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Authors: Diane Fanning

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“Some people are simply not meant for one another. Though not wicked or evil by themselves, together they feed each other's weaknesses, turning petty faults into cruelties, and fuel the fires of vanity, jealousy and greed.”
–Michael Peterson,
The Immortal Dragon,
1983
In early 1986, shaken by Liz's death, Patty tried to contact her old friend, Pat Finn. When she dialed her number, she discovered that the phone was disconnected. In the silence of their falling-out, Patty was unaware that the Finns had moved to a new home in Berlin. She went to the DOD office, and asked for and received Pat's new telephone number.
When she called, Pat snapped, “How did you get my number?”
Patty was infuriated by the question and said, “Don't worry, I will never call you again.” She slammed down the phone. It was the last time Pat and Patty ever spoke.
On June 6, 1986, Mike arrived in Rhode Island at Jim and Margaret Blair's home. He left Martha there and traveled to Texas to leave Margaret with George's family. These visits were explained to be temporary and were intended to allow Mike and Patty to get settled in a home in Durham, North Carolina.
Before Mike left Rhode Island for Texas, however, he made a proposition to the Blairs. Martha was too
much for him to handle because of her frequent temper tantrums. He asked if they would keep her on a permanent basis.
Margaret and Jim were delighted at the thought of keeping Martha. But what about Margaret? The girls were so close. The only immediate family they had was each other.
Michael would not entertain the possibility of both girls staying in Rhode Island. With heavy hearts, the Blairs declined his offer. They believed it was too important for the girls to remain together.
In July, Margaret Blair received a phone call from the Ratliff family in Bay City. George Ratliff, Sr., had a heart attack. Could she please come to Texas and pick up her niece? Margaret flew down and brought her namesake home.
The girls had a carefree summer making cookies, planting in the garden and picking up seashells on the seashore. One night, they lay out on the cool grass and stared up at the black sky watching as meteors showered to earth.
On bad weather days, their older cousins, Jodie and Damon, entertained them with puppet shows at the foot of the double bed. A big favorite was the reenactment of the story of Pinocchio. And each evening before they climbed into bed, the two little girls said their night prayers: “God bless Mommy and Daddy in Heaven.”
Margaret and Martha enjoyed their visit, but beneath the pleasures they experienced flowed a dark stream of sorrow. Great loss walked with them all their lives—loss that at this age they could feel, but could not comprehend.
Often they asked, “My mommy's dead. My daddy's dead. When are you going to die, too?”
After their Rhode Island summer, Margaret Blair drove the girls down to Durham and settled them into their new home with Michael, Patty, Todd and Clayton. One day during her stay there, Margaret heard screaming in the backyard and came running. It was so loud, she was certain it could be heard all over the neighborhood. When she reached the kitchen, she encountered a placid Patty.
Margaret asked her what was going on. Patty simply said, “Oh, that's just Michael.”
Looking out the window, Margaret saw Mike's continued rant. The cause of his distress was a bicycle—Clayton had left his bike on the ground behind his father's car.
Worry about the safety of the girls surged through Margaret. She told herself she was overreacting. Patty was very nurturing and loving with her boys. And she was just as nurturing and loving with the girls. It was Patty who mattered to Liz. She stuffed her worries down deep in the back of her mind.
Michael and Patty continued their complaints about how difficult Martha was to raise. They told Mike's sister, Ann, that Martha had tantrums and was manipulative.
Ann was puzzled. A 3-year-old manipulative? What could Martha possibly do? When Ann asked Mike and Patty, they gave her an example.
When the family went out shopping, they said, Martha would stand stock-still all of a sudden, and wail, “Oh,
my mommy died,” and start crying. Patty insisted that she did this just to garner the attention of the other shoppers. Another demonstration that Martha was a grand manipulator, they said, was when she called all sorts of women “Mommy.”
Ann, on the other hand, thought this kind of behavior was to be expected from a little girl who in three short years had lost her mother, her father and her nanny. When Mike and Patty asked if she would take Martha, Ann readily agreed. She was so excited about it, she told all her friends. And then, Michael changed his mind.
Some wondered why the Petersons were not more concerned about Clayton's behavior. He spent all his spare time up in the rafters of the garage tinkering with wires and mechanical objects. Once on a family trip to Hilton Head, he dismantled a Jacuzzi, then could not put it back together. Mike had to pay for a replacement.
