LAURA Ackerson spent most of Tuesday, July 12, 2011, with Chevon Mathes. The friends and business partners met at Laura’s apartment to work on their game plan for the next day. Then they went out to shop for a car for Chevon and run other errands. They returned to get more work done, and Chevon left for home about four o’clock that afternoon.
Earlier, while Chevon was still there, Laura also chatted with Oksana Samarsky, the artist whom she was helping to assemble a portfolio. Oksana asked how the custody case was going, and Laura wrote, “It’s going. I joined a group online of ladies in a similar situation—people who had to deal with assholes. LOL. And my situation is so, so, so, so good comparatively.” The two talked about tentative plans for the next day, when Laura hoped to visit her boys in Raleigh. They wanted to get together to talk about using Oksana’s artwork on cell phone covers and T-shirts.
“It might still be up in the air,” Laura typed. “I don’t know if I’ll see you or not. I have to figure out how to see my kids first and see how that goes.”
Oksana understood, saying that depending on the time she might not be able to make it herself because her study group would be meeting that evening.
“I’ll get back to you when I know when,” Laura said.
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GRANT Hayes sent a response to Laura’s earlier message that night at 9:25: “If you want to try the midweek thing again, you can come up tomorrow. Let me know so I can make arrangements with Lauren [Harris, the manager at Monkey Joe’s]. I might not be able to stay the whole time because I have packing to do.”
Laura accepted his offer and asked how much time she’d have with them so that there would be no chance of an “overemotional goodbye.”
Grant blasted back that the decision to leave the last midweek visit was because the place was closing, not because of what he wanted. The kids, he said, were losing interest in the place anyway. He wrapped up by mocking her need for a prolonged good-bye.
Laura said the best thing would be to have a beginning and end time set in advance that included five to ten minutes for the transition. That, however, started another argument, which Laura brought to an end with a qualified apology, wrapping it up by writing: “It is the most frustrating thing I know of to deal with a parent partner who doesn’t view love in the same light that I do.”
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AT ten that night, Grant Hayes wrote to Mark Gierth, a music promoter and his friend from St. John, telling him that he and Amanda wouldn’t be down in the United States Virgin Islands until late August because of “a court date for child support and shit. Nobody is going to give a black guy custody over a white girl and North Carolina ain’t gonna let me share custody unless I stay here and I just can’t make a living here. I’m just gonna let Laura keep the boys.” His plans after that, he said, were to move to St. Thomas with his wife and baby girl. He then asked about the number of days per week he’d be needed to perform if he returned to St. John.
Mark wrote back indicating that he’d be flying down over the weekend himself and really wouldn’t know with any certainty until he was there.
Grant asked about a mutual acquaintance and whether or not she was still working in St. Thomas, because he was going to need to find a job for his wife, too.
Mark wrote, “I will need people . . . could fill gap till she finds something she really digs.”