In early 1986, shaken by Liz’s death, Patty tried to contact her old friend, Pat Finn. When she dialed her number, she discovered that the phone was disconnected. In the silence of their falling-out, Patty was unaware that the Finns had moved to a new home in Berlin. She went to the DOD office, and asked for and received Pat’s new telephone number.
When she called, Pat snapped, “How did you get my number?”
Patty was infuriated by the question and said, “Don’t worry, I will never call you again.” She slammed down the phone. It was the last time Pat and Patty ever spoke.
On June 6, 1986, Mike arrived in Rhode Island at Jim and Margaret Blair’s home. He left Martha there and traveled to Texas to leave Margaret with George’s family. These visits were explained to be temporary and were intended to allow Mike and Patty to get settled in a home in Durham, North Carolina.
Before Mike left Rhode Island for Texas, however, he made a proposition to the Blairs. Martha was too much for him to handle because of her frequent temper tantrums. He asked if they would keep her on a permanent basis.
Margaret and Jim were delighted at the thought of keeping Martha. But what about Margaret? The girls were so close. The only immediate family they had was each other.
Michael would not entertain the possibility of both girls staying in Rhode Island. With heavy hearts, the Blairs declined his offer. They believed it was too important for the girls to remain together.
In July, Margaret Blair received a phone call from the Ratliff family in Bay City. George Ratliff, Sr., had a heart attack. Could she please come to Texas and pick up her niece? Margaret flew down and brought her namesake home.
The girls had a carefree summer making cookies, planting in the garden and picking up seashells on the seashore. One night, they lay out on the cool grass and stared up at the black sky watching as meteors showered to earth.
On bad weather days, their older cousins, Jodie and Damon, entertained them with puppet shows at the foot of the double bed. A big favorite was the reenactment of the story of Pinocchio. And each evening before they climbed into bed, the two little girls said their night prayers: “God bless Mommy and Daddy in Heaven.”
Margaret and Martha enjoyed their visit, but beneath the pleasures they experienced flowed a dark stream of sorrow. Great loss walked with them all their lives—loss that at this age they could feel, but could not comprehend. Often they asked, “My mommy’s dead. My daddy’s dead. When are you going to die, too?”
After their Rhode Island summer, Margaret Blair drove the girls down to Durham and settled them into their new home with Michael, Patty, Todd and Clayton. One day during her stay there, Margaret heard screaming in the backyard and came running. It was so loud, she was certain it could be heard all over the neighborhood. When she reached the kitchen, she encountered a placid Patty.
Margaret asked her what was going on. Patty simply said, “Oh, that’s just Michael.”
Looking out the window, Margaret saw Mike’s continued rant. The cause of his distress was a bicycle—Clayton had left his bike on the ground behind his father’s car.
Worry about the safety of the girls surged through Margaret. She told herself she was overreacting. Patty was very nurturing and loving with her boys. And she was just as nurturing and loving with the girls. It was Patty who mattered to Liz. She stuffed her worries down deep in the back of her mind.
Michael and Patty continued their complaints about how difficult Martha was to raise. They told Mike’s sister, Ann, that Martha had tantrums and was manipulative.
Ann was puzzled. A 3-year-old manipulative? What could Martha possibly do? When Ann asked Mike and Patty, they gave her an example.
When the family went out shopping, they said, Martha would stand stock-still all of a sudden, and wail, “Oh, my mommy died,” and start crying. Patty insisted that she did this just to garner the attention of the other shoppers. Another demonstration that Martha was a grand manipulator, they said, was when she called all sorts of women “Mommy.”
Ann, on the other hand, thought this kind of behavior was to be expected from a little girl who in three short years had lost her mother, her father and her nanny. When Mike and Patty asked if she would take Martha, Ann readily agreed. She was so excited about it, she told all her friends. And then, Michael changed his mind.
Some wondered why the Petersons were not more concerned about Clayton’s behavior. He spent all his spare time up in the rafters of the garage tinkering with wires and mechanical objects. Once on a family trip to Hilton Head, he dismantled a Jacuzzi, then could not put it back together. Mike had to pay for a replacement.
A block away from the Peterson home was the house of Fred and Kathleen Atwater. Their daughter, Caitlin, was wedged between the two Ratliff sisters in age. The three girls met at a mutual friend’s birthday party. After that, they often played together with Barbie dolls at each other’s houses.
One day in 1988, Michael came home to discover two one-way flight tickets to Germany in the mailbox. The passengers named on the itinerary were Margaret and Martha Ratliff.
Michael was furious. He confronted Patty. She told him that the Geislings, a wealthy older couple who had never been able to have children of their own, wanted to adopt the two girls.
At first, Michael refused to let them go. Patty persisted and eventually convinced him to allow the girls to go for a year and see if it worked out. Margaret and Martha were only told that they were going for a visit.
The 6- and 7-year-olds boarded the plane and flew off by themselves. The Geislings spoke very little English, making the transition more difficult. After a week, the girls were told to call them Mom and Dad. Margaret was confused.
No sooner had she accepted the reality of this change in her life than the rug was pulled out from under her feet again. The couple changed their mind about the adoption. The girls flew back to North Carolina. They cried all the way back across the Atlantic Ocean.
