12.Deadly.Little.Secrets.2012 (7 page)

“Kassidy’s prognosis was good,” Linda remembers. “She was cancer-free. The chemo was a precaution, and the doctors told us that she should make a full recovery.”

With her baby improving, Kari seemed at ease. At times, visitors found her in Kassidy’s room bouncing the laughing infant on her knee while she sang “Buffalo gals can you come out tonight,” from the Christmas classic
It’s a Wonderful Life.

In late February, the day finally came and Matt and Kari drove home from Fort Worth with Kassidy. She still had her trach and the feeding tube. They’d both been taught how to clean and maintain the lifelines that kept their baby alive. There was also an alarm, one that was designed to notify them if Kassidy stopped breathing. The doctors had said, however, that it should be only a couple of months before both tubes would be removed, and Kassidy would be breathing and eating on her own.

Her two grandmothers would later disagree about Kassidy’s condition when she returned home. Barbara would say that the child was still fragile and that, when left unattended, she’d fall over. “You had to blow on her face to remind her to breathe,” says Barbara.

Linda, however, maintained that Barbara wasn’t in Waco but Kerrville and hadn’t seen the child. “Kassidy was learning to walk, pulling herself up on furniture,” says Linda. “Her cheeks were pink, and she was smiling. She’d pull the oxygen with her on the floor while she crawled. She was still having chemo, but she was thriving.”

Others who saw Kassidy would agree with Linda, saying that they saw a baby who’d been through the worst and was fighting her way back. There was one change. Where in the past, she’d been comfortable on others’ laps, she now clung to her mother. “She wanted Kari,” says Jenny Monsey. “She didn’t want other people to hold her.”

One afternoon, Nancy and her husband dropped in at the parsonage to pick up an extra crib. Her second daughter, Ami, had just given birth to a severely premature baby named Joe Joe. The infant was still hospitalized, but Nancy was getting the nursery ready. When she arrived at the parsonage, Kari had Kassidy on her lap tickling her, the infant laughing. “Kassidy looked at us with her blue eyes, so serious,” says Nancy. “Then she looked at Kari and just smiled.”

Slowly, life was returning to normal. A home health-care nurse watched over Kassidy during the day, so that Kari and Matt could begin to attend their classes. There were concerns, of course, but the child seemed to be healing. “You could feel it in church,” says Jenny. “There was a sense of relief. We’d all been so worried about Kassidy, but our prayers had been answered.”

There were more operations ahead. Surgeons would remove the trach and G-tube once Kassidy’s lungs and muscles grew stronger, and one eye, damaged in surgery, would need to have the muscles tightened. “But it truly was looking like we got our miracle,” says Linda.

All went well, then on Friday, March 19, Matt and Kari took Kassidy to Hillcrest’s ER. Later there would be a disagreement about the reason. Matt would say Kassidy had a fever but that she no longer had it when they arrived. What Linda recalled was that the infant’s feeding port wasn’t seated right, allowing food to ooze out.

Whatever the reason, Matt had called ahead, and instead of exposing the infant to possible infection in the hospital waiting area, a doctor from the ER came out to the car to examine Kassidy. Linda and Jim were there, too, listening. “The doctor said it would be all right,” says Linda. “He told them to have the doctor look at Kassidy’s G-tube when they brought her in for chemo the following week.”

Two days later, Jenny walked with Kari from church after Sunday evening services. “It’s wonderful to have her home,” Kari said. “I know Kassidy will be okay.”

In the small parsonage that night, Matt and Kari watched the Academy Awards and saw Roberto Benigni jump on his chair to celebrate when he won best actor for his role in
Life is Beautiful.
Before Matt and Kari went to bed, they checked both girls and found that Kassidy had diarrhea. They cleaned her up, then went to bed.

When in bed, Kassidy was supposed to wear a monitor, a not-uncommon type used for premature babies who are at risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. If she’d stopped breathing, the alarm would have sounded. Why wasn’t Kassidy wearing it? Matt would later say that they often left it off at night. What Kari later told others was that Matt said Kassidy didn’t need it.

At about twelve, for no apparent reason, Matt got up to check both girls again. “They were both doing fine,” he said.

