The Dark Side

by Danielle Steel

  Zoe went to buy groceries after she unpacked, and Austin sat down on their bed and called his mother after she left. As she always did, his mother picked up immediately when she saw his number.

  “Hi, Mom, how are you and Dad?” he said in a tired voice, trying to sound cheerful.

  “Fine. How was Florida?”

  “Wonderful. We had a great time.” He could tell her the truth when he saw her. He didn’t want to tell her on the phone. Not again. Listening to him, she thought he sounded sad and subdued, and as though he was lying to her. She had no idea about what, but she could tell something was wrong. “I was thinking on the way back. We haven’t had lunch in ages. Do you have time for a date this week?” He tried to seem casual about it, but the invitation sounded stilted to him too.

  “For you, my darling boy, my dance card is always free. When do you have in mind?”

  “Does tomorrow work for you?” There was something desperate in his voice that he couldn’t hide.

  “Sure. Our usual?” There was a small Italian restaurant near his office that they both liked. Da’Giulio. They had lunch there from time to time.

  “Perfect. Noon? I have to be in court in the afternoon.”

  “Noon it is. See you then.”

  “Thank you,” he said in a soft voice.

  “For what? Having lunch with my son?”

  “For making time. For being you,” he said gratefully.

  They hung up, and she sat looking worried and pensive as George walked by.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I have a feeling there might be. Austin wants to have lunch with me tomorrow. He hasn’t done that since my birthday.”

  “Don’t be so paranoid. He probably feels guilty for not calling more often.”

  “I don’t think so,” but she hoped he was right.

  She was already at the restaurant, waiting for him, when he walked in the next day, looking tall and handsome in a dark suit, white shirt, and navy tie, since he had to go to court.

  “You’re a good-looking man,” she said to him, and smiled as he sat down, and leaned over to kiss her. She could also see that his eyes looked strained, and she thought he didn’t look well despite the tan.

  They ordered quickly, and she smiled at him again. “So Florida was fun? Did Jaime love it?”

  He didn’t answer for a minute and looked his mother in the eye. “Until the last day. Zoe was watching her at the pool, except she wasn’t. She was talking to some women, while Jaime ran around with some other kids her age, she slipped and fell into the pool at the deep end, without her floaties on, slit her chin open, went straight to the bottom, and nearly drowned. I just happened to come back from tennis then. I saw it, jumped in, and pulled her out. Even the lifeguard didn’t see it. If I hadn’t come back then, she’d be dead. And she has twelve stitches in her chin.” There were tears in his eyes when he said it, and his mother ached for him, as she touched his hand. “I’m not going to clean it up for you, or cover for Zoe this time. Mom, I don’t know what it is, but I’m scared. Something’s wrong. Maybe with her. Jaime only gets injured with Zoe. I don’t understand what’s happening, or maybe even who she is.” Tears slid down his cheeks as he said it, and he wiped them away. “I don’t know what to do.” It brought tears to her eyes just looking at him as they held hands across the table and he fought to regain his composure.

  “I’ve been worried for a long time.” She spoke softly. “I think there’s a part of Zoe broken so deep down inside that you can’t see it. On the surface she looks like the perfect mother, or wants to be. She runs the non-profit brilliantly. She’s a loving wife, a bright girl, a charming woman, but I think part of her is badly damaged. I feel it, more than see it. I think Jaime’s injuries are proof of it.”

  “Do you think she hurts Jaime intentionally?” He was willing to consider any possibility.

  “It’s more complicated than that, I think.” She said it as their lunch arrived and neither of them touched their food. “I wanted to talk to you about it a year or so ago, but you weren’t ready to hear it then. There’s a form of mental illness or a personality disorder that’s hotly debated in the psychiatric community. It’s called Munchausen syndrome by proxy.”

  “I’ve heard of it, but I never knew what it was.” Somehow he’d had a feeling that his mother would know what was going on, better than he did, and he hoped that was true.

