by Ann Rule
For the very first time in their relationship Bart apologized to Jenn and said he was sorry if he had hurt her. She stared back at him, shocked to hear him say he regretted the way he had treated her.
“You haven’t been a very loving husband, Bart,” Jenn said. She had nothing more to tell him. It was too late to change how she felt. If only he had apologized to her and promised to try harder years ago.
Now, Jenn agreed to stay with him over the holidays. It would give them both a short reprieve—two more months. She didn’t know herself how she was going to manage, where she would go, how much money she would need, or if she could even get a full-time job.
THE LEAVES ON THE YOUNG TREES Jenn had planted changed to yellow and apricot, fell to the ground, and blew away, leaving the yard on Bogan Gates Drive looking forlorn. Jenn’s garden turned fallow. She wondered where she would be in the spring when all her bulbs and flowers and trees bloomed again.
Only one thing kept a warm place in her heart, and a little bit of joy in her mind. She had Christopher. And it was possible that she and Christopher would find a way to be together, and that she might even find love again.
Christopher wrote that his mother was in the hospital and he didn’t know when he could email her, much less make plans to fly to Atlanta for a meeting.
“When my mother ends up in the hospital, she is usually there for a week. To be able to be with her in the hospital is one of the reasons I quit my job. Jennifer, know that I love you and think of you all the time.”
Christopher said he wouldn’t be online, and he admitted something to Jenn; he had a girlfriend, but be quickly explained he was in the process of breaking up with her. Jenn felt guilty that she had put him in that position when she still didn’t feel strong enough to walk away from Bart.
“It truly breaks my heart,” Jenn wrote, “that I’m doing you more damage than good. I’m only trying to do what is right for my kids. It doesn’t help that everyone here keeps telling me I have to work this out, that my life is going to be so hard if I go. My mom’s scared that I’m gonna end up in a trailer. I’m just scared that I’m going to fail. I’m just trying to do what is right. I know that I will never be happy if I stay…”
And all the while Jenn was writing to Christopher, she was living her other life—making a cake for the Fall Festival Cake Walk at Harmony Elementary School, arranging for Dalton’s bike rodeo in his Boy Scout troop, driving with her friend Juliet to take their boys to the north Georgia mountains to see the leaves change and to hike in the woods, making pies and casseroles and keeping her house immaculate. On Halloween, Jenn had taken her boys to a parade for the trick-or-treaters, and promised to help Heather move yet again.
In early November, Bart confronted Jenn and told her they needed to see a marriage counselor—something he had always resisted before. He also accused her of being addicted to EverQuest.
“He pretty much told me last night that we were done—again,” she wrote to Christopher. “That we need to cut our losses, that he can’t live with me and look at me every day if I don’t love him. And what did I do—but give him a little small hope that maybe we can work this out. Why did I do this? It’s not because I want to save my marriage, but more because of the kids, and I’m scared and want to wait until the school year is over.”
As the days passed, Jenn was confused and torn apart by her conflicting emotions. How could she be fair to her sons, herself—and, yes, even to the husband who was suddenly begging her to stay with him after so many years of ignoring her? It was almost Thanksgiving, now. She had promised Bart she would stay until after New Year’s Day. Maybe, for the boys, she should stay longer.
Increasingly she depended on Chris for emotional support, secure that he would be there for her. But then, on November 17, Chris virtually vanished from Jenn’s Internet mail. She wondered if his mother’s illness had become critical, or if he had been in an accident. If that happened, how would she know? Was there anyone in St. Louis who knew about her, who would call her?
In between cutting out pilgrim hats for her preschoolers’ Thanksgiving play, she emailed Chris a dozen times, but he didn’t answer. When Jenn clicked on, there were no new messages and no answers to her questions.
Jenn breathed a sigh of relief when Christopher’s email address finally turned up on her computer. But something was different. He seemed somehow removed, and responded to her only briefly, sidestepping her queries.
