Too Late to Say Goodbye: A True Story of Murder and Betrayal (24 page)

I
T WAS PROBABLY INEVITABLE
that the tone of the emails between Jenn and Christopher became a little more intimate each week until it was sometimes downright steamy. But they had never seen each other—not even a photograph, although Jenn continued to ask Christopher to send one. Finally, she sent him a picture of herself playing her guitar in a cowgirl costume she once wore in college, and a picture of Dalton and Dillon. She had gained some weight after Dillon’s birth, but with running and dieting, her figure was now as slender as it was when she was in college. Christopher kept making excuses about why he hadn’t gotten around to sending a photo of himself.

Couldn’t they at least talk on the phone, Jenn asked? He promised that they would—soon. Anxious for Christopher to be more real to her than merely someone who sent emails, Jenn tried sending him some semi-emergency messages so he would phone her. He didn’t call. And Jenn still didn’t even know Christopher’s last name. If he should ever disappear from her email inbox, she would probably lose him forever; she didn’t know exactly where he lived, or his phone number. In a way, the fact that their relationship was so ephemeral made it more exciting, but it also kept Jenn off balance, fearful that it could all vanish in an instant.

On occasion, they had misunderstandings and one or the other would apologize. Once, on October 15, when Christopher felt he had been too demanding about a commitment from Jenn, he wrote regretfully, “Jennifer, nothing I can say will excuse my behavior last night. I am sorry and I promise I will let you go whenever you need to. I don’t ever want to make you feel anything but good. I do know you love me and I know I am blessed for that.”

Jenn wrote on October 18: “I love that you take your job seriously. I love that they [your bosses] scare you. I love that you were strong enough to run when you needed to, then moved them [his extended family] when you were strong enough to get them on their feet again. I love that you can go a little crazy with me but yet stay strong enough for both of us. I love that you always question me, making me think through for the truth in my answers. The bottom line is, Christopher, I am in love with everything about you. I would love to be yours to keep, and one day I will be. I understand it can’t be now, but it’s so hard when you want it so much. So we will both have our strong moments and some weak ones, too…”

Every day, Christopher asked Jenn to tell him what she was wearing; it would make her seem closer to him. So she dutifully described her outfits every day, even though they were mostly bland, serviceable clothes suitable for teaching preschoolers or cleaning her own house. Once, she told him about her short green nightgown, but more often she described jeans and sweaters.

On November 11, they exchanged numerous emails from morning to late at night. Christopher often sounded a bit like a character in a Harlequin novel as he declared his passion for Jenn, a man most women long to find—but suspect is not within the realm of possibility.

“Good morning, Sexy,” he began. “Jennifer, have I told you I can’t wait to make love to you? Damn, with every passing day, the growing sexual tension for you elevates to new levels I have never dreamed possible. You, my darling Jennifer, are a very amazing woman. I love you.”

She answered in kind. “Christopher, I am madly in love with you, and you have changed me forever. You have taught me more in these past months than I have experienced in my lifetime. I want a lifetime exploring these new places with you.”

Late in the afternoon, Jenn wrote to Chris that she was cleaning out closets, thinking of when she could walk out her front door, and be with him. It was understood that her sons would come with her, and Christopher often said he admired her for that.

Bart still wasn’t home by 7:21
P.M
. It would have been a time when she and Chris could have talked on the phone, but Christopher kept finding excuses why they couldn’t do that. And he was still insisting that he wasn’t good enough for her.

“Chris,” Jenn wrote, “I hate that I can’t just talk to you. I want to hear your voice, Chris. I’m sorry to be saying what I said I wouldn’t do, [but] it just doesn’t change the fact that I want it every day. Damn, I sometimes don’t understand you. You have said a few times that you don’t deserve me or something to that effect. Why Chris? What makes you so bad or me so good? For me, I would love to be attracted to you, but looks aren’t everything. I want you to be attracted to me, but maybe you won’t be. I think I look a lot different than anyone you have dated before. I’m not someone you would have seen and said, ‘Damn! She’s hot!’ I’m not smart—not in the book sense, anyway. I struggled to get through high school. I did well in art school, but I didn’t graduate. I didn’t do so good in nursing school. By then, I had other things on my mind and I was tired of being in school. So, like you, I fell into the food service world. I loved my job—had lots of fun doing it. Not sure I want to go back into it though because of the long hours. And I’m selfish and want to be home with my children at night. I have decent street smarts, and a good sense of direction. I have lots of love in my heart, but so do you. So where is it that we are so different? I’m in love with you, Chris. And I already know who you are. Jenn.”

