In 1987, the family bought a place two miles outside of the town of Lee—population 800—and settled down for good. Their nearest neighbor was a quarter of a mile away. It was an old-fashioned kind of place where everyone knows everyone’s business. “We look out for one another—particularly the kids,” Leslie said. “If you see anyone’s kid acting up, you’d ask them, ‘You think your mother and father would be proud of you for doing that?’ ”
Leslie got a job a dozen miles away in a town of 5,000 at the Lincoln Paper and Tissue Company. He still worked there in 2009 as lead shipper.
Valerie got a job as a school bus driver after Frank started school. It allowed her to earn the money needed to provide little extras for her boys and still be at home with them after school. The Severances never had a lot in the material sense, but Valerie was innovative, making the most of what they had. The family was rich in other ways—a wealth of friends and a home filled with love.
It was the positive environment at their house that drew others like a magnet. People were always dropping by to share their company. If it was dinner time and Valerie had planned a quiet dinner for four, when unexpected company arrived on the doorstep, somehow she could manage to stretch it all to satisfy the hunger of an army of relatives and neighbors.
Mike attended kindergarten through sixth grade at Winn Elementary, a school that has since has been abandoned and demolished. He then went to Mount Jefferson Junior High School, where he competed in skiing events and played soccer and baseball. Valerie often volunteered for extra bus runs for school sports events. Not only did she earn some additional pay, but it enabled her to stand on the sidelines and cheer on her oldest son.
Mike and his brother Frank were close as young boys in spite of—or possibly because of—their different personalities. Mike was quiet and reserved. Frank was gregarious and outgoing. Both were very close to their mother, a passionate, hard-working, strong-willed woman. “She was the fire of the family,” said Shirley Harvey, Valerie’s best friend and Leslie’s cousin.
Valerie possessed a traditional attitude toward hearth and home. She viewed her job taking care of her husband and her boys as her mission in life, and she would let nothing stand in the way—not even illness. Diagnosed with lupus, she still did not slow down. She went to work every day and put a home-cooked meal on the table every night. She took medications that caused severe rashes, and the disease itself was the source of incredible pain and yet, she soldiered on with her responsibilities to her family.
In fact, she did, at times, take it a bit too far. She developed an abscess on the back of one leg, located in the exact spot that rubbed against the school bus driver’s seat. She ignored it. When Shirley chastised her about it, she refused to go to the doctor; instead she cleansed it and bandaged it and kept pushing forward.
Finally, it reached a point where she was limping so badly she could barely walk. Shirley looked at it again—it was red, inflamed and hot to the touch. Shirley rushed Valerie to the hospital, where Valerie underwent emergency surgery that removed a fist-sized piece of her upper calf, but saved her leg. Valerie was back behind the wheel of the school bus two days later. Valerie was a rock. Les, Frank and Michael did not think they could survive without her—and knew they never wanted to try.
EIGHT
Mike was only 14 years old on a fateful morning in late February 1995. Les was getting ready to go to work at the mill. Valerie was preparing for her day of getting the boys up for class and doing her job as a school bus driver.
Les heard an odd noise coming from the bedroom. He went to investigate and found his wife on the floor, out cold. He tried to rouse her. When that failed, he hustled the boys out of bed. “Hurry, hurry! Something’s wrong with your mother. We need to get her to the hospital.”
Les rushed her to a hospital in Bangor. Valerie had experienced a brain aneurysm. At first, doctors were very optimistic. When she came in, she knew her name and address. Doctors told the family that was unusual and promising.
The family’s hope soared. Then Valerie took a turn for the worse. Over the next few days, her condition wavered between highs and lows as she endured the surgery and other procedures the physician used to try to save her life. “She’d overcome so many things, we really expected her to pull out of this, too,” Shirley Harvey said.
When the medical personnel used up all the options available at that facility, they transported her to a hospital in Boston for additional treatments that went beyond the resources in Maine. Shirley wanted to be by Valerie’s side, but she had a more important task. Les took Valerie’s mother and sister south to Massachusetts and Shirley stayed behind to care for Frank and Michael.
In Boston, doctors performed a procedure that they hoped would save Valerie’s life—but instead, it turned her into nothing more than a physical shell, kept alive by a life-support system. After that, Valerie never gave any indication of knowing that Les or her mother or sister were there. She demonstrated no awareness of her surroundings. She responded to nothing. On March 8, Les made the most gut-wrenching decision of his life. He authorized the physician to pull the plug to the machines that artificially maintained Valerie’s physical existence. Now, Les was a widower with two boys to raise on his own. The love of his life was no longer by his side to lighten his journey through the years. The family fire had burned out.
Les was totally unprepared for this responsibility. Valerie had been a stay-at-home mom who’d taken care of everything. She paid all of the bills—Les didn’t even know where she’d kept the checkbook. He didn’t know how to cook, clean or wash the laundry. The first month of dealing with his grief and rebuilding structure for his family was overwhelming.
Mike saw his father stagger under his burden and assumed the role of caretaker. He automatically made it his responsibility to look after his little brother and his dad.