Jenn wasn’t sure what she had done wrong, and she ended up in tears several times. The next day was worse. Chris was inexplicably drawing away from her. Without the Internet, their connection would be severed. And she couldn’t bear it if that happened.
It was almost five on Thursday afternoon, and it was dark outside—one week to Thanksgiving—when Jenn wrote to Chris for the fourteenth time that day. “I keep hitting that brick wall. I feel you have come to know me better than anyone in my life—that I can tell you all my thoughts and secrets and I’m safe with you. I feel so safe when I’m with you, and yet I’ve never even laid eyes on you. Oh, Chris, don’t you know how much we need to be able to see into each other’s eyes, to hold that moment, and just look into each other’s souls?”
There was no answer.
But sometime between 6 P.M on Thursday, November 18, and 5 A.M on Friday morning, Jenn Corbin learned why Chris had backed away from their correspondence and her insistence that they had to at least meet, or talk on the phone, or that he should send a photograph of himself. Jenn finally learned the truth about Christopher and she was shocked beyond belief.
Christopher wasn’t married…or a convicted felon…or physically unattractive. He wasn’t sixty years old. He wasn’t an “Iranian ball-scratcher” as Heather had suggested, teasing Jenn. He wasn’t anything at all.
There was no Christopher. There never had been. “Chris” was only a phony name used by someone who had good reason to be secretive. Jenn was absolutely stunned to discover that for months she had been writing to a woman. Not a man at all. Her last name was Hearn, a name that meant nothing to Jenn, because she had never known about Dolly Hearn.
And “Chris’s” real first name was Anita. Anita Hearn. She was a bisexual who did live in Missouri and who apparently did take care of her sister’s children—if, indeed, there were any children. The rest of the things she had told Jenn were partly true and partly false. Jenn found that out in a single email—one that she erased in her humiliation. An email that “Christopher/Anita” also destroyed.
At first Jenn was furious. It was a safer emotion than grief at her loss.
“GDI [God Damn It!]” Jenn wrote. “All I asked for was no lies, no games, and tell me your secrets. How could you? OMG [Oh My God] HOW COULD YOU? What is your name—and tell me the truth, or is this just another lie? Is this just another test ’cause I honestly don’t know what to believe. Chris, Crystal, Christine—whoever. Don’t you know how many times I have searched for your face in the crowd? How I stare at men’s bodies to try to visualize what yours looks like? How many times I have heard you say my name, and how many times I have felt you pressed against my body? Damn you. I can’t live this lie. It’s killing me. I haven’t slept yet. I can barely keep myself from breaking down in front of my kids.
“I even fell in love with the name Chris. I can’t take it—I fell in love with Anita [instead]. I just don’t know how you could do this to me. I trusted you with everything in me. How many times did I call you a man—or my shy boy? You have absolutely ripped my heart out.”
Reading back over the emails on her computer, Jenn could see that “Chris” never spoke of possessing any male genitalia; the word penis or the slang cock could not be found in her emails. When their emails slid into sexual fantasies, “Chris” had never once responded to any discussion of male/female sexual intercourse, deftly avoiding that topic. Only now, in retrospect, Jenn realized that she had never noted this omission before.
Losing “Chris” was a crushing blow for Jenn Corbin. Fo
r months, she had been living in a fantasy—in love with someone she had always visualized to be a man. This was far worse than any of the warnings from her sister and her mother. She was cruelly disappointed. After existing for years in quiet desperation in a marriage without tenderness, she had grasped at what seemed to be her last chance.
And she had confessed her every private thought and hope to someone who wasn’t at all what she believed “him” to be. She was angry, but most of all she was heartbroken at the loss of someone who never was.
“Guess I should have known you were too good to be true,” she wrote. “Like you said last night, didn’t I suspect anything? NO! I believed in you. Guess I should have known. I am an idiot!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
NOVEMBER 2004
JENN’S HOPES LAY IN ASHES. There was nothing for her to look forward to. Bart was urging her to stay in their marriage, but he was still involved with Dara. Jenn had long accepted that her marriage was based on a fragile foundation that could crack and crumble any moment. And, finally, it had. Only now it didn’t matter to her. She had no one at all to love, and Dara could have Bart.
