Empty Promises

birthday dinners and holiday get-togethers. Her image is there in most of the family pictures, with Jami most often sitting next to her father. Anyone looking at the Hagels’ photo album would have seen a smiling, pretty young woman.
    Jami Sherer was living in two worlds, trying in vain to balance them.

    As the eighties drew to a close, Jami Sherer became desperate to hold a lid down on a relationship that was constantly threatening to explode. In her job at Microsoft, she was calm, friendly, and efficient. Someone who didn’t know her well would have supposed that she didn’t have a problem in the world.
    Jami was bringing home a good salary, and, perhaps more important, she was eligible for stock options at Microsoft. The company’s stock was doubling and redoubling constantly. Not only was Bill Gates a multibillionaire, but a large number of his employees were also instant millionaires. The dress code at Microsoft was casual but the work ethic was intense and well rewarded. Jami interviewed job applicants and helped choose those she knew would fit in.
    Steve’s job offered less of a future. He was working as a sales rep for an air freight company. He and Jami had decided to buy a house, but their credit wasn’t good and they didn’t have a down payment. Steve’s mother, Sherri, agreed to loan them enough to get them into a house. Jami may have held on to the slight hope that Steve would change if they gave up the transitory feel of living in a series of apartments and had their own place with a yard for Chris.
    Sherri Sherer Schielke wanted her son’s marriage to last, and it wasn’t really a financial risk for her because Jami put up her Microsoft stock as collateral. Steve added a bit more collateral with his small portfolio of Nordstrom and Longview Fiber stocks, an inheritance from his father.
    Steve and Jami started looking for a house. Jami knew she would have to put some sweat equity into it, because the area’s burgeoning real estate market put most homes on the east side out of their range.
    A house represented safety, respectability, and a chance to live like other young families. Maybe Steve would settle down and they could work toward a future that would be good for Chris—and for themselves, too.

5
    T he Hagels had no idea how much their daughter was hiding from them. Jami might have been using cocaine only to escape momentarily from the ugliness of her life or, as she said, to be sure Steve wouldn’t use it all, but she was using. She had not been using enough for her friends at work to notice or enough to compromise her life, but the small amount she consumed made her more amenable to Steve’s suggestions or, rather, less able to fight him.
    By 1990, Jami was no longer fooling herself; she knew that her marriage was a horrible mistake, but how would she ever get free of Steve? She agreed to buy a house, but she told friends that she probably wouldn’t stay with Steve after they moved. She had finally come to understand that another move or a new job for Steve or a baby would never change him. Now that she was a mother, she felt such love and concern for Chris that she dared not continue to risk exposing him to Steve’s chaotic rages. Motherhood had made her more vulnerable because she had so much more to lose, but it had also made her stronger. She would fight for Chris.
    Sara Smith,* who was dating one of Steve’s high school friends—Eric Linde—met Jami and Steve in the summer of 1989. They went skiing and bowling together a few times and Eric and Steve went to Reno that winter. Sara liked Jami better than Steve and spent time with her. One evening the two women watched television and ate pizza while the men were out. Sara had already noted that Jami never said much when Steve was there. She was a little surprised when Jami opened up to her that night as the two of them ate pizza. “She wasn’t happy,” Sara recalled. “She planned to divorce Steve after they moved into their new house.”
    That seemed a little odd to Sara. She wondered why Jami didn’t just leave—but then she realized that leaving Steve wouldn’t be easy.
    As alien as it might sound to women who were not involved in an abusive relationship, Jami had believed for a long time that Steve’s violence erupted, in her words, because “he just loves me so much.” But Jami had finally concluded that Steve really didn’t love her and that her value to him was as a possession, not as an equal