But did she know? Really?

H
EATHER CONTINUED TO WORRY
. She knew that Jenn was naïve, much less savvy about the world than she was, even though Jenn was the older sister. Heather was the realist who thought the whole EverQuest game idea was silly and perhaps dangerous.

Bart sensed that their marriage was deteriorating—that their relationship had grown flat and perfunctory. Where Jenn had always tried cheer him up or calm him down when he was in a rage, she no longer even attempted to placate him, much less please him. And she would not sleep with him. That distressed Bart the most; he had always prided himself on being a good lover.

As the Corbins become more estranged, they often confided in their neighbors. Sometimes it would be Jenn who came over to the Comeaus for coffee or a drink, but more often it was Bart. He seemed to Kelly to be in the most pain, extremely anxious over the possibility that his marriage might be headed for divorce.

He seemed very lost. Kelly had always respected Bart, and she called him “Dr. Bart,” rather than just plain “Bart.”

“He was trying to save his marriage,” she said. “It seemed as though he would do whatever it took to make it work.”

Bart cried as he asked Kelly’s advice, begging her to tell him what he should do “to make Jenn love me again.”

H
E WAS BESIDE HIMSELF
. He went to his in-laws for backing, first approaching Heather, even though he knew that she would probably stick with Jenn. Then Bart appealed to Doug Tierney on a man-to-man basis. Doug was embarrassed, but he liked Bart well enough to feel sorry for him, and he tried to be available to at least talk to his brother-in-law. Still, they had never been close friends, and like many men, Doug wasn’t comfortable listening to intimate details about someone else’s marriage. He nonetheless saw that both Jenn and Bart were, in his estimation, “acting weird.” They had both lost a lot of weight, particularly Bart. He said he’d lost sixty pounds, and it sure looked as if he had. Bart’s clothes hung on him, and the fullness had vanished from his face, leaving him with the gaunt look of a man suffering from some fatal disease.

Beginning in August or September of 2004, Bart had avoided spending time with Jenn’s family, and Doug found him quite distant.

Bart pulled out all the stops. He went to Narda, seeking her advice. He proposed taking Jenn on a trip in the hope that would help them reconcile, and find the love they’d once had. Narda agreed that might be a good idea, and suggested that Bart talk to Jenn about it.

“But she won’t have sex with me,” he complained.

“I’m not going to take her on a trip if she won’t sleep with me. Why would I waste my time and money? If I take her on vacation, she is going to have to have sex with me.”

Narda was not a judgmental woman, nor was she a prude. She could understand that Bart missed having a sex life with her daughter, and at his urging she promised to talk to Jenn. She did—the next time she and Jenn were working in her studio.

Choosing her words carefully, Narda said she felt Bart was basically a good man, and that maybe it was Jenn’s duty to stay with him. She had already told Bart he was putting too much pressure on Jenn, and asked him to lighten up, believing he would take her advice. Narda would regret her words later, but, at the time, she didn’t know how sad her daughter really was. She just didn’t want to see Jenn throw away the eight years she had invested in her marriage, especially when they had two wonderful little boys together. Narda asked Jenn if it was possible for her to work things out with Bart.

At this point, Narda knew that Jenn wrote regularly to Christopher, but she had no idea that their online relationship had progressed far beyond friendship. She gathered that Jenn was enjoying it a lot, but Jenn didn’t talk about Christopher much to her mother because every time she did, Narda would caution her about starting even a penpal correspondence with someone she didn’t know anything about.

“What is that guy’s name, again?” Narda asked her once.

“Mom—don’t worry about it,” Jenn said.