Mike became keeper of the minute details of the family. When they went to the bank after his mother’s death to straighten out the situation there, the banker filling out paperwork asked Leslie for Michael’s Social Security number. Leslie said, “I’ll have to get back to you with that.”
Mike said, “I know it, Dad,” and rattled off the digits. Then the banker asked for Leslie’s Social Security number. Leslie didn’t know that off the top of his head, either. Mike did. Everyone turned to Mike when Frank’s number was needed and, sure enough, Mike knew that, too.
That summer, Les traveled with his sons to Pennsylvania and stayed at the home of Valerie’s Aunt Lenore. He took the boys to their first experience at a major league baseball game to watch the Phillies play. The caps they got at the ballpark became prized possessions. When they left in the morning, Lenore was surprised and delighted to discover that her two young grand-nephews had made their beds without being asked.
Mike returned to his first year of high school at the Lee Academy—it was a unique educational environment, one of only twenty town academies in the country. It had opened a century-and-a-half earlier, in 1845, when there was no public school system in Maine. Several towns got together and started one on their own. Lee Academy grew into the major educational institution of the region east of Lincoln and as far as north as the Canadian border.
This private, independent school teaches ninth through twelfth grades as well as a thirteenth year for students who need additional preparation before going to the university. The student body consisted of about 200 day students from nineteen different towns—the students and their parents elect to attend this school, some riding the bus for an hour-and-a-half for the privilege of going there. Additionally, there were about eighty dormitory students each year from other states and several countries. The students were drawn to the academy because of its long, well-established reputation, the small, safe rural environment and the solid academic program with a low student-to-teacher ratio.
The dormitory students pay tuition. The day students’ cost is covered by their local town government and the state. Maine sets the rate a
t roughly $8,000 per local child and reimbursed the school accordingly. Fifty percent of the academy’s budget is public money. Mike thrived at the school.
In 1996, a convenience store clerk caught Leslie’s eye. Brinda Leighton was working that job as a stopgap measure. It was a way for her to earn money until the beginning of tourist season. At that time, she planned to move with her girls down to Bar Harbor, where jobs were plentiful and paid well.
Brinda was not looking for romance. She’d been separated from her husband for a year-and-a-half. His infidelity still stung, and she didn’t believe she was ready for a new relationship. Then along came Les. His stops at the store grew in frequency. He talked a lot about losing his wife and about how much he’d loved her. He told Brinda about his two boys.
Soon, he was asking leading questions. Did she like children? Did she like being a mother? Brinda said yes, telling Les about her two daughters.
Finally, Les made his next move. “You wanna go out for a cup of coffee?”
Brinda was hooked. How could she deny a man who applied no pressure? How could she pass up that innocent invitation? It was their first date of many. They found it easy to talk to one another, enjoyed each other’s company and discovered that they had a lot in common.
The new relationship posed a number of challenges. Les still grieved for Valerie. Brinda was still reluctant to trust any man. They both worried about the impact on their children.
In July, though, they plunged in and merged their households. Brinda, with 10-year-old Brooke and 13-year-old Nicole, moved into the home of Les and his two sons, 15-year-old Mike and 12-year-old Frank.
The four children got along from the start, even though young Frank could not understand why his family needed any additional members. Brinda was cautious with the boys and respectful of their mother. She never tried to replace her, and pictures of Valerie remained scattered throughout the home.
The two boys still hurt from the sudden loss of their mom. Mike handled it a lot better. He didn’t outwardly display his grief, but was able to cope by talking with Brinda and Nicole about his memories of his mother—the camping trips and family activities and the fun of having her for their school bus driver.
Mike was a lot more accepting of the reality of his new life than Frank. Being older, he had a better understanding of adult relationships and could see the importance of Brinda in his dad’s life. Frank, however, seemed stuck in the anger phase of his grief. He didn’t freely share his thoughts about his mother and tended to keep the three Leighton women at arm’s length. He was never hostile to them, but he never invited the close relationships with them that they had with Mike.
For her part, Nicole was delighted to have the older brother she’d always wanted. Nicole and Brooke continued to attend school in Lincoln after the move. Mike helped Nicole transition to the new neighborhood, introducing her to friends and taking her to different activities and places.
Mike and Nicole were close in age and had an interest in athletics in common. Nicole played basketball and field hockey. Mike focused on track and skiing. Together they jogged to get into condition and keep in shape for their sports.
While a lot of kids go in for one type of skiing or another, Mike wanted to do it all—slalom, downhill, cross country. He excelled at all three, and competed in the Penobscot conference, winning fourth place in the multi-discipline Ski-meister competition. He also ran cross country. In his senior year, his school team was eliminated before the state finals, but Mike made it as an individual.
Frank was big into basketball. Even though it wasn’t Mike’s favorite ball game, he and his friends would play with Frank at the house where they had a basketball hoop. Because of this practice with the older kids, Frank soon excelled at the sport. In many ways, the boys’ lives went on as they had before the Leightons joined the family.