Oddly, he then rose again, just nine minutes later, and checked Kassidy for a third time. Why? “Something wouldn’t let me sleep. I knew I needed to check again,” he’d say. Since the monitor wasn’t attached, no alarm had sounded, but Kassidy wasn’t breathing. “I yelled for my wife. I took Kassidy out of the bed and started CPR.”

Describing that horrible night, Kari would later say that she heard Matt scream and rushed to dial 911, begging them to hurry. Meanwhile, Matt continued CPR, using a bag to force oxygen through the trach and into the baby’s lungs. Kari never entered Kassidy’s bedroom that night. Why? Barbara would later say that Kari said she couldn’t go in, and that guilt for that would haunt her. But what Kari told others was that Matt ordered her not to go into the nursery. “She said he didn’t want her in there,” says Linda. “When she called us, she said Matt was with Kassidy, and he’d told her to wait for the ambulance.”

Moments later, Linda called Nancy, and said, “I think my baby is losing her baby.”

Meanwhile, Kari and Matt followed the ambulance to the hospital, phoning Barbara on the way to tell her of the unfolding horror. Nancy arrived at the ER just after 12:30 
A.M.
and saw the staff working on Kassidy. Overcome with emotion, Nancy took an elevator upstairs, where she checked on her own grandson, Joe Joe. At only twenty-eight weeks and two pounds, he was high-risk, and doctors had warned that he might not survive, but he was improving. It struck her as ironic when Nancy returned to the ER and saw the doctors still fighting to restore Kassidy’s life. “Joe Joe was supposed to die, and the doctors had said Kassidy was cured, that she would live,” Nancy says. “It seemed so strange. He was going to be all right, and Kari was losing her baby.”

Finally, the doctor turned to all of them, and said, “There’s nothing else we can do.”

At that, Kari screamed. As Nancy watched, tears running from her own eyes, she looked at the faces of those around her. It seemed everyone in the room was crying, even the doctors and nurses who’d fought so hard but been unable to save the child. Then Nancy noticed Matt standing in the background watching it all as if it were a mildly interesting television show. “Matt showed no emotion. Zilch,” says Nancy. “It was so strange. Everyone crying, and Matt acted like it was just another day.”

Thinking to herself that people express grief differently, Nancy couldn’t help but wonder, “How can you not cry when you see this beautiful, chubby little baby die?”

At that point, the focus turned to saying good-bye. Family members, one at a time, began entering the hospital room, where Matt and Kari sat with Kassidy’s body. Motioned in, Nancy found Kari in a chair cradling her dead child in her arms. “I love you both so much,” Nancy said, hugging and kissing Kassidy and Kari.

Later, it would all seem so surreal. Tears coated Kari’s cheeks, but Matt stood off to the side, silent and unemotional, until he suddenly rushed forward as if intent on something. As Nancy later described it, Matt began grabbing at Kassidy’s tracheotomy tube.

“What’re you doing?” Kari snapped. “Leave her alone.”

“I just want to remove her trach,” Matt said.

“No,” Kari responded. “Leave her alone. Don’t touch her.” But Matt persisted, and Kari protectively swung her arms around, holding the dead child’s body away from him.

Before she left the room, Nancy looked down at Kassidy’s small, still body, covered with scars from her months of shots, surgeries, and treatments, and thought about how hard the baby had fought to survive. At the time, she thought little of the trach incident beyond that Kari was hurting so deeply, and Matt was being selfish. Later, in light of what lay ahead, it would take on a whole new meaning.

A
bout three that Monday morning, Kari called her friend Janelle Murphy. “Kassidy is gone,” Kari said, then between painful sobs, explained what had happened. “I had to leave Kassidy at that hospital, Janelle. I couldn’t bring her home.”

Four hours later, at seven, Barbara arrived at the parsonage. The door was open, and she walked inside and found Matt, Kari, and Kensi all in bed together, asleep. Barbara had called from the road and talked to Linda, who told her that Kassidy had died. So Barbara didn’t wake them, and instead lay down on the couch to rest.

That morning, at the high school, Jenny saw one of the other teens from the Williams Creek youth group crying. When Jenny asked why, the girl told her that Kassidy Baker had died. Tears gathered in Jenny’s eyes as she thought back to the evening before, when she’d left church with Kari and talked about how Kassidy had improved and how happy Kari was to have her home.