A block away from the Peterson home was the house of Fred and Kathleen Atwater. Their daughter, Caitlin, was wedged between the two Ratliff sisters in age. The three girls met at a mutual friend's birthday party. After that, they often played together with Barbie dolls at each other's houses.
One day in 1988, Michael came home to discover two one-way flight tickets to Germany in the mailbox. The passengers named on the itinerary were Margaret and Martha Ratliff.
Michael was furious. He confronted Patty. She told
him that the Geislings, a wealthy older couple who had never been able to have children of their own, wanted to adopt the two girls.
At first, Michael refused to let them go. Patty persisted and eventually convinced him to allow the girls to go for a year and see if it worked out. Margaret and Martha were only told that they were going for a visit.
The 6- and 7-year-olds boarded the plane and flew off by themselves. The Geislings spoke very little English, making the transition more difficult. After a week, the girls were told to call them Mom and Dad. Margaret was confused.
No sooner had she accepted the reality of this change in her life than the rug was pulled out from under her feet again. The couple changed their mind about the adoption. The girls flew back to North Carolina. They cried all the way back across the Atlantic Ocean.
Michael was now working with a literary agent. Over a two-year period, the two men labored over changes to the manuscript about the Vietnam War that Michael began writing when he was stationed in Japan. They pounded and polished every chapter, every page, every word to prepare it for the marketplace.
It was sold to Simon & Schuster for an advance of $600,000.
A Time of War
was released in hardcover in 1990. Michael Peterson had made it.
The dedication in his masterpiece read:
To Patty, who suffered all my wounds.
To Clayton and Todd, whose suffering, I pray, is
only in my nightmares.
To the dead.
And to those whose suffering cannot be relieved.
Although he claimed to love Martha and Margaret as if they were his own, he neglected to mention them.
A Time of War
was described as a cross between Tom Clancy and Graham Greene. The book was set in the midst of war in Vietnam and filled with high-level espionage, acts of personal bravery and both heterosexual and homosexual escapades. Noted authors praised it with enthusiasm. It was heady stuff for any writer and it propelled Michael onto the
New York Times
Best Seller List.
When the book was released in a paperback edition,
Publishers Weekly
added their praise, but with a caveat: “Peterson adroitly evokes embassy intrigue and his battle scenes are immediate and compelling. Some readers may be taken aback by the powerful, troubled current of sexuality, however.”
One evening soon after Margaret and Martha had returned from their 1990 summer trip to Rhode Island, Margaret tattled on Martha. She told Michael that her younger sister did not say her good-night prayers. To him, the child sounded self-righteous. He thought her attitude was unhealthy and unwholesome. And Michael knew who to blame.
He fired off an angry letter to Margaret Blair on July 18, 1990. “The girls had a terrific time with you, and I thank you very much. My only concern is with the
heavy dose of religion they—Margaret in particular—brought back. It borders slightly on fundamentalist fanaticism that Liz was utterly opposed to.”
He informed her that Patty accepted a job offer to teach at the same school in Germany again. He and all four children were going back with her to live together as a family. He then lashed out at Margaret for wanting to adopt the two girls. It was, he said, out of the question. “They absolutely need me.”
He rejected the importance of the girls' bond with the Blair family. “Believe me, if I thought that it would be better for Martha and Margaret to live with you, or that you could better raise them, then I would step aside, but deep in my heart I believe that I am the best person to mould and guide them—and love them too.”
The Peterson clan moved back to Germany. It was a brief and bitter family experiment. Soon, Michael returned to Durham with Martha and Margaret. He left his two boys with their mother in Germany.
At the end of the school year in 1991, Patty came back to the States with her boys. She drove Margaret and Martha up to Rhode Island and told the Blairs they could adopt the girls. She said that she and Michael were separating, and Margaret and Martha needed a stable home environment. By this time, Michael had moved in with Kathleen Atwater and her daughter, Caitlin.
Margaret Blair had heard about their nanny, Barbara, from Liz and from her mother. Now, she heard from Barbara for the first time. Barbara was delighted about the impending adoption. She asked if she could send the
girls mementoes and a tape of a German song she used to sing to them.