Michael was now working with a literary agent. Over a two-year period, the two men labored over changes to the manuscript about the Vietnam War that Michael began writing when he was stationed in Japan. They pounded and polished every chapter, every page, every word to prepare it for the marketplace.
It was sold to Simon & Schuster for an advance of $600,000. A Time of War was released in hardcover in 1990. Michael Peterson had made it.
The dedication in his masterpiece read:
To Patty, who suffered all my wounds.
To Clayton and Todd, whose suffering, I pray, is only in my nightmares.
To the dead.
And to those whose suffering cannot be relieved.
Although he claimed to love Martha and Margaret as if they were his own, he neglected to mention them.
A Time of War was described as a cross between Tom Clancy and Graham Greene. The book was set in the midst of war in Vietnam and filled with high-level espionage, acts of personal bravery and both heterosexual and homosexual escapades. Noted authors praised it with enthusiasm. It was heady stuff for any writer and it propelled Michael onto the New York Times Best Seller List.
When the book was released in a paperback edition, Publishers Weekly added their praise, but with a caveat: “Peterson adroitly evokes embassy intrigue and his battle scenes are immediate and compelling. Some readers may be taken aback by the powerful, troubled current of sexuality, however.”
One evening soon after Margaret and Martha had returned from their 1990 summer trip to Rhode Island, Margaret tattled on Martha. She told Michael that her younger sister did not say her good-night prayers. To him, the child sounded self-righteous. He thought her attitude was unhealthy and unwholesome. And Michael knew who to blame.
He fired off an angry letter to Margaret Blair on July 18, 1990. “The girls had a terrific time with you, and I thank you very much. My only concern is with the heavy dose of religion they—Margaret in particular—brought back. It borders slightly on fundamentalist fanaticism that Liz was utterly opposed to.”
He informed her that Patty accepted a job offer to teach at the same school in Germany again. He and all four children were going back with her to live together as a family. He then lashed out at Margaret for wanting to adopt the two girls. It was, he said, out of the question. “They absolutely need me.”
He rejected the importance of the girls’ bond with the Blair family. “Believe me, if I thought that it would be better for Martha and Margaret to live with you, or that you could better raise them, then I would step aside, but deep in my heart I believe that I am the best person to mould and guide them—and love them too.”
The Peterson clan moved back to Germany. It was a brief and bitter family experiment. Soon, Michael returned to Durham with Martha and Margaret. He left his two boys with their mother in Germany.
At the end of the school year in 1991, Patty came back to the States with her boys. She drove Margaret and Martha up to Rhode Island and told the Blairs they could adopt the girls. She said that she and Michael were separating, and Margaret and Martha needed a stable home environment. By this time, Michael had moved in with Kathleen Atwater and her daughter, Caitlin.
Margaret Blair had heard about their nanny, Barbara, from Liz and from her mother. Now, she heard from Barbara for the first time. Barbara was delighted about the impending adoption. She asked if she could send the girls mementoes and a tape of a German song she used to sing to them.
Margaret was pleased with Barbara’s continued interest in the girls and encouraged it. Throughout the summer, Barbara called the girls, sent them short notes and arranged for the delivery of little posies to them from a flower shop.
One day in late August, Margaret Blair answered the phone. A hostile Mike Peterson was on the other end. He told her that he had no idea that Patty left the girls to be adopted. He said it was his decision—only his—and totally up to him.
He was coming to Rhode Island. He would take the Blairs out to dinner and announce his decision on whether or not they could keep the girls. Kathleen and Caitlin made the trip north with him and they stayed at the Biltmore in Providence.
Michael changed his story, telling Margaret and Jim that he would leave the decision up to the two girls. The Blairs knew how Margaret felt. She had complained to them that she had no privacy in the Peterson home—all of her mail was opened by Michael.
Michael, Kathleen and Caitlin sat down with Margaret and Martha to discuss the future. When Margaret suggested that she might want to live with her aunt and uncle, Michael said: “I leave this choice up to you. But I’m telling you that your mother never—never—wanted you to live with your Aunt Margaret. Never. But I’m leaving the decision up to you.”
With that level of emotional pressure, 10-year-old Margaret and 9-year-old Martha succumbed. They said they wanted to live in Durham, but it looked as if they had been out-manipulated by Mike Peterson. From that day forward, Mike discouraged any visits to Rhode Island.
On September 11, 1991, Patty Peterson wrote a letter expressing her dismay to Margaret and Jim Blair. “Since learning of the removal of Margaret and Martha from your home, one week after the fact, I have been in a state of profound shock and physical unwellness. I offer to you both deeply felt apology, as I came to you in good faith. I sorrow that you and your children received the girls into your family with open hearts, and then were subject to their arbitrary departure.”
She went on to emote her disdain for the actions of her estranged husband: “The present situation is anathema to my very soul.” She reiterated her willingness for the Blairs to adopt the girls and concluded the letter on a solemn note: “I do not believe, however, that it was Elizabeth’s will that her daughters be subject to frequent dislocation nor that the family of her friend and two sons be destroyed.”
Now, Patty and Mike Peterson were separated. Kathleen Hunt Atwater was divorced from her husband, Fred. The three girls in the two households formed the link that launched the intriguing, successful novelist and the ambitious and beautiful dark-blonde engineer with gray-green eyes into orbit together. The stage was set for romance, extravagance and tragedy.