Because You Loved Me. M. William Phelps
third day of Billy’s visit, Jeanne had explained to both kids that Billy needed to go back to Connecticut that Thursday, August 7. And she had told Chris and Nicole she wasn’t thrilled about Billy returning anytime soon. Jeanne wanted Nicole to start focusing once again on being a teenager; and wanted her to get back into the chorus at school, a role Nicole had always embraced and excelled in—that is, until Billy came along. Nicole was much too young to be thinking about spending the rest of her life with Billy, or any boy for that matter. She had consistently made honors in school. Jeanne and Chris didn’t want to see her potential (or life) wasted by getting wrapped up in a heated love affair at such a young age. They felt the upcoming school year was not only pivotal where her future was concerned, but would be one of the most difficult. With Billy now talking about marriage and living together, filling up space in her head, it put pressure on Nicole to stay focused on the relationship, instead of school. Jeanne was afraid school was going to become secondary to Nicole’s love—or, as many later said, “lust”—for Billy. They had been talking about moving into their own apartment. It was impossible for Jeanne to dismiss the relationship as puppy love. Billy had written a list of household items he and Nicole might need once they moved in together, and estimated the cost of each item. It seemed simplistic, even adolescent, on the surface, but showed, at least, how seriously he and Nicole were taking the relationship.
Then there was the letter Jeanne had received recently from Billy that was telling, in and of itself.
“First of all,” Billy wrote, “I’d like to thank you for giving birth to the most amazing and beautiful girl in the world.” He said he loved Nicole with “all my heart and have every intention of spending my life with her…. I will love her and…treat her with all the respect in the world.” He also mentioned that he and Nicole had been talking about moving to Connecticut and living with his mother and sisters. Nicole could transfer to Windham High School. It would all work out, Billy promised. Still, he wanted Jeanne’s support and blessing.
About six months after Nicole and Billy first met, then-fifteen-year-old Nicole wrote Jeanne a similar letter, explaining her feelings for Billy. The letter was a bit more blatant, persuasive and, quite honestly, sobering, detailing how seriously Nicole was taking her feelings for Billy. First, Nicole said she’d discussed the situation with Billy and agreed that it was time for her to be legally “emancipated” from Jeanne.
“Mom…I want to move in with Billy,” wrote Nicole. “I’m really not happy here…. Billy is the only person who makes me happy…. I’m sick of this house…family [and]…don’t want to live here anymore.”
It wasn’t the Nicole that Jeanne, Chris or even Drew knew. She was clearly being influenced by Billy, they believed, maybe even controlled.
As Nicole suspected, the letter didn’t sit well with Jeanne. She became “very angry” and started screaming, Nicole later explained. Weeks after, Nicole mentioned that she was thinking about opening up a joint bank account with Billy in Connecticut.
“Haven’t I taught you anything?” raged Jeanne when she found out.
Nicole walked away without responding. “She wasn’t very pleased with me. I thought she just didn’t understand me.”
After Jeanne explained to Nicole that Billy was going back to Connecticut “for good”—“Don’t ask me again!”—and Nicole wasn’t allowed to see him for a while, Jeanne told her there wasn’t to be any more discussion of the relationship. It was time to end it, or at least allow a cooling-off period. Nicole was Jeanne’s baby, her firstborn. Billy was overstepping his boundaries and coming between them.
For crying out loud, Jeanne told Chris, “I want my daughter back.”
CHAPTER 3
While they were at work during the day on August 6, Chris McGowan and Jeanne Dominico didn’t talk much beyond a quick, passing hello. Chris stopped by Jeanne’s cubicle once in a while to “chitchat,” but it was minimal at best. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to talk, or had trouble communicating. Jeanne was adamant when they started dating that their relationship not affect their job performances.
“It’s not fair to our employer.”
Chris agreed. Work wasn’t a place for romance. They could say hi, certainly. Maybe eat lunch together once in a while, if their schedules permitted it. But that was going to be the extent of it.
At around 4:30 P.M., Chris walked over to Jeanne’s desk, which was on the opposite side of the building from where he sat. It was the end of Chris’s day. He wanted to stop by and tell Jeanne he was leaving. Ever since they’d started dating, Chris rarely left the office without stopping by Jeanne’s desk and “touching base.” They had decided earlier that afternoon Chris was going to his house after work to grab a quick shower, change and meet Jeanne at her Dumaine Avenue house between 7:00 and 7:30 P.M. Jeanne mentioned something about picking up dinner on the way home. There was a pizza place, Ciao’s, near the house. Jeanne loved it. On certain nights, beginning at five o’clock, the price of a pizza was determined by the time a customer called: 5:00 P.M. meant a five-dollar pizza.
“Jeanne was a penny-pincher,” Chris remembered with an admiring laugh in his voice. “She looked to save wherever she could. She would have called Ciao’s exactly at five P.M., not a minute sooner or later. I know her.”
Approaching the aisle of Jeanne’s cubicle, Chris poked his head around the corner. “I’m heading home to change, shower and check my mail. I’ll be over around seven, seven-thirty.”
Jeanne had a routine every night when she returned home from work at five-thirty. She’d clean up after the mess the kids left during the day, something that bothered Chris, and then tend to her many other single-mom suburban chores.
“I told her they needed to clean up after themselves. The kids would trash the house. And that’s the type of person Jeanne was. She wouldn’t think twice about working all day and going home to clean up. She didn’t like it when I’d come over while she was cleaning up after them, because I’d get on her to make the kids do it.”
As Chris hung around Jeanne’s cubicle, itching to leave, Jeanne said, “I called the kids. I’m gonna pick up a couple of pizzas on my way home.”
“Do you need anything else?” asked Chris. “Soda? Chips?”
Jeanne was totally absorbed in her work. She had spent the day training a coworker and they were still engaged in their work as the clock ticked its way toward five. Jeanne had received flowers from Chris the previous day, August 5. The flowers weren’t supposed to arrive until August 14, which was Chris and Jeanne’s anniversary of meeting each other. But the flower shop botched the order and Jeanne ended up with the flowers that Monday. When coworkers asked Jeanne about the flowers, she said with a smile, “Just because.”
“She beamed when people stopped and asked about the flowers,” said Marge Alcorn, the woman she was training that day.
“No, we don’t need anything. I’ll see you later, honey. OK?” said Jeanne as Chris stood by.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“That’s fine.”
“No wine…anything?”
“I think we’re all set,” said Jeanne. She was focused on her job, engrossed in the training.
“I love you,” Chris said as he prepared to walk away. It was a mandatory custom for Chris to send his affection to Jeanne before he left work each day. As it always did, that one subtle whisper of devotion turned Jeanne’s attention from her work back to Chris. She smiled, put her pencil down and reached up to hug him.
“I love you, too.”
It was vital to Chris, he later noted, to let Jeanne know at every opportunity that he loved her. They said it to each other quite often. To the both of them, Chris insisted, it wasn’t three words couples say to each other under their breath, or in the middle of doing something else. When he was ten years old,