Free Before He Wakes by Jerry Bledsoe Page B

for more than a year after going back to Larry, but in March 1976, she found new opportunity. She left her job at the fabric company and became a receptionist for a big manufacturing company, a job that paid only $25 more per month. But she had been promised, she said, that this was only a foot in the door, and greater things were to come.
    Larry remained in his office manager’s job and continued his martial arts classes. He was now a red belt, helping Lou Wagner teach beginners and volunteering his time at the Boys Club in High Point, where he took Bryan for activities.
    Bryan was now a first-grader at Trindale Elementary School and had formed a close friendship with another boy from his neighborhood, Locke Monroe. Bryan had started going to Sunday school with his new friend, and Barbara had gotten to know Locke’s mother, Brenda, because of their children. She invited Barbara and Larry to join Bryan at church one Sunday. They accepted and soon began attending services regularly at Cedarcrest Friends Meeting, only a few miles south of their house. Larry’s parents were pleased when they learned that Larry and Barbara had turned to the Quaker faith that had been their own heritage. Maybe this was indeed a new start for both of them. Maybe this was what they had needed to strengthen their marriage.
    Barbara’s promise of bigger things to come at work was fulfilled when she became secretary to the company president, Daniel Morefield. He was a self-made millionaire. A man of great confidence and a personable nature, he harbored high political ambitions. Married, with children, he also had been involved in a long-term off-and-on affair with a younger woman, Susan Deaton*.
    Although her promotion didn’t bring much more money, Barbara celebrated by trading in her Mustang for a new Ford LTD. Her new job required her to attend business meetings with her boss, travel that sometimes took her away on weekends. She frequently returned with expensive items that she showed off to her in-laws—gifts from business associates, she said; it was the way business was done nowadays. But the Fords had seen such gifts before, and they doubted that they had anything to do with business. Barbara, they feared, was returning to the old habits that had hurt Larry so much.
    Not long after Barbara went to work for Daniel Morefield, Susan Deaton sensed that he had turned cool toward her. He didn’t call anymore. When she called him, he couldn’t talk, couldn’t find time for her. Finally he told her that so many things were going on that he wouldn’t be able to see her again for a while. Susan was angry and hurt.
    “I knew he was having an affair with Barbara,” she said years later. “I just knew it, woman’s intuition.”
    Susan had developed a close friend at Morefield’s company, and she called her about it. The whole plant was swirling with gossip about Barbara and her boss, her friend reported, and everybody was certain that something was going on between them. Barbara seemed to go out of her way to make it obvious.
    Susan confirmed the affair in her own mind later when she saw Barbara and Morefield leaving a convention together arm in arm.
    In August 1977, however, Barbara left her job abruptly. As soon as Susan heard about it, she called her friend at the company. The word was that the gossip about Barbara and Morefield had finally reached his wife.
    When Morefield showed no sign of renewing their relationship after Barbara left the company, Susan began to suspect that he was still seeing her, and she knew that was the case when she saw them together two months later.
    Susan had never met Barbara, and she was certain that Barbara didn’t know about her affair with Morefield. Wanting to size up her rival, she got a mutual friend of hers and Barbara’s to invite the two of them to lunch.
    “Money, money, money,” that was all she talked about, Susan later recalled. “She was going to have a Mercedes, she was going to have a beach