Free 04.Die.My.Love.2007 by Kathryn Casey Page A

goals for Piper, in addition to her current diagnoses of depression and attention deficit disorder, Welton noted that he’d consider alcohol abuse and a mood disorder. That fi rst session, he took her off the Ionamine for her ADD and put her on a more common drug for the disorder: 20 mg of Adderall.
    At first, changing her medication appeared to work. At their next meeting, seven days later, Piper said the Adderall had been helpful, increasing her ability to focus, especially when playing tennis. By then she was also on the antidepressant Prozac, Welton noted, “as she had been more frantic and stressed than usual.” The physician set a follow- up for two weeks and noted his goal on her chart as determin-ing her best combination of medications.
    It was about that time that Melody had what she’d describe as an even stranger than usual conversation with her neighbor. One morning when Piper dropped in for coffee, Melody was griping about her husband, Pete, nothing serious, just the minor annoyances of everyday married life.
    Piper chimed in, complaining about Fred. Then Piper announced that she’d found a way to eliminate such aggrava-tions. “You should put Pete on Prozac. I’ve got Fred taking it, because I think he’s depressed,” she said. “He doesn’t know. I’ve been slipping it in his coffee.”
    Years later Piper would contradict Melody Foster’s recollection, claiming that Fred had been prescribed the antidepressant by Tina’s second husband, Howard Praver, a Houston gynecologist. Praver, however, would deny that he ever treated 58 / Kathryn Casey
    Fred as a patient and say he never wrote a prescription for him. “Fred didn’t need Prozac. He was one of the most level-headed, laid- back people I’d ever met,” he says. “I had no reason to treat him for depression.”
    At the time Piper told Melody about the Prozac-laced coffee, Mel was stunned, not knowing what to say, wondering if Piper had just made it up to shock her. Or perhaps, she thought, it was a product of what she increasingly viewed as Piper’s disturbed mind. Mel quickly changed the subject, thinking there were some things she’d rather not know.
    Piper’s therapy with Welton continued throughout that winter and spring. At times she talked about a relationship with yet a third man—beyond Fred and her twenty- something lover—this time a nonsexual liaison with a man she described as “a match for her intellectually.”
    In March, Piper missed all her appointments with the psychiatrist, and didn’t show up until early April. She seemed sanguine then, saying her mood had been stable.
    During the session, she claimed she’d cut off the relationship with her young lover when she discovered he was having an affair with one of her friends. Perhaps having the younger man out of her life forced her to focus, at least briefly, on her marriage. Piper is “now debating about the value of her relationship with her husband,” Welton wrote.
    “In general, she feels stuck with inertia on her part. Suggest need her marital Rx to work on issues with husband.”
    In hindsight it seems that summers were usually more tranquil times in the Jablin house hold. Piper enjoyed her trips home to the Rountree family reunions on the Texas beach. Fred still rarely went, but he didn’t interfere with Piper attending and taking the children. And in summer, without classes to teach, he was able to spend more time with her. Piper seemed to require that: Fred’s constant attention. She only seemed happy with the marriage when he focused on her and the family. As soon as his thoughts strayed DIE, MY LOVE / 59
    back to work, Fred would later say, Piper grew discontent.
    The summer of 1999 started out well. They spent time at the beach house and the neighborhood pool. But their usual hiatus of marital woes was interrupted by a discovery: When Fred decided to buy a car, a new Ford Explorer, the fi nance company ran a credit check. In the process, Fred discovered