Margaret was pleased with Barbara's continued interest in the girls and encouraged it. Throughout the summer, Barbara called the girls, sent them short notes and arranged for the delivery of little posies to them from a flower shop.
One day in late August, Margaret Blair answered the phone. A hostile Mike Peterson was on the other end. He told her that he had no idea that Patty left the girls to be adopted. He said it was his decision—only his—and totally up to him.
He was coming to Rhode Island. He would take the Blairs out to dinner and announce his decision on whether or not they could keep the girls. Kathleen and Caitlin made the trip north with him and they stayed at the Biltmore in Providence.
Michael changed his story, telling Margaret and Jim that he would leave the decision up to the two girls. The Blairs knew how Margaret felt. She had complained to them that she had no privacy in the Peterson home—all of her mail was opened by Michael.
Michael, Kathleen and Caitlin sat down with Margaret and Martha to discuss the future. When Margaret suggested that she might want to live with her aunt and uncle, Michael said: “I leave this choice up to you. But I'm telling you that your mother never—never—wanted you to live with your Aunt Margaret. Never. But I'm leaving the decision up to you.”
With that level of emotional pressure, 10-year-old Margaret and 9-year-old Martha succumbed. They said they
wanted
to live in Durham, but it looked as if they
had been out-manipulated by Mike Peterson. From that day forward, Mike discouraged any visits to Rhode Island.
On September 11, 1991, Patty Peterson wrote a letter expressing her dismay to Margaret and Jim Blair. “Since learning of the removal of Margaret and Martha from your home, one week after the fact, I have been in a state of profound shock and physical unwellness. I offer to you both deeply felt apology, as I came to you in good faith. I sorrow that you and your children received the girls into your family with open hearts, and then were subject to their arbitrary departure.”
She went on to emote her disdain for the actions of her estranged husband: “The present situation is anathema to my very soul.” She reiterated her willingness for the Blairs to adopt the girls and concluded the letter on a solemn note: “I do not believe, however, that it was Elizabeth's will that her daughters be subject to frequent dislocation nor that the family of her friend and two sons be destroyed.”
Now, Patty and Mike Peterson were separated. Kathleen Hunt Atwater was divorced from her husband, Fred. The three girls in the two households formed the link that launched the intriguing, successful novelist and the ambitious and beautiful dark-blonde engineer with gray-green eyes into orbit together. The stage was set for romance, extravagance and tragedy.
“Life is too important to waste a single moment.”
–Kathleen
Wanting a better life and believing the myth that the streets of America were paved with gold, the parents of John Franklin Hunt moved to Boston from Newfoundland, a maritime province of Canada, just before his birth in 1899. His father's death two years later left his mother in desperate straits. John was working to help support the family by the time he was 10 years old. The family soon moved to New York.
John learned the brick-laying trade in his new country and attended Cooper Union College. After completing his education, he started his own construction company.
In the 1940s, he was sub-contracting for another construction company. A young secretary there caught his eye. Veronica Ann Hogan, a New York native 21 years his junior, was responsive to his flirtation.
Veronica's father had died two days after Christmas when she was 16 years old. Her daughters thought she may have seen a substitute father figure in the older John Hunt, or perhaps she was looking for a way out of a hardscrabble existence. Whatever the motivation, Veronica fell in love. The couple married in 1946.
They did not stay in New York. They moved to
Kansas City, Missouri, where their first child, Steven Desmond Hunt, was born on January 23, 1951. The family then moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. There on February 21, 1953, Kathleen Morris “Kathy” Hunt first made her appearance.
The family settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1955 and grew by the addition of another daughter, Candace Susan Hogan Hunt. A third girl, Lori Anne Hunt, was born five years later when John Hogan was 63 years old.
Both John and Veronica stressed the value of education to their children. John, unlike many men born in the nineteenth century, believed it was important for his daughters to go to college. He emphasized to his girls the need to have career objectives.
Although Veronica did not have a college education, she was a life-long learner. All of the children made their first trip to the library when they were 2 years old. Every evening, the family gathered at a dinner table stacked with books. A dictionary and encyclopedia were omnipresent. If any question was raised during mealtime conversation, Veronica had the resources at her fingertips to find the answers.