From the time the doors opened at the visitation, there was a line of well-wishers wanting to talk to Matt and Kari: family, friends, members of Williams Creek and the other churches where he’d worked, friends and professors from Baylor. Even some of the nurses who’d cared for Kassidy came to say a final good-bye. “It wasn’t like a family grieving,” says Todd. “Because it was Matt and Kari’s baby, because they were so involved in the community, it was the whole town.”

When Jenny arrived, Kari took her by the hand and led her to the casket. “Look at my baby,” Kari said. She then leaned over and gave Kassidy a kiss.

Throughout the visitation, Kari did the same thing with others, taking them to Kassidy’s casket for a final good-bye, including her friend Janelle. Perhaps Kari noticed the way Janelle looked at Kassidy, staring at what appeared to be dark bruises on the child’s mouth and nose. “I think those are from CPR,” Kari explained.

Like the night before, Matt showed no emotion. “You don’t have to cry,” Nancy would say later. “But it didn’t seem right that he walked around like it was any other day. As people gave their condolences, it looked like Matt enjoyed all the attention.”

To many, it appeared that Kari was grieving enough for both of them. At one point, she jumped up from the couch she was seated on and ran to the casket, draping herself over Kassidy’s body. “Why did you do this? Why did you leave me?” she cried.

Janelle followed her and took Kari by her arm, walking her away. “She’s not supposed to be in there,” Kari sobbed. “My baby is supposed to be home.”

It was after the visitation and before the funeral began, that Kari turned to Linda, and said, “Mom, I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can,” Linda said, wrapping her arms around her. “We’re going to do this together.”

A former pastor from Trinity Baptist, Matt’s home church in Kerrville, conducted the funeral service. There were flowers and a picture of Kassidy on the casket, and a video was shown of her brief life, from her birth through the birthday party when she’d first shown signs of her illness.

Looking at her granddaughter’s body, Barbara would say she said to God, “This is one of those situations I don’t understand.” Later, many would remark how alike she and Matt were that day, how neither shed a tear. Meanwhile, Kassidy’s death would test Linda’s faith. “God and I had some problems for a while after that,” she’d say later. “We agreed to kind of leave each other alone for a while.”

After the memorial service, the immediate family followed the hearse to historic Oakwood Cemetery. The burial place of three Texas governors, the cemetery was founded in 1878 on 157 wooded acres. In the summers, crape myrtles bloomed a bright pink at the gate.

The spot chosen for Kassidy’s final resting place was in Babyland, a section reserved for the burial of the very young. Not far from a massive oak with branches reaching outward, her grave waited, yawning open just past a stone marker with an etching of Jesus surrounded by children. In a crescent across the top, it read:
SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME.

The day had already taken a terrible toll, and Linda and Jim had to help Kari walk up to the grave. Her body seemed ravaged by grief. Just as he had been at the funeral, Matt appeared businesslike, talking to people, not crying, and not reaching out to comfort his wife. Barbara had a friend with her who snapped photos of Kassidy’s casket. When Kari saw it, she asked her mother to ask the woman to stop. Linda did, and the woman appeared unhappy, saying Barbara wanted the photos for her memories. “Kari doesn’t want the pictures,” Linda told the woman. “Please, put the camera away.”

In the little more than a year since Matt had given her
The
Quest Study Bible,
Kari had written in it often, sometimes while listening to him preach or during Bible study, noting her thoughts in the margins. She’d also tucked two bookmarks inside, Precious Moments cards with sweet drawings of two little girls and the definitions of her daughters’ names: Kensi was the “wise leader,” and Kassidy, “a helper of mankind.”

In her Bible, Kari had also filled out the family history section with the date of her marriage to Matt and the birth dates of both her children. That spring, she penned another entry, a death date for Kassidy Lynn Baker, March 22, 1999. Later, a granite gravestone marked the site where Kassidy was buried. It read:
MY SWEET, SWEET BABY
.

Chapter 11

“K
ari grieved for her child. Oh, how she grieved,” Linda would say years later. “But did she let it take over her life? No.”

