MARY CLARK - Piece of My Heart

Laurie had attended the annual gala for God’s Love We Deliver multiple times and was a regular donor. Last year for the fundraising auction, she had donated a tour of Fisher Blake Studios, culminating in a lunch with both the host and the producer of Under Suspicion .

That connection had come in handy when she wanted to meet with Summer Carver’s mother, Julie. Laurie had culled her old emails for the contact information of the staff member who had solicited the auction donation.

“Caroline,” Laurie called out, now recognizing the face of the young woman making her way to the reception desk to meet them. As Laurie rounded out the introductions, she noticed Grace eyeing Caroline’s high heels with a knowing smile. “Thank you so much for helping us out, especially on such short notice.”

“I was happy to do it,” Caroline said. “Julie Carver’s one of our best volunteers. She and her husband used to run their own restaurant in Queens. When he passed away, she decided to sell, but, turns out, she missed the work. Her retirement was very much to our benefit.”

Rather than bombard Summer Carver’s mother without notice during her weekly volunteer shift in the kitchen, Laurie had called Caroline and asked her to act as intermediary. According to Caroline, Julie had said she was a regular viewer of Under Suspicion and seemed eager to speak to someone about concerns she had regarding her daughter’s connection to a convicted killer.

Caroline’s eyes brightened at the appearance of a woman emerging from the first-floor commercial-style kitchen, drying her hands on her apron. Laurie recognized her from her Facebook photographs. “There’s Julie now. I held one of our conference rooms for you to meet in private.”

It only took a few minutes for Laurie to explain that they were conducting research for a special covering Lou Finney’s murder and Darren Gunther’s claim that he was wrongfully convicted. “As Caroline probably mentioned, your daughter’s name arose in our investigation because she frequently visits Gunther at the prison. We looked at her social media accounts to see how the two of them might be connected and happened to come across your posts, suggesting you had some concerns about your daughter. We were wondering if they related to Darren Gunther.”

“Those prison visits are what really put me over the edge with her,” Julie said wistfully. “At first, I was heartened by her interest in his criminal case. After a couple of very rocky years, Summer was back in New York, living with me, trying to figure out what she wanted to do next. She finished some course work she needed for her bachelor’s degree and started studying for the LSATs to go to law school. She has always been interested in the criminal justice system. In fact, she’s the one who got me hooked on your show. We watch it together.”

Laurie allowed the comment about Summer’s “rocky years” to lie for now, but she recalled Julie’s Facebook post from three years ago, mentioning that her daughter had moved home.

Julie continued. “You have to understand, my daughter has one of the best hearts in the world. You couldn’t ask for a more loyal or compassionate friend. But sometimes her feelings are almost too much. She’ll go to the end of the earth for someone she cares about, but to the detriment of herself—or anyone else for that matter.”

“My sister’s like that,” Grace said. “She’s willing to burn up her own life to help someone she loves.”

Julie smiled sadly. “So you understand. Let me ask you something: Does the person your sister is trying to help always deserve it?”

“Heck no,” Grace said. “One man ended up dumping her by text message—on her birthday no less. When she called and asked him why, he put his new girlfriend on the phone to talk to her. If some fool did that to me, the police wouldn’t find the body.”

Laurie was starting to wonder if it had been a mistake to bring Grace along, until Grace followed up with “I take it Darren Gunther isn’t the first person you’ve had to worry about in Summer’s life.”

“Definitely not,” Julie said. “She would have been the high school valedictorian except a boy who was a smidgen behind her in the class convinced her to flub a test so he could have it instead. He told her he needed it to get a scholarship, and then he broke up with her as soon as grades came out. But nothing beats the guy she met the summer before her senior year at Stony Brook. He wanted to be an actor. Convinced her to quit college at the start of her last semester to move to LA with him and be his manager. For two years, she lived her entire life around him, to the point that she stopped calling me because we couldn’t even talk without fighting. When she ran out of money to spend on him, he found another woman and moved on. The only bright side is that she finally came home.”

Because of Grace’s comment about her sister, they now had an answer to where Summer had been before returning to New York. Laurie was also starting to understand the value that someone with Summer’s personality could provide to a man like Darren Gunther. If she truly believed Gunther had lost eighteen years of his life for a crime he didn’t commit, could she justify taking a child’s freedom for a few days to balance the scales of justice?

“How have things been between you and your daughter since then?” Laurie asked.

“We were good at first. She wanted to pursue a career in criminal law and started reading more and more about the innocence movement, which led her to Darren Gunther’s case. At first, she made it sound like she was working as an intern for his defense lawyer or something. I was overjoyed, thinking that would give her a leg up on her law school applications.”

“By his lawyer, do you mean Tracy Mahoney?” Laurie asked.

Julie apologized and said she did not know the attorney’s name. “In fact, I have no idea whether Summer even had contact with the lawyers. The next thing I know, she’s driving up to Dannemora as often as the prison will let her in. At that point, I knew this wasn’t any normal office volunteer situation and confronted her about it. Turns out, she’d written that man a letter in prison. She had been working on her admission essay about wrongful convictions and was hoping to collect personal stories. It went from a pen pal situation to her meeting him in person, to what seemed to me to be practically an obsession. Suddenly, there were no more LSAT books on the dining room table, there was no more talk about applying to schools. Just Darren this, Darren that. I honestly got so worried that I called the prison to try to bar her from seeing him, but I couldn’t give them grounds for doing so.”

Laurie heard the obvious anguish in Julie’s voice. “You said the prison visits were what ‘put you over the edge’ with Summer. Exactly what did you mean by that?”

“I felt like I was enabling her, letting her live here, paying her bills, all so she could give her time and energy to this murderer. And honestly, even if he’s innocent, he’s taking advantage of her goodwill. I didn’t want my daughter falling prey to some prisoner she barely knows instead of figuring out how to live her own life. So I put my foot down. I told her she had to stop visiting him and focus on her future if she was going to continue to live under my roof. That was four months ago. She hasn’t spoken to me since.”

“I’m sorry,” Laurie said. “That must be terribly painful.”

Julie nodded, accepting the concern. “Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake giving her an ultimatum. I thought she’d have no choice but to respect my wishes. Or at the very least, she’d have to get a job to support herself, which might keep her from spending so much time upstate.”