Young Writers Society

AN: This is the final part. Thanks for reading and please offer me your honest feedback

And thus began our relationship. Jay had secured a room in a boarding house on the other side of town in exchange for work, but he told me it was temporary. That he was saving enough money to buy a house. One that we could live in together. For the first year and a half, everything was perfect. He’d often pull up in the car and take me somewhere after school. I’d become aware that others had noticed, but no one ever said anything to me. Once spring came we’d often drive into the forest, find a place to park and watch everything go by.

Father seemed to forget about my job at the motel. Once, early that following summer, I asked him about it, and he responded that I didn’t need to work as Jay was going to take care of me. Jay had indeed won him over in the preceding months. Sometimes he would be over and he and my father would be so deep in conversation they would both seem to forget that I was there.

Jay first proposed to me shortly after my sixteenth birthday. My father confirmed that we had his blessing, but I declined as I wanted to finish school first. Something inside him seemed to change after that. He became colder, more authoritarian, more one to outbursts. We’d only had one real fight before then, when he discovered that I was fourteen when we had met. But that had long since been water under the bridge. After we fought constantly. It was if he couldn’t stand being rejected, even if it wasn’t really a rejection. I told him to ask me again after I graduated. That was another two years away. I figured if we still together by then, he was the one. While I was sure that I loved him, what I didn’t want was to rush into something the way my parents had done, and end up divorced and bitter. I almost left him many times, but after every fight he would make it up to me with grand romantic gestures, always apologizing profusely, telling me that I was the only one he’d ever love.

We ended up marrying two weeks after my high school graduation. Jay had made good on his promise to save enough money to buy us a house, and we moved to Helena. Our house was smaller than the one I’d shared with my father, but it was our own. I liked the city. It was exciting.

In September of that year I found out I was pregnant. It was unplanned. Jay had never vehemently been against kids, but he’d also not been enthusiastic about having them either. Personally, I’d never thought about having kids, but more and more I became excited about the prospect of motherhood. Jay seemed happy too. That Christmas he presented me with a crib that he had built himself. As Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas played softly on our record player, he looked at me, smiling.

“This child’s going to have a better life than I ever did.”

I smiled back, thinking then that in spite of all of our fights, in spite of the many times I’d doubted him, that his heart was really in the right place, that he did mean well, that he did love me. What neither of us acknowledged during my pregnancy is that our house had only one bedroom. There was no place that our child could sleep. When I was eight months pregnant, Jay stated that he would begin to look for a new house for us, and the crib could stay in our room in the interim.

Adam was born that June. Motherhood was a difficult adjustment, but the love I felt for him quickly became unparalleled. Father came to visit, and so did Mother and Gary, separately of course. They both loved Adam too. I realized during those visits how much I missed my parents, how little time I spent with anyone other than Jay. I did need to interact with other people. Make a few friends.

I did not know how to drive, so I talked to Jay about enrolling in lessons. We were standing in the kitchen when I approached him. I was holding Adam, trying to rock him to sleep, as I had just fed him. I did not see anything wrong with what I was asking, but apparently he did. It was a waste of money, he said. There was no reason I needed to know how to drive when he was around.

“What if you’re not?” I asked him.

He didn’t respond. “Who will take care of Adam?”

“You can, you know,” I said curtly.

“I work,” He said. It was true. He did. But he also couldn’t hold down a job. In the year since we’d been married and moved to Helena he had never worked anywhere for more than two months. He mostly subsided on various manual labor job but he kept getting fired for reasons that he would never fully disclose to me. Then he would sit and sulk and would only apply to other jobs because I made him do so. Now he was working for the park service. But even then, I didn’t remember the last time he’d tried to comfort him.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t help take care of him.”

He then started screaming nonsense about how he worked for us, and how by making money he was taking care of us and I’d better just try to raise him on my own. I wasn’t sure because I wasn’t fully listening. Adam began crying and I yelled at Jay for it. He froze, stated that the short of it was that I did not need to learn how to drive, and went into our room and slammed the door. Of course I began lessons anyway. There was a young husband and wife, Don and Victoria I think their names were, that we were neighbors with. Don gave me lessons while Jay was at work and Victoria watched Adam.

This went on for a month before he eventually found out when he came back unexpectedly. It became an explosive fight. He accused me of having an affair with Don, of going behind his back, of deliberately defying him to make him angry. We would have to move now. Not because our son was quickly growing and needed a room of his own, but because I was supposedly having an affair with our neighbor.

We eventually found a house in Livingston with a second bedroom, and I found out the reason was because he had been fired from the Park Service. Apparently he’d cursed out his female boss when she tried to give him feedback about his performance, telling her that he’d never answer to a woman.

I should have left him after that. I should left him many times. But after each and every fight, he would always come back and tell me how much he messed up, how much he loved me. By then he’d been a part of my life for so long I could barely remember a time without him. Everything before then in a sense didn’t feel real. After we moved into our house, he also took a lot of care to spend time with Adam. He was genuinely good with him. I rarely spoke to my parents. I still didn’t really have any other friends. My parents were both getting older and the nearly seven hour drive was too much for them. And in spite of his many faults, he had done a lot for me.

For the next five years, it was more of the same. He’d managed to find steady work with the park service there (apparently various branches did not communicate with one another) that he seemed to enjoy. I wondered then if things might look up for us, if we would be a happy family after all.

It was two days after Adam’s sixth birthday when the police came to our house. I was confused. Our mortgage check had been forged. Apparently he had done this for the past few months. This was a felony, they explained to me. He would be sentenced to several years in prison. Jay vehemently denied everything, but I knew instinctively that it was true. As they took him away, he yelled nonsense to me about how it wasn’t true and this wasn’t who he was.

