Life for the newlyweds was anything but routine. Instead of having time to get to know one another, they had the responsibilities and stresses of a striving young couple married for years.
Caring for a newborn puts demands on any relationship. In addition to little Shane, active 4-year-old Tristan needed a lot of attention, too. Mike worked on bonding with his stepson—just the two of them going to McDonald’s or playing together. By all accounts, that was going well. Tristan usually called his stepfather “Mikey,” but as time went by, he called him “Daddy” more and more.
Mike was a loving and affectionate father to Shane. He was always willing to hold him and care for him when they were home together. Often, though, he was away. His commute to work chewed up a lot of his day, and his hours were erratic, with night duty assignments and training schedules on top of his regular work.
Adding to the stress were the cramped quarters they called home. The tiny one-bedroom apartment was too small for comfort with four occupants. A door from the clinic waiting room led into the apartment. There was no real kitchen—just a sink, a toaster oven, a couple of hotplates and a microwave. In order to reach the bathroom, they had to go out the back door and in another door to the kennel area. It was a full bath with a commode, sink, shower and tub that, in addition to being used by the family, was where dogs were bathed.
Fortunately, Tristan often stayed with his grandparents, where he had his own bedroom. That eased the space issue to some degree, but it was still a difficult situation.
The biggest threat to the family’s peace and tranquility, however, was the rush to get the clinic opened for business. A newlywed 26-year-old woman with a newborn rarely embarked on an undertaking as ambitious as this one. With all the details running through Wendi’s head every minute of every day, she was excited and excitable, stressed and peevish. It led to a lot of bickering between her and her husband. Her mother’s daily negative comments about Mike inflamed the situation.
Wendi complained to her brother Marshall about the incessant spats. He didn’t want to get in the middle of it and said, “Y’all are married. That’s your business.”
When Wendi didn’t take the hint that Marshall didn’t want to talk about her marital problems, he borrowed words from his mother’s mouth, saying, “He’s lazy. He won’t get out there and work. He just grabs the baby up as an excuse.”
“Well, I know, but I love him.”
Marshall sighed. “As I said, that’s your business.”
Finally in October the doors to Advanced Animal Care opened for business. Terrell Sheen, with an obvious expression of pride toward his protégée, stood by Wendi’s side in the photograph in the newspaper ad that announced the new veterinary clinic.
The white one-story box of a building stood alone in a potholed parking lot with patchy, uneven paving. Towering above it, a billboard proclaimed the grand opening of the practice. A small slab of cement sat before the front door. It was just large enough for the chair that sat to the right of the entrance.
Inside, a small but comfortable waiting area with a receptionist counter greeted the new clients. One wall was lined with shelves containing pet care products. An array of leashes for sale hung beside them. Another wall had two doors. One led to the examination rooms and a public bathroom, another to the apartment.
The arrival of patients made the clinic complete. Word-of-mouth, advertising and the convenient, visible location all helped bring them in to Wendi for treatment. One of the first was Charlie Fleming, Wendi’s high school Ag teacher. Charlie wanted to pay when Wendi took care of his cat, but she refused his money. She owed him a debt of gratitude for his encouragement and instruction, and she wanted to honor the special place he held in her life.
Diane Slater was another new patient. Her cat Hansel had a urinary tract infection. She was very happy with the way Wendi cared for Hansel. She told the San Angelo Standard-Times: “I just got good vibes from her. She talks to you. She doesn’t rush you out of there.” Diane left smiling with medication, special food and an instant fondness for the new veterinarian in town.
With the business open, Judy Davidson spent her days at the clinic. She volunteered her services as a receptionist and secretary. Since she was receiving Social Security disability payments each month because of her lupus, she could not get a paycheck for the job she did. She placed supply orders and made it clear to vendors that she could see through their sales games and was not going to purchase anything that was not a necessity.
She expected her son-in-law to assist Wendi in the business. It was irrelevant to her that he had a job of his own with a long road trip to go with it. She didn’t like it when he slept late—it didn’t matter to her that he might have worked all through the night. In her mind, he was supposed to be up and at it each morning when the doors opened. She never bothered to learn anything about his schedule or make accommodations for it.