  “People who suffer from it often make their children sick in a very serious way. They poison them, and do some frightening things to cause illness—not feign it, cause it. That’s the most severe form. Or they create or allow dangerous situations, where a child will get injured. They don’t injure them themselves, but they set it up, and let it happen. Or when a child is legitimately sick, they exaggerate the symptoms and insist they’re sicker than they are to make the illness seem more important. Some of them even set up surgeries that aren’t necessary.” He thought immediately of the ear tubes Zoe had engineered, and the appendectomy she wanted Jaime to have for her stomachache, and if he hadn’t objected, she might have had it.

  “I think Zoe fits in that spectrum somewhere,” Connie said. “She puts Jaime in dangerous situations and the inevitable happens. And then there’s the apnea, the febrile seizure no one ever saw, the appendicitis that wasn’t. It’s a plea for attention for the mother. A desperate need to be noticed, appreciated, and comforted. Once the child is genuinely sick or injured, or appears to be, they rush forward and are the perfect mother and astound everyone with how attentive they are, and become the child’s savior and hero. They appear to be fabulous mothers, and it’s mostly women who suffer from this disorder—and no one sees that they have caused the child’s injury or illness in the first place. Some of them have had medical training in some form, so they know what they’re doing,” she continued. “The debate among psychiatrists is whether it’s a mental illness, a personality disorder, or a form of child abuse. Maybe it’s the degree of it that makes the difference. I’ve done a lot of reading about it for the last three years, since Jaime was born. I think Zoe fits the pattern. You’d know better than I. But it occurred to me three years ago—the difficult nursing, Jaime rolling off the changing table and bumping her head, falling down the stairs, the broken arm and wrist, the story you just told me. I’ve suspected it for a while.

  “These women usually cover their tracks carefully and are very clever. There is always another explanation. They’re practiced liars. And I hate to tell you, but some of them kill their children. Or the children die in an accident they allowed to happen. I don’t think Zoe is at the extreme range of the disorder, but I’m not sure of that, and maybe you aren’t either. I understand why you’re scared, I am too.” Constance was quiet and calm and sane about it, which made everything she said worse and more real. She wasn’t hysterical or accusatory, she was, as always, intelligent, well informed, and made perfect sense. And what she described sounded all too familiar.

  “Do they know they’re doing it?” he asked in a strangled voice.

  “That’s debatable. Even the psychiatrists don’t agree on that. It’s a form of compulsive behavior.”

  “Her mother donated her own marrow for a transplant when her little sister was dying of leukemia, and everyone thought she was heroic during her entire illness. Maybe Zoe wanted a piece of that kind of admiration, and the only way she could get it was by making Jaime sick, or letting her get hurt. Mom, are you sure about this, I mean about Zoe?”

  “No, I’m not,” she said honestly, “which is why I haven’t talked to you about it. From everything I’ve read, the puzzle pieces fit, and she’s a match with the pathology, but you’d be a better judge of it than I. I have a book about Munchausen by proxy in layman’s terms, if you want to read it. It’s frightening, especially when you read the case studies. People with this disorder can be, or become, extremely
dangerous. And after what you tell me happened in Florida, I think you need to watch Jaime closely. Does Zoe know how upset you are?”

  “Maybe. I’ve only just started figuring it out myself. I’m not sure what I think.” Constance nodded, and picked at her pasta, and he did the same.

  “There’s also a different form of the disorder, which is simply called Munchausen, where adults pretend to be ill, but they aren’t, they just want attention. In Munchausen by proxy, the illnesses and injuries are not pretend, they’re real, caused by a parent, usually a mother, and it is far more scary. They can also attack the elderly. Most victims are under the age of six, because they don’t understand what they’re seeing, and can rarely report it accurately. People with Munchausen by proxy are usually accomplished liars and get away with it. And what they do, and how they do it, is extremely difficult to prove. They’re often above reproach and no one would suspect them,” which was true of Zoe, champion of abused children and devoted mother. Nothing his mother was telling him was good news, but in some ways it was a relief, to finally hear the truth, if it was the truth about Zoe. It sounded to him like it was. He trusted his mother and valued her opinions immensely.