Steve was a protective and proud older brother. He was also ambitious at an early age, drawing his sisters into entrepreneurial schemes. In one instance, he supervised while his sisters wove fabric loops on a plastic loom to make potholders. Then he escorted them door-to-door as they peddled their wares to their neighbors.
All three girls were members of the Girls Club that met at their elementary school Tuesday and Thursday
evenings. Each month, the most exemplary one in the group was named “Girl of the Month.” Every year, one person was selected to be “Girl of the Year.” In seventh grade, this honor fell to Kathy. She advanced to the next level of competition, vying with others who had won the same award in other clubs. Kathy came out on top, winning the coveted title of “Lancaster Lass.”
Kathy carried her ambition to succeed into high school. She was president of the debating club and editor of the school magazine,
Generation,
at McCaskey High School. She played on the tennis team and volunteered at St. Joseph's Hospital.
She was the first student selected to take advanced Latin classes at the local college, Franklin & Marshall. She graduated first in her class of 473 and was selected for publication in
Who's Who in American High School Students.
In 1971, Kathy Hunt earned a singular and historic honor—she was the first woman ever admitted to Duke University's School of Engineering. Her qualifications were so exceptional that admission was a breeze. When her brother Steve left for Virginia Military Institute to study engineering two years earlier, his badge of honor was his slide rule. Times had changed by the time Kathleen went off to school—she carried a $160 Texas Instruments calculator.
As an undergraduate, she was a contributing editor to
DukEngineer
magazine. She lived on the third floor of her dormitory. In a pair of wooden-soled Dr. Scholl's sandals, she raced up and down the stairs amazing everyone with her coordination and agility.
When she came home after the first semester, she
informed her family that she was no longer Kathy—she was now Kathleen. When Candy asked her to please pass the salt, Kathleen picked up both the salt and the pepper and instructed her younger sisters that passing them together was proper etiquette.
Kathleen took a Physics class in the summer of 1972. Her parents suspected that something more than academics drove this decision. They packed up the family and drove from Pennsylvania to Durham to find out what it was. When they met Fred Atwater, a graduate student and a teaching assistant in the Physics Department, the reason was clear.
Kathleen and Fred's relationship started with trips out for coffee after his evening office hours. Kathleen spent her spare time thinking up intelligent questions to ask in order to impress Fred. And it worked.
To Fred, she was an intelligent and thoughtful young woman eager to discuss points of philosophy and life itself. Besides being smart, she was very sweet. She was the kind of person who would do nice things for other people for no reason at all. And, Fred thought, she was very attractive.
After the summer session, Kathleen went home to Lancaster for a few weeks. When she returned to Duke for the fall semester, she and Fred started dating.
During the summer of 1973, Kathleen took her first career-oriented job as a junior engineer at Huth Engineers in Lancaster. The next summer, she was a junior engineer at W.M. Piatt & Company in Durham.
She graduated from Duke with a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering in 1975. She and Fred married on August 3 of that year in a civil ceremony at a
magistrate's office in Durham. No family members from either side were present, but a handful of college friends were there to witness the exchange of vows.
The newlyweds took a trip to Kathleen's home later that month. Veronica and John welcomed them with open arms and threw a reception in their honor.
Kathleen and Fred returned to Duke to further their education. Fred continued his work on his doctorate in Physics, and Kathleen pursued a master's degree in Civil Engineering. She worked as a teaching assistant in the department in the first year of graduate school and as a research assistant both years.
In May 1976, she made her first professional presentation at the American Society of Civil Engineers conference at Waterloo in Canada. The subject was a futuristic look at magnetic power as a basis for transportation.
The Atwaters moved to Columbia, Maryland, when Fred finished his doctorate and accepted a position in research at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. They bought their first home there and Candace was a frequent visitor. She enjoyed hanging with the couple whenever she could.
In February 1977, Kathleen finished her master's thesis. She turned down an offer from Procter & Gamble because Fred did not want to relocate, and accepted a position as applications engineer at Baltimore Aircoil-Pritchard, a subsidiary of Merck & Co., specializing in the construction and repair of large-scale, field-erected cooling towers for use in industry and at power-generating facilities.
For more than two years, Kathleen tried to get
pregnant. She was becoming impatient and frustrated with her lack of success. Her long wait came to an end in the summer of 1981. She went to her doctor's office for a test on the morning of her husband's 35th birthday. The results were positive.