The working balance in the Corbins’ marriage had shifted. Jenn had been the first to bring up the subject of divorce. And that triggered a conditioned response in Bart. It was imperative that he be the one to walk away from a relationship with a woman. Gradually, with Jenn, he had lost control, and control was everything to him.
Jenn didn’t tell her mother, her sister Heather, or her best friend Juliet that she had discovered “Chris” was really “Anita.” She was too embarrassed to admit that they had been right all along; she had been deceived. They sensed something was wrong, but she couldn’t bring herself to convey how devastated she was. She had kept the depth of her feelings for his virtual stranger secret. They had certainly known she was happy and excited about the new person in her life, but Jenn’s love for Chris had been far more intense than anyone knew.
Jenn’s family had seen for themselves how moody Bart could be, and observed traces of the rage that often smoldered just below the surface. Although they empathized greatly with her unhappiness, they still considered Bart a member of their family, albeit one who would move out of their close inner circle after the New Year. There had been so many happy times together, and all in all, their holidays together had been warm and serene.
Now they were all saddened to think that Jenn and Bart might actually get divorced, and that their little boys might grow up without both parents there for them. Bart had been with her family for every holiday since 1995. At least Jenn and Bart had agreed to celebrate the holidays as always—together. And perhaps it was still possible that they would make up their differences as they went through the family traditions.
But as Thanksgiving 2004 approached, Jenn confessed to her mother that she was sometimes afraid that Bart was capable of hurting her physically. She said he was so angry with her that he frightened her. But physical violence? No, that seemed impossible to Narda. She assured Jenn that, whatever she chose to do, she and Max would stand behind her. That was a given.
Jenn tried to act cheerful for Dalton and Dillon. She knew now why her “Sir Tank” had been so hesitant to come to Georgia, or send a photograph, or even call her on the phone. Heather and Narda had warned Jenn that she couldn’t possibly know who a stranger she had met on the Internet really was, and she had brushed aside their qualms. Worried, Heather had done her best to find out who Christopher really was. She had searched the Internet, EverQuest, tried to find a phone number—but she never found him. From the beginning, Heather was afraid that Chris might harm Jenn. Now, she knew something was wrong—but she had no idea what Chris had done to make Jenn so unhappy.
IN 2004, Thanksgiving fell on November 25, and Heather and Doug Tierney were hosting dinner at their new house in Dawsonville. As always, Jenn and Bart and their boys were expected.
Jenn had a great deal on her mind, most of it dealing with her correspondence with Anita Hearn. She still wasn’t clear about her feelings. She kept remembering Chris—as if he still existed somewhere in St. Louis, and might suddenly come forward and say, “It was all a joke.” She had erased many of the thousand or more emails that had flown through the Internet between herself and “Christopher.” She didn’t want to leave them on the computer for fear that Bart might discover them and use them against her to prove to the court she was an unfit mother. Bart had warned her if she ever tried to leave him, that he would take her boys away from her.
Before they left for Heather and Doug’s house Thanksgiving afternoon, Jenn placed some special emails she’d printed out and saved in her knitting-bag-sized purse. That seemed to her to be the safest place to hide them until she read them again to figure out what she should do, and to come to some kind of resolution. Only a week had passed, and her mind was jumbled with scenarios. But, above all, she didn’t want Bart to read the emails. She took them with her as they left for the Tierneys’ house, hooking her purse over the headrest of the driver’s seat of their SUV.
Jenn drove, with Bart in the passenger seat. Dalton and Dillon sat in the backseat, excited about the holiday. As they were on their way, Jenn’s cell phone rang. It was her mother, asking if they could stop at a store and pick up a turkey baster. She had looked all over Heather’s kitchen and couldn’t find one. It was probably still in the boxes that weren’t unpacked yet.
