Bitter Remains Page 5

  Events proceeded at a reckless speed after that. Grant contacted attorney Brad Hill in North Carolina and told him Laura had used his checking account in Kinston to pay for a subscription to a website called Sugar Daddies where she was prostituting herself and that he had contacted the FBI. Although Laura later admitted to some immature sexual posting on the Internet, calling it “prostitution” was an over-the-top characterization. According to Amanda, Hill told Grant that the courts would view any of Laura’s alleged solicitation on the Internet just as harshly as they would his cohabitation with Amanda.

  On April 1, Grant sent a message to fellow musician Nick Hagelin. “I’m marrying an actress from that movie Stepford Wives.” He invited him to come up to New York and take part in his weekly Sunday evening variety show at a Bleecker Street venue. Grant had high hopes for his future, writing, “All I need is someone to get signed and discovered there and my show blows up.”

  Amanda said that Grant started planning an elaborate wedding, and she said, “Can’t we just get married? Does it have to be something crazy?”

  Later that month, instead of bringing little Grant home to Laura as he’d promised, Grant took his almost-two-year-old son with him on a trip to Las Vegas, accompanied by Amanda, Sha and Paul Hutchins, a man he introduced as a former manager. Grant and Amanda were married in Vegas on April 10.

  Grant had always treated Sha, then twenty, as if she were a dumb kid who didn’t know what was going on. His new stepdaughter, however, was more aware than he knew. She made that clear in Vegas. “Grant, if you ever mistreat my mom,” she told him, “I will deal with you.”

  Laura was stunned when Grant sent her a photograph of his Las Vegas wedding along with a message that he and Laura had never really been married because he hadn’t signed the paperwork.

  She rummaged around in her papers and finally found their certificate of marriage. Laura stared dumbfounded at the piece of paper. She called Heidi and said, “I can’t believe it. He never signed the marriage certificate. I can’t believe it.” Without his signature, the document was not legally binding. She never had been Grant’s wife. She had two sons with him but no tie that binds.

  Laura’s sister, Jennifer Mae Cross, chatted online with her on April 29. She asked Laura how she was doing, adding, “G4 (little Grant) is beautiful.”

  Laura answered the question, “Terrible but wonderful, too!” Then she responded to the compliment about her son, “Thank you. His dad and I just broke up and he got married right away and little G is in New York with them and we are in the middle of this ugly custody battle. . . . His lady is a movie star. Sigh . . . LOL.”

  Jennifer sent her number to Laura so that they could continue the conversation on the telephone.

  —

  AT the end of April 2010, Grant, Amanda and little Grant came down to Kinston, North Carolina, driving overnight so that little Grant could sleep through the trip. Grant wanted to celebrate his son’s second birthday at his parents’ house. He told his mother that she could invite Laura if she promised “not to make a scene.” Laura was thrilled to see her oldest son at the party but disappointed that she was not allowed any one-on-one time with him outside of the home.

  Grant had filed an ex parte motion telling Judge Les Turner that Laura was an unfit mother. “Ex parte” refers to the fact that the other party—in this case, Laura—did not appear before the judge. Grant alleged that Laura purchased a Craigslist ad looking for someone to live with her at no cost. In arguing this point, Grant’s attorney inferred that Laura was willing to trade sex for housing. Grant also claimed that Laura was having trouble parenting the children and controlling the temper tantrums of the youngest child—which, he said, was why little Grant went to New York City with Grant. Without any opportunity to appear, object or fight for her boys, the court accepted him at his word at the time, awarding Grant full temporary emergency custody of the children.

  Amanda did not tell her daughter, Sha, about Grant’s disparagement of Laura’s parenting abilities. Instead, she explained that the custody change had come about because of Gentle’s need for kidney surgery.

  Amanda, Grant and little Grant returned to New York City for two weeks before leaving to move to North Carolina. Amanda paid cash for their Raleigh apartment deposit, furniture and a car.

  —

  ON June 15, 2010, Laura was served the emergency ex parte custody motion. Worst of all, when she received the document, law enforcement immediately removed Gentle from her car and turned him over to Grant. Amanda later said that Gentle cried his heart out on the drive back to Raleigh.