“His name’s Chris—that’s it, isn’t it?”

“You’re not gonna contact him, are you?” Jenn asked suspiciously.

“Just leave it alone, Mom,” Jenn said. “Don’t worry about it.”

N
ARDA DID WORRY ABOUT IT
, and she felt Jenn would be a lot better off if she could just work things out with Bart. It was mid-November 2004, and the holidays were fast approaching when Narda tried once more to reason with Jenn about Bart. She urged her to at least try to work on her marriage. Bart might be a miser with his money, but she pointed out that he had increased Jenn’s household allowance by quite a bit over the years. He was, after all, the boys’ father. And even though he could be tough on them, Narda felt he loved them, and that he loved Jenn, too. Jenn acknowledged that part of her would always love Bart to some degree, because he was the father of her little boys. He had given her that much, “the most precious gifts of my life.”

“He really loves you,” Narda said, not totally believing her own words. “I think Bart really loves you.”

But when Narda looked in her daughter’s eyes, she saw no wavering there.

“He doesn’t love me, Mom. You have to understand,” Jenn said forcefully. “I just don’t want to be married—to be there anymore. He disgusts me. He gives me the creeps. He makes my skin crawl. I cannot bear to have a sexual relationship with him. I have tried so hard—but I cannot do it. I cannot bear to have him touch me at all. I just can’t stand it.”

And Narda recognized that her daughter’s marriage was crumbling into so many pieces that it could never be mended.

“I don’t know what to say—or what to do,” Jenn told her. “You’re just going to have to understand the fact that I’m leaving Bart.”

It was obvious that Jenn was in the grip of major anxiety, and it wasn’t about making the decision to leave her marriage. She was far beyond that. But she didn’t know how she was going to make her life work with no financial support from Bart.

She wasn’t giving up, Jenn said. But she was determined that she could do it without him.

“I have one credit card that he doesn’t know about, but it has a pretty low limit. I know he won’t let me stay in the house, but the boys need to stay in their school. I can get a small place, and I’ve already begun to buy a few things that we’ll need.”

Jenn said she had managed to save enough to put $2,000 in her private checking account; that was meant for first and last month’s rent on an apartment. She knew she couldn’t afford to rent a whole house.

And Narda knew that Bart still monitored Jenn’s expenses. They still sat down every week and she had to explain how she had spent the money, so it hadn’t been easy for her build a nest egg.

No longer the self-assured husband who had spent nine years cheating on her with other women, Bart was now clinging tightly to Jenn. He was a desperate man, a dog in a manger with his paw clamped tightly over her—financially and emotionally, although not yet physically at least. He had never struck Jenn; he only demeaned her with words.

When Jenn tentatively brought up the subject of divorce, he seemed to have expected it. But he begged Jenn to stay in their house over Christmas. Couldn’t they have one more Christmas as a family—something they all could remember? He argued that there was no rush about leaving, not after all the years they had been together. After New Year’s, they could decide what they would do.

For the very first time in their relationship Bart apologized to Jenn and said he was sorry if he had hurt her. She stared back at him, shocked to hear him say he regretted the way he had treated her.

“You haven’t been a very loving husband, Bart,” Jenn said. She had nothing more to tell him. It was too late to change how she felt. If only he had apologized to her and promised to try harder years ago.

Now, Jenn agreed to stay with him over the holidays. It would give them both a short reprieve—two more months. She didn’t know herself how she was going to manage, where she would go, how much money she would need, or if she could even get a full-time job.

T
HE LEAVES ON THE YOUNG TREES
Jenn had planted changed to yellow and apricot, fell to the ground, and blew away, leaving the yard on Bogan Gates Drive looking forlorn. Jenn’s garden turned fallow. She wondered where she would be in the spring when all her bulbs and flowers and trees bloomed again.

Only one thing kept a warm place in her heart, and a little bit of joy in her mind. She had Christopher. And it was possible that she and Christopher would find a way to be together, and that she might even find love again.

Christopher wrote that his mother was in the hospital and he didn’t know when he could email her, much less make plans to fly to Atlanta for a meeting.