“No problem—of course, we can,” Jenn said. “We’ll stop at the next store that’s open. I think Kroger’s is.”
It was such an innocuous errand. While Bart waited in the SUV with the boys, Jenn ran into the supermarket and grabbed a turkey baster, waiting in line behind all the holiday shoppers buying last-minute items. She wasn’t gone long, but as she slid back into the driver’s seat, she could almost smell rage emanating from her husband. She wasn’t sure what might have happened until she saw that Bart held her empty purse in his lap, its contents on the seat, the floor, and on him, too. He had dumped it all and found the very emails she had tried to hide from him.
Suspicious, Bart had begun to search the SUV the moment she left. He had opened her purse and rifled through it, pocketing her cell phone. With a sense of horror, Jenn realized that he must have read the emails from Anita Hearn. Without allowing herself to think of the ramifications of Bart’s discovery, Jenn put the vehicle in gear and drove on to Heather’s house, the blood roaring in her ears as she waited for an onslaught of accusations from Bart. He was so angry that it seemed as if the front seat was actually vibrating. Jenn was relieved to see the turn into Heather’s neighborhood ahead.
Bart hadn’t said a word to her. As soon as he walked through the door at the Heather’s house, he headed for the bathroom and everyone in the house could hear him vomiting. When he finally came out, he was as pale as death itself.
It was a horrible afternoon. Besides their own family, some of Doug Tierney’s relatives had also been invited for dinner, yet Bart made no effort to be civil to anyone. It was impossible not to notice that he was furious about something. He downed two bottles of wine, pacing back and forth in the basement, and then sat on the back deck, glowering. The more he drank, the blacker his mood became.
Usually, Bart would have spent time visiting with Max, and talking to Jenn’s mother and sisters. But on this Thanksgiving he was avoiding everyone, and he looked like a thundercloud, his jaw clenched as he grew steadily more intoxicated.
They all sat down around the dining room table, and ate the turkey dinner, but their conversation sounded tinny and self-conscious, and they often lapsed into awkward silences. Dessert hadn’t even been served when Bart stood up and announced that he was going home. He ordered Jenn and the boys to get their coats and get in the car. Dalton and Dillon pleaded to stay longer to play with their cousins, but Bart ignored them. Jenn had no time even to make apologies. She hurried after Bart.
They were no sooner outside than Bart began shouting at Jenn. Everyone inside could hear him.
“Slut!” he shouted at her. “Are you going to tell me what you’ve been doing on the Internet? What sordid little game have you been playing? You might as well tell me because you know I’m going to find out all about it.”
White-faced, Jenn urged him to keep his voice down. She touched her finger to her lips in a “hushing” motion: “Not in front of the boys. We can talk about it when we get home.”
As always, she tried to protect their children from seeing them argue. But this was far beyond an argument. She lifted the boys into the backseat and drove off, still begging Bart to lower his voice. When Bart saw her shake her finger at him, he erupted. He no longer cared if his sons heard him. When Jenn turned toward him, he hauled off and hit her square in the face. She was shocked; as cruel as some of his verbal taunts had become, he had never struck her.
“I never touched you,” Bart sneered, anticipating that she would tell someone. “It’s your word against mine.”
Now the car was silent except for the sound of Dalton sobbing. Amazingly, through all of this Dillon had fallen asleep in the back seat. The boys had heard their father shout and swear before—but neither of them had ever seen him hit their mother. Jenn attempted to stifle her own tears, trying desperately not to scare Dalton any more than he already was. She watched the road ahead. It was dark out and visibility was poor. All she could think of was getting Dalton and Dillon home without anything worse happening. Bart was so out of control that she was afraid he might grab the wheel and send them plunging off the road.
Jenn was relieved when they finally pulled up into their own driveway. Bart stalked into the house, leaving Jenn to follow with the boys. She didn’t try to talk to Bart until she had Dalton calmed down. Then Jenn called Heather and told her what had happened.