LAURA got busy getting her house in order. She moved from the Hayes’s rental home to her own place on North Heritage Street, within walking distance of just about everything in downtown Kinston. The building was a renovated warehouse with shops and a beauty salon. Most important for a single woman, her second-floor apartment was very secure—a key was needed to enter the building and a remote to enter the garage.
She set up a bedroom for the boys. Once Gentle moved out of his crib, he used a white wood toddler bed, and little Grant slept in one that looked like a sporty blue car. On the table between them was a photograph of Laura and Grant. She put that there, she said, because she wanted the boys to know they were loved by both Mommy and Daddy. Toys tucked around every room of the apartment gave the entire space a whimsical air. Every week before the boys visited, Laura went to a toy-rental store to make sure little Grant and Gentle always had something new for their play.
Laura got a job at HealtHabit Natural Foods, a health food store on North Queen Street, and started taking classes at the community college, studying early childhood development. Ultimately, she wanted either to be a teacher or to open a holistic day care center with organic food and classes for the kids. Then she told Heidi she was ready to do battle for full custody of her kids.
In one of their regular Tuesday night conversations, Heidi Schumacher assured Laura, “I will be there for you if you chose to fight. You’ll be fighting all your life for them. Do you want to be a lioness or a lamb?”
“I’m going to be a lioness and I’m going to fight every step of the way,” Laura told her friend.
Heidi, who was in the process of obtaining her master’s degree in criminal justice, knew the value of documentation and told Laura, “Go get a tape recorder immediately and record every conversation with Grant. And keep a log of any contact you have with Grant and with the boys—write down the food you give them so he can’t claim you fed them something that made them sick.”
“Yeah, and when I feed them and when I change their diapers,” Laura agreed.
“Every little thing you do with those boys.”
“I’m going to get them back, no matter how long it takes.”
“Good for you,” Heidi encouraged.
Because Laura feared that Grant had hacked into her e-mail account, she and Heidi set up a secret communication link through an address known only to the two of them. Laura used it for safe storage, forwarding any information relevant to the custody case, whether it was e-mails between her and Grant or messages from her attorney, the psychologist or anyone else involved in her fight for her kids.
Laura started attending Grace Fellowship Church on a regular basis. She also went to “house church,” a smaller gathering in other people’s homes to study and worship.
By late summer, she’d added a Monday night one-on-one Bible study with Barbara Patty, an older church member who’d become a mentor to her. At one of their first get-togethers, Barbara said, “Laura, I don’t know how you take your babies back every Sunday night and leave them for the week. I don’t know how you do it as a mother. I don’t understand. I’m not sure that I might not take my children and leave.”
“Oh,” Laura said, “if I did, he’d kill us.”
It was a reflection of Laura’s new assessment of Grant also seen on July 4 in a message to Alison Gunson, a woman in England who had posted about a sociopath-victims support group on Facebook. “I recently got OUT of a relationship with one but we have two children together,” Laura wrote, asking if Alison knew of any resources to help her get him diagnosed. “My kids are at risk here and I need all the help I can get.”
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ON August 11, 2010, Laura started her phone call log to record her observations and make note of patterns as well as to record anything negative or abnormal. “Prior to starting this log, I have observed several things when talking to my boys via Grant’s cell phone. . . . Most times, the volume in the house is very loud, making it hard to hear either Gentle or Grant. This is due to the TV, restaurant noises, or Grant’s music. When Amanda answers, it is usually quiet.”
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THAT summer, Sha was still living in her mother’s New York City apartment. At Amanda’s request, she packed up everything belonging to her mother and Grant. Amanda flew up to New York to meet the movers who would load everything into a U-Haul she’d rented up there. One of the pieces of furniture on board was an English castle antique that Amanda had inherited from her deceased husband, Nicky Smith. It was an elaborate specimen with a green granite–topped wet bar, flanked by two cabinets and drawers. A large decorative topper made the piece taller than the height of a typical contemporary ceiling.
Amanda and Sha drove the truck down to North Carolina. After a night’s sleep at the apartment, they and Grant unloaded the contents at a storage facility in Raleigh.
During that visit, Laura’s and Grant’s parents gathered at the apartment to celebrate Gentle’s first birthday. Apparently, something Sha did set Laura off. She later called the girl and said, “Stop raising my children. They have a mother and father and it’s not your job to raise them.”
Amanda was furious at Laura. She told her, “Never call my daughter again.”
The conflict between Laura and Amanda didn’t end there. When Laura was concerned that Gentle might have croup, she sent Grant an e-mail containing information she had found online. Laura was careful to couch her words with an abundant use of “if” and “if necessary.”
Nonetheless, the message prompted a strong reaction in Amanda, who called Laura and said, “You are psycho-crazy. You don’t have anything better to do with your time than research crap on the Internet.” She went on to tell Laura that the kids “didn’t have a virus, they had a cold.” She accused Laura of always bringing the kids back home ill because she took them to the water park and let them stay wet all day long. When Amanda hung up on Laura, Laura called her back and told her what she did was inappropriate. “You are still new to the situation.”
Amanda shot back, “I am responsible for your kids now because you are psycho-crazy.”
Laura was “shaken by Amanda’s call.” She was certain that Grant had painted her as wacko and had convinced Amanda that she needed to help him protect the kids from their mother.
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FOR some inexplicable reason and despite the fact that the judge designated Dr. Calloway for the evaluation, Grant and Amanda had first contacted Dr. Kristen Winns, a female psychologist in Raleigh, for a custody consultation. Little Grant came along on the visit and Dr. Winns was alarmed at how Grant was willing to rage about the boy’s mother with him sitting right there listening to every word spoken.