  “How do you stop them?”

  “You can’t. You can’t change them. The child or the victim has to be removed from them to be safe. That’s the bad news for you here. If we’re right, you may have some hard choices to make at some point, for Jaime’s sake.” He nodded, but didn’t comment. After all, he wasn’t sure yet. This was just a theory. “Some of them wind up behind bars, sometimes for murdering their own children. Most of them go undetected, and you just have to hope the child survives, physically and psychologically. Some cases are less extreme. I thought that about Zoe at first, but I’m more concerned now. If Jaime had drowned, she could have played the grieving parent. It’s always about playing a role, star mother mostly. What they want is praise and attention heaped on them. They appear to be perfect, but they’re severely damaged. The old saying ‘too good to be true’ seems to apply here. I’ll lend you the book I mentioned, if you want to read it.”

  “I want to,” he said with a look of determination. “Christ, Mom, I hope you’re wrong about this.”

  “So do I, Austin. But I don’t think I am. I’ll drop it off at your office. Don’t let her see it,” Constance said wisely.

  “I won’t. I promise.” Austin looked frightened and his mother’s heart ached for him.

  “You know, the poisons under your kitchen sink were a perfect example. She left them there so Jaime could get in to them, and if she had, they would have killed her. And she did it after bragging about being the safety warden. Not exactly.” He shuddered as he thought about it and remembered Zoe saying that they had to respect Jaime, and teach her boundaries, and leave the poisons in plain sight so she could learn not to touch them, as a two-year-old. It was crazy, and he’d had to move them himself. And there was the gate she had taken off the stairs after he’d set it up. There were so many examples he couldn’t even begin to remember them all.

  Austin looked even more sober when he hugged his mother and left her after lunch.

  She went home afterward, put the book in a manila envelope, and dropped it off at his office an hour later. He read the description on the jacket flap when he got it, and it was even worse than his mother had described. Munchausen by proxy was terrifying, and if Zoe was suffering from it, he had to figure out what to do, now. He couldn’t wait till a tragedy happened.

  Chapter 13

  Austin read the book his mother gave him during his lunch hour the next day and on his way to and from work every day. He hid it in his locked briefcase at home, and only read it when Zoe was out or asleep. Too much of it already sounded familiar and painfully apt, and so much like Zoe, even the reasons for it. She had been starved for attention and affection for years during her youth and childhood and now she wanted to shine as a mom, as a savior and protector. He hadn’t come to any conclusions yet, but there was a huge question in his mind now. Was Zoe hurting Jaime intentionally, or just letting it happen in order to draw attention to herself once Jaime was injured? She claimed to be so diligent and careful, but he had evidence now that she wasn’t, like the incident in Florida. She played innocent every time, and was so convincing about it. Maybe there was a part of her he didn’t know. And if so, how dangerous was she to Jaime?

  He was reading the book on Saturday, while Zoe and Jaime were at the playground, when a call came in from a doctor’s office, with a message for Zoe, confirming an appointment for Jaime. It caught his attention and when he asked what kind of doctor it was, the woman on the phone said he was an orthopedic surgeon. The appointment was for Tuesday, and they had managed to squeeze her in, in response to an urgent request from Zoe.

  He didn’t beat around the bush and asked Zoe about it immediately when they came home for lunch.

  “What’s this about? Why is Jaime seeing an orthopedic surgeon? And why wasn’t I told about it? That sounds pretty major.”

  “It’s not major yet,” Zoe said calmly. “And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry you. I want him to check out Jaime’s spine,” she said when they were out of earshot of Jaime, while she ate her lunch at the kitchen table. At least she had returned from the park unharmed. He was grateful for that now. A day without injuries.

  “Why would you want him to check out her spine?” Austin asked her.

  “For scoliosis,” she said simply.

