John Putnam's Journal
May 26, 2003 (part 3)
I can't recall what we did exactly after that. We must have gone back to the lake house, Jerry was still with us and we needed to drop him back off. It was nice to be away from mom and dad for a while. They had others around them now, so we got a little break. Mom I believe was o.k. with it, but I think dad was irritated with the whole setting. He is the kind of person that would be better off alone in this situation. Maybe coming in late to the scene, he felt like he had no control. It wasn't his house, it wasn't his town, it wasn't his lake. It was his daughter though. Dad gave Phil his credit card and asked us to go back into Marble Falls and get 3 hotel rooms. No problem, mom and dad stayed at the lake house. We headed back to Marble Falls which was about 5 miles from the lake house. We were standing in the lobby at the check in counter trying to get 3 rooms with dad's card. In today's world, fraud is a big player. There was some definite confusion on the clerks part in that who was who and who was paying for what and so on. We were dancing around letting her know who we were to the point I again became aggravated. I said out loud to Phil, "Just tell her who we are and what we are here for and let's get on with it." Phil sort of let me have control of the situation and I explained to her that we were the family of the woman they were searching for up on Lake LBJ and so on. The clerk basically dropped everything, handed us our card back and swiped 3 sets of room keys and we were done. We got the rooms lined up and took our stuff into each of them including mom and dad's. Audrey and I went to our room. It was time to make some phone calls. By now, word had begun to creep out up in the DFW area. For the first time I came to realize what was going to be the hardest thing in the world to do. Tell people. I called a few people and absolutely fell apart. So did Audrey. I don't know why that particular aspect is so difficult. Telling people hurt worse than anything I had ever done and anything I have done since. Maybe someday I will understand that. We received a call shortly after that from mom. She stated that she and dad had decided to stay at the lake house. So, we cancelled their room, gathered their things and headed back to the lake house to drop their stuff. We made some excuse to leave and went back to the Hotel for the remainder of the day. Luckily there was an extremely nice Chili's attached to our hotel. We headed there for the evening. Chili's became a very special place to Phil and I and our wives over the 2 weeks we were there. First of all, it was attached to the hotel we stayed at. Second, the food was good. It had a beautiful patio overlooking Lake Marble Falls. And the beer was cold. As we visited the soon to be sacred Chili's the first night, it was very uncomfortable. We still had not eaten all day. The opportunity to have a cold beer was about to present itself and I honestly did not know if it was appropriate or not to try to relax in that manner. Were we compromising any respect towards our sister by maybe backing away from the situation a bit and easing off of the tension? That question was soon answered with an order of 4 beers. Big ones. This was familiar territory and my mood changed. I was looking forward to some bar time with Phil and discussing things in more detail. We ordered some food, but none of us ate. I can't remember one thing we discussed, but I know we were there a while and the conversation was rich. We still didn't know what we were doing, but at least we had some time to get that straight. We went back to our rooms after closing Chili's and it was time for me to tell my son's mother. Carol was my ex-wife and my son lived with her. I got her on the phone and told her she needed to leave Alan in the living room watching TV and go to her bedroom because I had something terrible to tell her. Once we could talk, I told her what happened. She was so upset. She, after all, had been sisters with Laura for 5 years or so. Laura was an angel to everyone. I told Carol not to tell Alan yet and that she needed to compose herself when she went back in as to not let on to him. We did agree however that if the opportunity came up for her to tell him, she would. Otherwise, I or we would tell him when I came back. As it turned out, about 4 days later the opportunity presented itself and Alan knew. But, for that night he didn't. Audrey spent time talking to her family. We were both crying on the phones. Eventually, we went to sleep. The first and longest day was over. You would think the first day would be the hardest. Wait until the second day.
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