In August, Grant, using Amanda’s money, finally made the first down payment of five thousand dollars to Dr. Ginger Calloway. First, she spoke with the two attorneys, who informed her of the questions their clients hoped would be addressed through the process.
On Grant’s side, there were questions about Laura’s psychological state—he stated that she was either mentally unstable or mentally ill. He also claimed that she had a negative impact on the children and was attempting to alienate them from their father.
From Laura’s attorney, Calloway received questions about Grant’s credibility and his manipulative behavior. Concerns were also raised about the numerous threats he’d made about taking the children from their mother.
The next step, on August 26, was a meeting with both Grant and Laura together to determine their issues and evaluate their interactions with one another. In that session, Grant said that he and Amanda wanted full custody and stated that Laura should have supervised visitation only. Laura, on the other hand, said that she thought both parents needed to be involved with the children in an established parenting-access plan.
Grant said, “I think Laura will go away as soon as she sees there is no payday. This is all an act.”
During that initial appointment, Calloway noted that Laura was quick to criticize Grant with “barbed or sharp comments.”
On September 9, Laura returned to Calloway’s office for a further interview and psychological testing. When asked about an early, very short-term breakup in November of 2008, she said that she’d left Grant and gone to her brother’s home in Youngsville, North Carolina, because Grant had insisted on anal sex. On another occasion, she said that Grant beat her up and threw her out. From Laura’s testing, Calloway concluded: “Laura engaged in a considerable amount of denial. In short, she was highly defensive, making interpretation of her MMPI”—Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a standard psychological assessment tool—“difficult.” However, she noted, “this was not true with the Rorschach. On the later measure, she was highly engaged, provided ample number of responses for interpretation and provided a rich, elaborate record.”
On the fifteenth, Calloway met with Grant. When she asked him about the short separation in November of 2008, he contradicted Laura’s versions of the events, saying that he kicked Laura out because she was soliciting men through the Internet for pay. From the testing, Calloway saw that “Grant was extremely negative, at times paranoid, about Laura, her character and her alleged actions.” She met with him again on September 28. Grant referred to every day with Laura as negative and described her as controlling and accused her of flip-flopping on stories. He claimed that he’d reported Laura to the FBI for online prostitution because he was afraid that, if she were prosecuted, his bank account would be affected.
After those meetings, both parties were given forms to fill out about themselves and their children and were requested to fill out a lengthy questionnaire detailing their parenting histories.
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EARLIER that month, on September 10, when the boys came to her home for the weekend, Laura noticed that little Grant was in tears and fretful. She worried about the return of a bladder infection he’d had previously and had him tested, but no bacteria was present. She wondered what could be going on with the little guy. “I’m afraid to approach the subject with Grant and Amanda. They act as if I don’t exist. . . . It is so discouraging to deal with them with my children. I encourage the boys to love their Dad and Amanda. I wish I had a picture of both of them for the boys’ room. It would be less of an oddity than Mama and Daddy’s picture.”
During the month of September, Laura did a lot of fretting in her phone log about difficulties with talking to her boys on the phone when they were at Grant’s apartment. “Amanda was teaching the boys new words like ‘iguana.’ It was good to hear the interaction,” but, she said it pulled the children’s focus away from talking with her. She noted that video chats would be a better way to capture and sustain their attention. On another day, she complained that the boys were eating dinner when she called at her agreed time. She wished that Grant and Amanda would help arrange more compatible times for the calls. “Even if I try to speak to them, I get zero response.” On another occasion, she was trying to talk to the boys but could clearly hear Sha in the background playing with them making “I’m gonna getcha” taunts. She was happy that the boys were having a good time but she wished “that Grant III would value and encourage my times with the boys. . . . He’s gotten Amanda so worked up about me that now instead of giving me reports on the kids, she looks at me with disdain.”
The following weekend was a remarkable improvement. Laura noted in her journal that “Amanda and I were able to talk joyfully about Grant IV and Gentle.”
But the skies darkened again on Friday, September 24. After the exchange of the kids, Grant sent Laura a text saying that he would “pick the boys up tomorrow, Saturday, September 25, at 2:01 P.M.”
Laura didn’t know what to do. No matter how she handled the demand, it would be wrong. She could anger Grant and his family by saying no or she could violate the court order by saying yes, and thus eroding the whole structure that had been put in place. Unable to decide, she simply did not respond at all.
The afternoon Grant had said he would get the boys, Laura looked down at the McDonald’s restaurant behind her apartment building and saw Grant sitting there in his car at 1:18. She called him and said that while she appreciated that he was waiting until the time he’d given her, she was not going to violate the court order.
Grant told her that the lawyers had already worked the situation out. The court order said that if he was in Kinston, he could pick the boys up there.
Laura reviewed the court order. There was no mention at all about Kinston being an alternate exchange point. She then checked her e-mail and voice mail messages to make sure there was nothing from her attorney. She called Grant back and told him that, while she understood his logic, she would be bringing the boys to Wilson on Sunday. He hung up on her.
Around four that afternoon, Grant’s mother, Patsy Hayes, called, but her number came up on Laura’s cell as an “unavailable number,” so she didn’t answer it. She did listen to the voice message from Patsy, pleading with her to bring the boys to her house. She even invited Laura to stay for dinner with them.
But Laura declined, and on Sunday, she took the boys to Sheetz as usual. She was greeted there by Amanda and Sha. Amanda was “visibly angry” and shaking. Her tone was curt. Defeated, Laura wrote in her journal. “This weekend was terrible as far as Grant III is concerned. So I lose until we get to court, I hope.”