Just a week after Kassidy’s death, Kari stopped at her cousin Ami’s apartment to see Joe Joe, who’d just been released from the hospital. She held the baby and murmured to him. She stayed to help Ami care for the infant. “We were worried about her, but Kari wanted to be there,” says Nancy. “She loved Joe Joe, but it was so hard.”

On another level, Kari was plagued by sorrow. The woman so many saw during the first weeks, then months, after her daughter’s death struggled trying to understand what had happened, how and why. She wondered, as any mother might, what she could have done to change fate. But for Kari, there was more reason to question, since Kassidy had come home with such an optimistic prognosis.

The day of Kassidy’s death, Kari left a message for the oncologist who’d treated her daughter. The physician had worked long and hard to give Kassidy a chance to live, and she’d been successful, sending the child home with the prospect of a healthy future. When the doctor called back, Linda stood with Kari in Kassidy’s room and heard the phone conversation. Kari tearfully explained that her daughter had died, but the oncologist didn’t respond as Kari expected. Instead of commiserating with her, the doctor protested, “Kassidy wasn’t supposed to die. How could she be dead?”

Kari appeared stunned, as the doctor warned, “There’s something wrong. I’m going to call children’s protective services.”

When Kari hung up the phone, she turned to her mother, sobbing, and said, “The doctor thinks we did something to Kassidy. She’s calling CPS.”

On top of the anguish of her granddaughter’s death, Linda heard the hurt in her daughter’s voice. She couldn’t imagine why the doctor would make such a bizarre statement. “Well, that’s crazy,” Linda assured Kari. “That’s just crazy.”

The physician followed through with her threat, and just days after Kassidy’s funeral, a CPS worker arrived at the parsonage to talk to Matt and Kari. Anxious, not knowing what to expect, Kari asked her aunt Kay and Kay’s good friend, Jo Ann Bristol, a Waco counselor, to be there to support them. They agreed, and the three women and Matt greeted the CPS worker when she came into the house.

A heavyset woman with a notepad, she had questions, and the small group sat in the parsonage and answered. The CPS worker asked about Kassidy’s battle with the tumor and the aftermath, and about what happened the night of her death. Matt answered as the woman took notes, describing as he would for so many finding Kassidy’s lifeless body. Meanwhile, the woman glanced about, sizing up the house and those gathered.

It was when Matt mentioned that Kassidy had a trained health-care aide in the house eight hours a day taking care of her special needs, that the woman appeared most interested. The aide had even gone to the ER with Matt and Kari days earlier. “Oh, I didn’t know that when you went to the ER you had a home health nurse with you,” the woman said.

That, it would seem, had settled the matter. “I don’t think there’ll be any problems,” the woman assured them as she left.

Matt would later say: “CPS had a claim we didn’t take care of Kassidy properly, and the woman was checking to see if Kensi was okay. She interviewed us, me and Kari. But she didn’t find anything wrong. She never did anything.”

A few days after the CPS worker walked out the door never to return, Kari had her Bible open to a passage that read: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.” The grieving mother, fighting to find some order in all that had happened stenciled her lost daughter’s name, KASSIDY, in all caps beside it.

For Matt, grieving appeared vastly easier. The week after he buried his daughter, he was at the pulpit in Williams Creek Baptist. Some wondered if the young pastor was allowing himself time to grieve, speculating that a father needed time off after the death of a child. Yet there Matt was, standing before the congregation, insisting he followed orders from above: “This is where the Lord wants me. He gives me strength.”

This strength of Matt’s, it would appear, confused Kari. She expected him to share her pain. “I can’t understand why he’s not hurting like I am,” she told Janelle. “Why is it tearing me apart, and Matt’s acting like nothing happened?”

“The fact that it was business as usual for Matt was hard on Kari,” says Janelle, who looked at Matt and saw the same thing Kari did, someone who’d moved on. “At one point, I heard him say, ‘Now I can get back to work.’ It was as if Kassidy’s illness had interrupted his life and his preaching, and he was glad to have it over with.”

Over the weeks, Kari talked often with Janelle, who was working as music minister at Williams Creek. “Kari questioned the events, how they happened, how Matt found Kassidy, how long he’d been in there, was there more they could have done,” Janelle says. “She thought it was strange that Matt was the one who found Kassidy, that he’d decided to go in there and check on her after they went to bed.”