  Two days later, paperwork in hand, Laura met with attorney John Sargeant. When Laura finally got her day in court for a return hearing on June 25, Judge Beth Heath had to decide whether to keep the emergency order in effect or to put some other arrangement in place. Laura did not look very stable to the judge. She had no permanent place to live and didn’t have a job. Offsetting that was Laura’s allegation that Grant was a substance abuser.

  The attorneys met with the judge in chambers and reached an agreement. The children would remain with Grant during the week but would be with Laura on the weekends. They would make the exchange at a public place in Wilson—about halfway between their two residences.

  Grant had complained that Laura wanted to delay Gentle’s surgical procedure because she wanted a second opinion. Laura’s attorney, however, said that it was Grant who had pushed to get another doctor involved because he wanted to pursue a holistic cure that did not involve surgery. In the agreement, Gentle’s operation would go through as indicated by the original physician.

  Gentle’s medical situation was one of the reasons that Laura was willing to go along with Grant having the boys during the week, since Gentle’s medical care provider was in Cary, much closer to Grant’s Raleigh apartment. The other reason Laura agreed was the nature of their employment. Laura was about to start a job that required her to work during the week and, as a musician, most of Grant’s work was on the weekends. Since she’d only seen her son little Grant once since February 14 and hadn’t seen Gentle for more than a week, Laura viewed the agreement as a blessing.

  The judge also ordered a full psychological review of Grant, Laura and the boys because of the dueling charges about the issue of character and behavior. Additionally, Grant would be the one responsible for covering the upfront cost of the evaluation. The judge recommended a doctor named Ginger Calloway for this job.

  A handwritten consent agreement put everything in place. Provisions were made for telephone communication allowing for reasonable contact when the boys were with the other party, no more than twice a day and fifteen minutes or less in duration between the hours of ten A.M. and eight P.M. Other conditions were that neither party would get a passport for the children or remove them from the state of North Carolina while the order was in effect. After it was typed and signed by the judge on June 29, a copy was officially filed.

  Little Grant’s visitation with his mother began immediately. Laura and her friend Heidi Schumacher took him straight from the courthouse to Laura’s apartment. Gentle’s was delayed for a few weeks to give him time for surgery and recovery, but Laura was there at the hospital throughout the operation. She and Amanda had a positive interaction there. Amanda assured her, “Things will get better as time goes on.”

  “You still don’t know Grant,” Laura said. As far as Laura could see, Grant hadn’t changed “a single step in his game” and was running the same plays on Amanda that he had run previously on her.

  The meeting place established for the exchange of the children was the Sheetz gas station and convenience store near the intersection of Interstate 95 and US 264 in Wilson, about halfway between Raleigh and Kinston. Occasionally, Laura and Grant met up for the exchange at a Monkey Joe’s in Raleigh, a franchise for kids featuring inflatable slides, jumps and obstacle courses for the under-twelve set with a mini-
monkey zone for safe toddler play. The general manager there was Lauren Harris, a longtime friend of Grant’s, who never made little Grant and Gentle pay the seven-dollar entry fee. According to Lauren, Grant brought the boys into Monkey Joe’s nearly every day she worked. He played along with his children as if he were a kid, too.

  Laura filled her weekends with the boys with trips to the playground and to nature parks. They did arts and crafts projects together. One night of each visit was pizza night—together they’d build little pizzas and pop them in the oven.

  —

  GRANT had a lot of complaints about the new court order arrangement. In a Facebook message to his friend Crystal Wiggins, he wrote: “I’m very happy, stressed from the whole custody arrangement and what it is doing to my boys. Their mom is a woman scorned and, well, making life for me as difficult as possible. My wife is going to New York to clean out our place [and] put it on the market.”

  When Crystal responded with regret that things did not work out with his wife, Grant fired back: “My wife? I was never married to my kid’s mother. My wife now is awesome.” He continued grousing that the custody arrangement made it impossible for him to leave the state and his rent in New York had been paid up front for a year.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  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.”

  —

  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.”

  —

  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.

  —

  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 li
stening 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.”