She magnified every empty beer bottle into a serious drinking problem and credited Mike with every one of them—never Wendi. She resented his stock car racing and hated it when Wendi went with him to a race. She thought it was a dangerous hobby that no responsible husband and father would have. And every day, Judy told her daughter about how much she loathed Mike, couldn’t stand him, hated him. It was unrelenting.
Marshall was visiting his parents one weekend when his normally non-confrontational brother-in-law got into an argument with Judy. After Judy stormed off, Mike said, “She’s not going to tell me what to do. It’s my marriage and I’ll do whatever I want.”
“Y’all just need to get along,” Marshall urged.
“That’s fine, but she wants me to do stuff, and it’s my marriage and I’m going to run it the way I want to run it.”
“You’re right,” Marshall agreed.
The living quarters at the clinic were too small for the family of four. Judy offered her home—said that Wendi, Mike and the boys could live out there. But Judy’s hostility toward her son-in-law made that an untenable solution.
Hillary Langley, Mike’s old girlfriend, was disappointed when she learned of Mike’s marriage. She’d still hoped that they would get back together someday. Mike drove the 75 miles to Tuscola to visit her family in October.
Frank was a home builder and Mike sought his advice on buying or building a home for his new family. While he was in Tuscola, Mike took a spin in Frank’s new Corvette. Frank and Janis were a bit concerned after the visit. Mike did talk about Shane, and flashed around baby pictures, but, although a newlywed, he barely mentioned his wife. They worried that things were not going well for him. It was the last time they ever saw him.
Mike and Wendi went out with real estate agent Joe Stephens in search of a place out in the country with enough land to raise horses and other large animals. Joe showed them a five-acre tract with a manufactured home in Grape Creek. After Mike and Wendi saw it, Judy and Lloyd contacted Joe, and went out to view it, too. They definitely wanted Wendi to buy a home near theirs, and were pleased with the location. But to Joe, it seemed that that was all they found pleasing. In minutes, he picked up on their negative attitude toward their son-in-law.
Mike and Wendi, though, weren’t convinced that it was the right place for them. Joe took them out to another spread twenty miles north of town. It was larger and more rugged—definitely rattlesnake country. The house on the land was site-built, but it was one hundred years old and its clumsy, amateurish construction was not up to contemporary standards. The young couple liked it just the same.
Joe thought the two were happy together. Mike often commented on how much he liked the San Angelo area and the people who lived there. Joe figured he must love it—and Wendi—a lot, since he was willing to commute all the way to Abilene to be here with her.
Even though they were drawn to that property, Mike and Wendi decided the timing wasn’t right. If they bought now, Wendi would be stuck with handling the move with two young children on her own. Mike was scheduled for another deployment on January 24. They told Joe they’d get back with him when Mike returned from overseas.
For now, the living and working situation continued. When Mike wasn’t in Abilene, he’d make lunch for Wendi. Many times he offered to fix something for his mother-in-law, too, but she always turned him down. She didn’t want “to eat anything that man prepared.”
In a phone call to Maine family friend Shirley Harvey that November, Mike said, “I think my mother-in-law is trying to kill me.” Shirley did not take his comment literally.
Tristan was around the clinic all day, every day, too. He watched movies and played with toys in the apartment, sat in his grandmother’s lap at the reception desk and played games with her in between clients. When Jamie Crouch started working part-time on weekdays, she pitched in with the kids, too.
Some days, Lloyd and Judy cared for both of their grandchildren overnight to give the couple time for an evening out. Other times, Tristan went with his grandparents and Jamie kept Shane.
Despite Judy’s complaints about Mike’s drinking, others didn’t see it. Wendi and Mike often visited Jessie Mae and Emmett Eggemeyer, Judy’s mother and stepfather. Emmett said that on the many occasions they visited, he’d seen Mike drink only a beer or two, and never saw him intoxicated. Around Christmas of 2004, Wendi laughed and said, “If I ever learned that Mike was unfaithful, I’d have him on the table at the clinic.” Emmett thought she was only joking about euthanizing her husband. Soon, it wouldn’t be funny at all.
While in the Air Force, Mike participated in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He landed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Uzbekistan. He took part in 515 sorties and was part of 232 peacekeeping missions, achieving a 99 percent departure reliability rating and accumulating 922 flying hours as a crew chief. He survived the perils of war. But he would not survive five months of marriage to Wendi Davidson.