  “What’s that?”

  “Curvature of the spine. I’ve noticed hers is a little off. And I want to get on it early if she has a problem.”

  “Did you talk to Cathy about it? Does she think she has it?”

  “It’s not her area of expertise. I want to see the orthopedic guy first.” Austin didn’t comment, but checked it out online and saw that scoliosis was sometimes repaired surgically, by inserting metal rods along the spine to prevent it from curving further. He felt sick as he read it. He had never noticed anything unusual about her spine, and he saw Jaime in the bath all the time. He felt panicked that Zoe was even taking her to the doctor, and called Cathy about it on Monday and told her about Zoe’s concern and the appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. She brushed it off.

  “You know how she gets, she panics about something, like leukemia. The orthopod will tell her Jaime is fine and that will be the end of it.” She didn’t sound worried at all.

  “What if it isn’t? What if she talks him into putting rods into Jaime’s spine?” Cathy almost laughed at the suggestion.

  “He won’t, unless he’s a total charlatan. Jaime’s spine is fine.”

  He didn’t want to tell Cathy that he was having grave concerns about his wife. But the fact that she was trying to drum up a new illness for Jaime that would require excruciating surgery terrified him again. This was deadly serious.

  The case studies in the book his mother had given him were endless and horrifying. Some were very extreme, mothers who had killed their children and gone to prison for it. Other cases were harder to discern and more closely resembled the incidents that Jaime had experienced, which had seemed normal or understandable at the time, but no longer did, because of the sheer number of them. His mother had been suspicious of Jaime’s injuries for several years. And what if she was right? The thought of it brought tears to his eyes and anguish to his heart. He still loved Zoe, but he was beginning to question how well he knew her or if he knew her at all.

  * * *

  —

  On Tuesday night, when Austin got home, he questioned Zoe about Jaime’s appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. He had been reading about mothers with Munchausen by proxy who had caused their children to have serious surgeries, sometimes with death as the result. And Zoe exploring spinal surgery to insert steel rods into his daughter’s back had him panicked.

  “What did he say?” Austin asked
in a strangled voice when he found Zoe in the kitchen.

  “He said he wants to see her again in six months. We’ll see how it goes and what he thinks then,” she said calmly. As far as Austin was concerned, it was a reprieve, and at least he didn’t have to confront her about it now, so he nodded and said nothing. The tension between them since Jaime nearly drowned in Florida had been palpable, but in spite of that, he was trying to act as though nothing was wrong, at least until he finished the book his mother had given him, and he had further thoughts on the subject. For the moment he was still confused, or hoped he was. But it was hard to feel close to her when he was so worried. He blamed how distracted he was on problems at work, and she seemed to believe him, and didn’t question him about it. She was having problems of her own at the shelter, after the vacation. They kept her busy all week.

  He finished reading the book on Munchausen by proxy on Wednesday on his way to work, and called Cathy on her cellphone as soon as he got to his office.

  “I know this probably sounds crazy to you, but I’d like to come and see you, confidentially. I don’t want Zoe to know about it. I don’t want to put you in an awkward position, but there are some things I’m concerned about and want to discuss with you.” He didn’t mean to sound mysterious but he didn’t want to tell her on the phone. He wanted to see her face-to-face.

  “Is it about what happened in Florida?” Zoe had already called her and told her her version of the story and that she felt terrible about it, and that Austin was furious with her. “Accidents can happen. You only have to take your eyes off a child Jaime’s age for a split second, and they can wind up at the bottom of a pool and drown.”

  “She almost did,” he said miserably. “But it isn’t about that, not entirely. But just for your information, Zoe was talking to a group of women and had her back to the pool. She didn’t have her eyes on Jaime, and Jaime was racing around the wet concrete when she slipped, without her floaties on. Zoe had no idea where she was or what she was doing, for a lot longer than a split second. But I want to discuss a broader subject with you, in confidence. I’m sorry if that’s awkward for you.”