At the time, Janelle never considered that Kari could be struggling with a suspicion that Matt had somehow caused their daughter’s death. Only later would Janelle believe that was exactly what Kari was attempting to sort through.

One time that would stand out in Janelle’s memory was a day she and Kari were at the parsonage and ended up in Kassidy’s room. “Kari began talking about the night Kassidy died. She wandered around the room, saying things like, ‘I just don’t understand what happened. Why did Matt come in here a second time? Did he know something was wrong? What if I had been the one to check on Kassidy, would she still be here? How long did it take for her to die? I mean, Matt checked on her, and she was fine, but then when he went back, she had died. What happened? I hate thinking that Matt did something wrong, like with her feeding tube, that could have caused this. But, why doesn’t he hurt like I do?’ ”

That afternoon, the conversation continued, Janelle listening but able to offer little in response. Talking it through, Kari pondered, “Matt’s able to go right back to preaching like nothing ever happened. How does he do that? He wants to have sex, but that’s the furthest thing from my mind. It’s almost like he’s relieved that Kassidy is gone.”

Although the conversation was highly emotional, Kari didn’t cry. Instead, she looked right into Janelle’s eyes. “She was rambling all of these questions while I just empathized. I didn’t have answers. Her tone was one of confusion. She couldn’t piece together what happened, and speaking aloud her fears of Matt made her feel too guilty. She was careful in how she spoke. She would question what he did that night but then immediately have a look of,
why would I think that?
”

At times, Kari closed her eyes and simply shook her head. Perhaps she felt haunted by what the oncologist had said, her accusations that Matt or Kari must have done something wrong.

Despite all the turmoil inside her, Kari did her best to forge ahead. Yet the sadness seemed to follow her. She was at Target buying clothes for Kensi when she ran into Basy Barrera, her hairdresser. “Did you hear what happened to Kassidy?” Kari asked.

“No.”

“She died,” Kari said, and the two women stood in Target, hugging and crying.

“People were probably staring,” Basy said later. “But I don’t think either one of us cared.”

As the weeks passed, Kari talked often of Kassidy, wanting to keep her memory alive, much to Matt’s annoyance. “He really didn’t seem to have time for it,” says Janelle.

To help Kari through the grieving process, Linda suggested that her daughter seek professional help. “I wanted her to be able to talk freely,” Linda explains. “She needed someone to help her work through her grief.” Kari did, turning to the friend of Kay’s who’d come to help the day the CPS worker dropped by, Jo Ann Bristol, a licensed clinical social worker who’d gone back to study psychology and specialized in grief counseling. Bristol had first worked with Linda’s family in the early nineties, when Linda’s grandfather was dying of cancer. At the time, Bristol worked for a hospice. Over the years, she’d opened her own office, and she and Kay had become good friends.

From that point on, once a week, Matt, with Kensi in her car seat, drove Kari to Bristol’s downtown Waco office, on a quaint street lined with shops and restaurants. Matt and Kensi would then leave, while Kari talked to Bristol, a motherly woman with a well-lined face. There was little doubt that Kari was grieving. “I saw that as Kari’s way,” says Linda. “She lived big, with so much joy in her life. The opposite side was that she grieved hard. Kari never had a feeling that she didn’t tell someone.”

“I don’t want to be here,” Kari admitted in the confines of Bristol’s office.

“Are you suicidal?” Bristol asked.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Kari answered. “I just wish I could be with Kassidy.”

Bristol would later say she’d heard these same words before from others who lamented the loss of a loved one. “Kari wasn’t talking about taking her life. She was just saying overall, ‘I wish I could be with Kassidy.’ ”

At one session, Kari complained that Matt was pressuring her for sex, at a time when she felt as if her heart had been torn from her body. At times, Kari confided that she looked for Kassidy everywhere, in other blond babies she saw on the streets, when she looked up to the heavens. In those sessions, Kari laid her soul bare, exposing the deep pain of a mother who’d lost a child. Yet as the hour ended, Kari dried her eyes and took a lipstick from her purse. She put it on, smoothed her hair, said good-bye to Bristol, and walked to the waiting room with a smile, where an unemotional Matt waited with Kensi. They left together until the scene replayed the following week.

