conviction. “I want whatever is right for my son. Just because he has two children with Mary does not obligate him to marry her.”
Kate understood. If it had been her son who had been caught up in the turmoil of such an affair, she'd have felt the same way. She might have hoped for a more positive response from Soona Fualaau, but Kate knew that only time would tell anyway. And there was a lot of time. Seven years, to be sure.
Vili's grandmother was less “let's wait and see.”
“Don't you look at another girl,” she said to Vili as Kate looked on. “You've got those babies… you marry that girl. You wait for her.”
Even before there was a second baby on the way, Mary Kay and her friends worried about whether she'd ever get Audrey back from Soona. It wasn't that she thought Soona was unfit, but simply that Mary Kay wanted to raise her own daughter herself. She had lost her first four to Steve and it would be a battle on the order of a world war to get them back. For a woman who often defined herself by the children she bore, Mary Kay was desperate to retain the bond that she had tried to forge between herself, her infant daughter, and Vili.
“Mary's parental rights are definitely at stake here,” said a close friend. “As more time goes by, the more attached Soona is to Audrey. And there ain't no parting of the ways with that woman and that child, I'll tell you now.”
When Soona referred to Audrey, it wasn't as her granddaughter, but her own infant.
“She says that's 'my baby.' My baby.”