NINE
Brinda and Les focused on caring for the children and building a new life together. Brinda understood and accepted Leslie’s love for Valerie. She listened to him as he talked of his loss and hugged him as he continued to cry over his wife’s death for the next four years.
They always put off the idea of marriage out of consideration for the boys, and in Valerie’s memory. As the years went by, it didn’t matter as much. They were comfortable together, acting married and thinking of their household as a blended stepfamily.
The new family celebrated Thanksgiving in a big way. Their home filled every year with friends, cousins and friends of their cousins. Brinda and Les worked side-by-side in the kitchen turning out a traditional feast complete with an enormous stuffed turkey and plenty of pumpkin pie.
Because Brinda’s girls maintained a relationship with their dad after the divorce, Christmas logistics were a bit more complex. They settled into a routine that worked for everyone. Nicole and Brooke spent Christmas Eve with their dad and Christmas morning with their mom, Les and the boys. They exchanged gifts and enjoyed a festive holiday breakfast around the big dining table. The ease of slipping into this routine was facilitated by the relationship between Les and Brinda’s ex-husband. The two men worked together at the mill and had always gotten along well.
Although introverted, Michael loved a good joke. He cut school one day to go fishing. At the end of the day, he went to the school, told Headmaster Barry McLaughlin what he had done and gave him the fish, earning laughs instead of punishment.
Mike pushed the limits at bit at home, too. He decided to teach his stepsisters how to drive. He coached them in his old ’72 Dodge Dart as they drove the dirt road around their home. During one lesson, the trio was surprised by the earlier-than-expected return home of Brinda and Les.
“What are you doing, Michael?” Les asked. “Those girls are under-age. They shouldn’t be behind the wheel on any public road. Give me your license.” Mike turned it over to his dad, who kept him grounded for a week—a monumental hardship for any teenage boy.
Mike was too shy to ask girls out. When his senior prom rolled around, Nicole asked, “Who’s your date for the prom?”
“I didn’t ask anyone,” Mike admitted.
“That’s not right. You will have a date,” Nicole insisted and immediately called her best friend, Erica Voisine. The two girls decided to escort Michael to the prom. They planned to stay for a short while and then head home, leaving Mike with friends.
Mike’s prom dates were not traditional, and neither was the transportation he used to get them there. He coaxed the loan of a Peterbilt out of the owner down in Winn. He loaded up the two girls and drove up onto the front lawn of the headmaster’s house on campus. As students arrived in cars and limos, dressed up in their finest party duds, they stopped to view the spectacle. Their first reaction was bewilderment, but soon they were cheering Mike for his stunt. The headmaster came out of his house and said, “Okay, Mike. You’ve had your fifteen minutes of fame. Now get your truck off my lawn.”
Mike backed the big rig cab off of the grass, the crowd dissipated and all went inside for the big dance. Mike was the topic of conversation all night. Nicole and Erica had so much fun with Mike and his friends that they didn’t leave until the night was over.
Despite his impish nature, Mike was a serious student, graduating with honors. His best friend throughout school was Luke House. Frank’s best friend was Blair Emery. After high school, Luke’s brother Joel and Blair both joined the Army. Mike went into the Air Force. Every one of them would make it to the conflict in the Middle East. All three of those new servicemen made the small town of Lee proud. They were all fine, polite young men who didn’t swear in front of women. Not one of those three young men returned home alive.
TEN
Mike wanted to earn a living driving semis. He got his class-one license right out of high school and hoped to get a job running short-haul routes. His father had no objection to his choice of career, but thought it was too early for him to settle down in Maine. “Mike, you need to see the world first. You need to know what’s out there
before you can really know that here is where you want to be.”
Leslie suggested that Mike join the armed forces. “I was in the Air Force, so I’m a little biased, but it beats the Army. In the Air Force, you don’t have to go camping, sleep in a tent or carry a gun.”
Mike agreed, signed up and began active duty on September 28, 1998. The Air Force stationed him at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas. Nicole and Mike kept up their sibling-like connection, talking on the phone once or twice a week whenever his work permitted it. When he came home on two weeks’ leave, Mike, Nicole, Frank and Brooke hung out together, driving around in Mike’s old clunker.
Nicole noticed a big change in her stepbrother after joining the Air Force. He was still reserved, but the painful shyness had faded away, replaced with a core of self-confidence. It seemed to Nicole as if he had found himself and his place in the world.
Mike found his first steady girlfriend in Texas, Hillary Langley. The young woman had been wounded by a recent date rape. She did not trust easily, but Michael’s gentleness broke through her defenses, helped her heal and captured her heart. They dated for months and Mike became a well-loved member of her family. He had a lot in common with her father Frank and brother Graham. They rode four-wheelers together, ate homemade ice cream and went on hunting trips. Hillary’s mother, Janis, had an international Coke can collection. Every time that Mike was deployed, he brought back a can from a different country for her.
Mike, however, was only 20 years old and not ready to settle down. When the relationship grew serious, he backed off. He showed Hillary the respect of sitting down with her and explaining his feelings. He wanted to maintain a connection with her family, though, and did so with her blessing.
A Poisoned Passion Page 4
