Empty Promises

will be home at four o’clock,” she said. “He’ll be glad to take Chris then.”
    But Steve wouldn’t wait. He didn’t leave eighteen-month-old Chris home alone; he took the baby with him, wherever he was headed. Jami and her mother were worried sick and called each other all evening to see if Steve had left Chris with one or the other of them. Finally, just before eleven that night, Steve and Chris showed up. He had taken the toddler to the racetrack, stayed until the last race, and arrived home long after Chris was exhausted and hungry.
    Judy edged along a tightrope, trying to help Jami but afraid to appear to be a meddler in her daughter’s marriage. Steve constantly made it clear that he didn’t want her involved and told Judy so often. “I was told [by Steve]: ‘Leave us alone. If you don’t stay out of our business, I’m going to take Chris and Jami and move. We’re going to move to California.’ So I knew I just couldn’t show up when I wasn’t supposed to,” Judy said.
    Judy feared that if Steve moved her daughter and grandson back to California, she would never see them again. “I don’t know if Jami would have moved, but I wasn’t going to push him on that.”
    In a sense, Steve now had control not only over Jami but also over her mother and the rest of her family. Occasionally, he would grudgingly allow Judy to come over and work in the yard with them, but he didn’t want her doing anything to help Jami fix up the interior of their house. Judy was a slender and pretty blond woman who looked much younger than her age. She had a job at an auto dealership, and she was never the kind of mother-in-law who hovered, but she had reason to be worried about Jami and Chris.
    June Young, Jami’s longtime friend, who hadn’t seen her since the wedding, came to visit Jami when Chris was less than a year old. “I’m not sure of the date,” June recalled, “but Chris was sitting up, so he was probably about eight months old.”
    When June called to arrange the visit, she heard tears in Jami’s voice. She regretted that they hadn’t been as close as they once were, but she suspected it was because she had warned Jami not to marry Steve. “He didn’t treat her well,” June recalled, with massive understatement.
    This time, Jami urged her to come over for a visit. When June arrived at Jami’s house in Bothell, Washington, she quickly learned why Jami was crying. Jami confessed that Steve had hit her and pulled her down the hall by her hair. And it wasn’t the first time.
    “You’re going to pack your things and come with me,” June said firmly. “Nobody deserves to be treated like this.”
    For a moment, June thought Jami was going to come with her. Then Steve came home. When he saw June there, he glared at her and grabbed Jami’s arm, pulling her into the bedroom, slamming the door behind them.
    “Steve came out yelling and swearing,” June said, “And then Jami came out, and she was crying. She told me that I should go, that she could take care of it.”
    Saddened, June had no choice but to leave, but she was troubled for a long time, remembering how diminished Jami was; her dear friend had lost all of her exuberance and her zest for life and there was nothing June could do to change it. She wondered if she would ever see Jami again.
    Apparently, Jami was able to appease Steve after the incident with June—but not for long. Like almost all domestic abusers, Steve’s assaults on Jami only escalated. Now he not only put her down verbally but he was also increasingly physically abusive when she annoyed him.
    And Jami seemed to annoy Steve frequently; it was almost impossible to please him. He was given to large and sudden shifts of mood, alternately depressed, euphoric, and angry. It was hard for Jami to tell if this was a result of the drugs or his natural unstable personality. Jami continued to withhold a portion of his cocaine, but it was like mending a huge, oozing wound with a Band-Aid.
    Most distressing of all to the few who knew about it, Jami herself sometimes used cocaine. Steve had finally coaxed her into trying the drug. Timarie couldn’t fathom how anyone could truly enjoy getting higher and higher all night long—only to land with a crash when the supply of cocaine inevitably ran out. When Timarie asked Jami why she used cocaine, Jami answered, “Because the more I do, the less [Steve] will—and the less I will have to put up with. We won’t have so much