In the end he got five years. I called my father in in tears and told him everything. I wanted to leave Jay, what was most important to me was taking care of Adam.

“If you want to leave him,” my father said, “you will of course be welcome back here.”

“Thank you,” I said.

And in the end I did. But of course, that wasn’t the end of the story.

In the first five years I thought a lot about him. And then, he started to fade. In 1968, when Adam was eleven, I met Ed. Ed was nice. Kind. He had a stable job as a travelling salesman. He was going to take care of us. But it was the same year Jay would get out, and I was terrified that he would try to find me. He’d wrote me often the first year. I never replied to anything. I had gotten sole custody of Adam in the divorce proceedings, so I was under no legal obligation to find Jay. But still, I was willing to forgive him, be cordial to the point of allowing him to spend time with his son. But I never received any kind of correspondence from him. I’d found later that it was because than a week after he’d gotten out, he’d met her. The little blonde girl from the bookshop who was half his age.

Ed and I married. We moved to Seattle and I tried to put everything behind me. And for three years, I did. Adam often asked about his father, and I always gave him half, vague answers. He was old enough to remember, but not well.

I found out about everything completely out of nowhere. Ed was out of town on business, so it was just me and Adam. It was a cool summer afternoon. He was watching TV while I began to prepare dinner.

“Mom?” He asked from the living room.

“What is it, honey?”

“I think Dad’s on the news.”

I immediately ran over to the living room. Sure enough, there was his mugshot. He looked terrible. Beside his were the mugshots of three other girls and one boy. They were all college aged or younger. They’d just been arrested and charged in connection with the murder of Margaret Kelly and two others who had died in her home earlier that month.

The kids were part of a cult, the news explained. My ex-husband was the leader. He’d ordered them to kill. I thought I was going to faint as I continued to watch. But it was only the beginning. For months, as they were all tried and ultimately convicted, it was all that was ever on. I thought a lot about the girls, specifically the little blonde girl and the dark haired, wide-eyed girl that had killed. The news made them out to be crazy. Fried from acid. The blonde especially seemed to be in love with him. And I couldn’t fault her for that. But if everything was true, and it seemed that it was, he was more depraved than I ever thought. I’d also found out, in the midst of all of this, about his time in juvenile hall just before we’d met. Everything felt like a lie. He’d told all of these girls that he’d loved them. He hadn’t meant it. Had he meant any of it with me?

The news said he was a psychopath, that he was incapable of loving anyone. I thought of the night we’d first met. To holding my hand and bringing me roses after school. To the way he’d first kissed me. To the Christmas when he’d presented me with Adam’s crib. I wondered if it any of it had been real.

I told Ed everything. I wasn’t sure how he would react, but he was incredibly supportive. He held me as I cried in his arms, and encouraged me to talk to a professional if I believed that it would help. I decided to try.

I explained, in the session, that I felt guilty for not seeing the man he really was. For loving him when it turned out that this was what he was capable of. Guilt for leaving, for not being around to warn the girls about the type of man he was. Reporters had begun to call. They’d found out about me when they dug into his past, and they were asking me to give statements. To explain the man once knew to them. I ignored them all for now. The psychiatrist suggested that I write a letter.

I found out later that he had only meant to write something and tear it up, and not to actually send it. But that night, I did. I must have gone through a hundred sheets of paper, starting, stopping, rewriting. My final letter was short and still felt rambling to me.

Jay,

I’m only writing this because my psychiatrist thought it would be good for me. It has been a long time. As I’m sure you have suspected, I know of everything you have been involved with due to the relentless news coverage. I constantly receive calls from reporters, asking me to tell them about the man I knew. Adam is well, not that you care. He’s becoming quite the young man. I hope he turns out nothing like you. My current husband takes care of both of us and I am quite happy with him. But all of this beyond what I even thought you were capable of. Those poor girls. They were too young to know any better and you knew it. I’ve often thought of the many good times we shared, and I wonder if any of it was real. I really did love you once. I hope prison suits you well. At least you won’t be able to hurt anyone else.

Best,

Sarah

I quickly sealed it an envelope and walked over to the mailbox before I lost my nerve. A month passed, then two. I wasn’t expecting a response, and as the days and weeks edged on I became more and more assured that I wouldn’t receive one.

Then, one afternoon, I was gathering the mail when I recognized his handwriting. I sank. Adam was at school and Ed was at work, but still I took it into the bedroom, closed the door and opened the letter. My heart was racing a mile a minute, and I could barely hold the paper in my hands because they were shaking so much.

Sarah,

I apologize for the delay in responding to you. As I’m sure you can imagine, it was quite a shock to hear from you, as I’ve assumed for a great deal of time that you wouldn’t want anything to do with me. I receive a lot of mail and I try to respond to it all, and I wanted my response to you to be perfect. Let me be clear. I never took advantage of anyone. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear on the news. I’m glad Adam is well. It hurts me that you would ever doubt that I loved you. You’re the only one I’ve ever loved. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about you. I wish things had turned out differently. I somehow figured you would have remarried, but I’m glad you are happy. And I of course would rather not be in prison, but it is the way things must be. I hope to talk to you again soon.

Jay

I had a happy life now. A wonderful husband, an amazing son. And yet, this evil man who’d seduced teenage girls and ordered them to kill three people was telling me that he thought about me every day. That I was the only one he’d ever loved, and I had no idea what to do with that. I took the letter and cried, because maybe there was a part of me that still loved him too. Not the man he was, but the man he’d been. As tumultuous and toxic as our marriage was, he’d also been charming, romantic and, I thought at one point, good. It had nearly been twenty years since the day we’d first met. It’s a strange sinking feeling to long for an innocence you know you’ll never again regain.