On other days, Kari wrote in her journals, calling out to God. One journal was flowered and brightly colored with a Bible verse on the cover, John 3:216: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

It was on the one-month anniversary of Kassidy’s death that Kari wrote: “My dearest Kassidy, I haven’t written in so long because I just didn’t have the words to say how I felt. Now it has been a month, and you are no longer on earth with us. We miss you so much. The thing I miss the most is your smell. I felt that you are so special, and I just never knew how much until you were gone. You are my soul, and you will always have a piece of that.

“Kensi misses you so much. Give her in your own little way something on her birthday that will let her know you are with her . . . Thank you for letting me see you on Friday in the clouds. Please keep that up. I want to feel you all the time.”

Two days later, the day of Kensi’s third birthday party, Kari wrote again, telling Kassidy: “Oh how I wish you could have been here . . . I am going to keep you by my side forever . . . I know you aren’t sad, but I am . . .”

She then wrote: “Dear Jesus. Please help me! This sadness is death feeling. Give me your strength. Please help Matt and I [sic] get through this. I love him so much. You are my rock. Please give me the strength.”

When Kari talked about the counseling sessions, Jenny saw it as an indication of her friend’s strength. At church, after the first few weeks, Kari had stepped right back into her role of pastor’s wife, working with the youth group. “Kari wasn’t afraid to say, ‘I’m getting help because I need to talk about it,’ ” says Jenny. “She was the strongest person I knew. Anything the group did, anything we needed, Kari volunteered. One day we played tug-of-war. The devil was pulling us in one direction and Jesus in the other.”

In May, Kari wrote to Kassidy again, calling her “my everything” and lamenting that she had nothing left but photographs and videos. “There is something missing, and it is you,” she noted. A bracelet Kari wore, one with two intertwined hearts, had broken, and she said it was because Kassidy had died. “I will carry you with me always.”

The tension must have been building—Kari struggling with such powerful emotions while Matt watched, stone-faced. On the two-month anniversary of Kassidy’s death, Kari again turned to her journal: “I went crazy on your daddy today. I just have so much anger. I don’t know how to channel it. I know how you loved your daddy so much, and he misses you so much.”

As the letter continued, she asked Kassidy to help her control her anger, and to “help me fall in love with your daddy again. You and Kensi are so lucky to have a father like him. I guess I just wish I had more control of the way I felt.” Then, in all capital letters, she printed: “I WANT YOU BACK!”

In those quiet moments, alone with a pen and a blank sheet of paper, Kari pleaded with Kassidy, telling her that she shouldn’t have died. “I wish I could explain why you aren’t here anymore,” she wrote. “But I really don’t even know.”

One day during Bible study, Janelle sat next to Kari. Other women were gathered with Bibles open, and Janelle saw Kari write: “I want to be with Kassidy.”

“I understood what Kari meant,” Janelle said. “I didn’t take it as Kari saying she wanted to die. Kari needed to cry, and she did that. She wanted Kassidy back, with her.”

The summer came, and in July Matt and Kari accompanied the teenagers to the Glorieta Youth Camp in Santa Fe, New Mexico, near the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) Mountains. While Jenny and Kensi drove with Kari in her Volkswagen Touareg, Kari talked. On the drive, she recounted a day after Kassidy’s death when she stood in the empty sanctuary at Williams Creek alone. “I screamed at God. I told God it wasn’t fair.”

That afternoon, Kari admitted there were days when the only reason she got out of bed was Kensi. Yet at camp, Kari played games with the teenagers, held worship services, even helped mow the grass. She smiled and laughed. “She was so strong,” Jenny said.

The summer wore on, and Kari again confided in Janelle, admitting that she didn’t like going in the room that had been Kassidy’s, the room where her baby had died. Quickly after the child’s death, the room was cleaned out, and Matt converted it into an office. Later, Barbara would say that when she drove to the parsonage with Kari in the car, Kari would become upset as they neared the house. “I don’t like coming over this hill,” Kari said. “I can’t breathe, and my heart starts pounding. I want to keep driving. I don’t want to go back to that house where my baby died.”