She greeted Fred that evening with ribbons wrapped all around her body. “Your birthday present is here,” she told him. The couple was jubilant. Fred and Kathleen took birthing classes together—Kathleen practiced her breathing and Fred learned proper coaching techniques. They awaited the arrival of their first child with unbridled excitement.
1982 was a banner year for Kathleen. She moved into the executive stratosphere at BAC—Pritchard with a promotion to Product Manager for Engineered Products. Her responsibilities included goal setting, cost analysis, purchasing, developing marketing plans and writing catalogues.
The most fulfilling day of all, though, was April 27, when Kathleen gave birth to Caitlin Veronica Atwater. There was a small setback in their birthing plans when Caitlin was breech. It made a Caesarian section necessary, but Fred was there by her side just the same. He was overwhelmed with awe the moment he first saw his daughter and quite pleased that his secret preference for a girl was satisfied.
After ten years of bad health, Kathleen's father died before Caitlin was two years old. After forty years of marriage, Veronica Hunt was a widow. Her granddaughter was too young to understand the paroxysms of grief that swirled around her. Caitlin would be older before loss laid its lonely hand on her head.
While ambitious and purposeful in her career, Kathleen still made time to revel in the daughter she adored. Living in nearby Columbia, Maryland, the family often traveled to Washington, D.C. At a young age, Kathleen introduced Caitlin to the Smithsonian museums in the nation's capital.
Caitlin and her mother's favorites were the paintings of Mary Cassatt. Her frequent use of mother/daughter themes in her work evoked emotion in both of them. Caitlin developed an early love of standing in a room filled with artwork and absorbing its power.
Each trip to D.C. ended with a ride on the carousel. The Smithsonian National Zoological Park, however, was the major source of magic and wonder. On one occasion, Caitlin and Kathleen stood entranced watching as a baby giraffe was born. They went to the gift shop that day and bought a breakfast plate and mug to commemorate the event. Every Mother's Day, Caitlin would serve Kathleen's breakfast with these mementoes.
In 1986, Fred was on the hunt for a new job. He got offers from a number of companies, including ones in Long Island, Philadelphia and Raleigh-Durham. It was an easy choice. The couple enjoyed the area when they attended Duke, so they headed back south to North Carolina.
Fred began his new position at GTE Government Systems right away. Kathleen took a break from her career to set up their new home in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Durham, and get to know the neighbors. The Atwaters also bought a sailboat.
Kathleen shared Fred's love of sailing and loved to drive down to Washington, North Carolina, and set sail down the Pamlico River to the Pamlico Sound and on to the Outer Banks.
Caitlin loved when her grandmother, Veronica Hunt, came to visit their new home. Her attachment to this grandparent was magnified by the similarities between Veronica and Kathleen. Both were quick-witted and their banter rocked any room with laughter. They displayed similar mannerisms and possessed a deep well of nurture. Whether Veronica lived in Pennsylvania or Virginia or Florida, she showed up for every one of her granddaughter's birthday parties in addition to spending many weekends at Kathleen's home. Caitlin grew up knowing that, like her mother, her grandmother would always be there for her.
After a few month's hiatus in her career, Kathleen went back to work. June 8, 1987, was Kathleen's first day at Northern Telecom, later known as Nortel, in the Research Triangle Park, the commercial center for Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. Her entry-level position was low on the totem pole. Kathleen's ambition and competence soon elevated her at Nortel as it had at BAC—Pritchard.
Her marriage to Fred Atwater did not fare as well. In fact, the foundation was crumbling beneath their feet. On her visits to their home, Candace noticed a young woman, a co-worker of Fred's, whose presence in the Atwater home seemed constant. She observed what she thought was an inappropriate level of intimacy between
Fred and this woman and spoke to her sister about it.
At first, Kathleen ignored the warning signs. At last, she could deny it no longer—her marriage was sinking fast. Fred moved in and out of the home for short periods of time.
Caitlin was aware of the fighting and unrest in the home, but she was having problems of her own. Second grade was proving to be a challenge. She had no difficulty with the academics, but the social interaction was a disaster. She didn't feel she fit in and she could not understand why the other children didn't like her. In the midst of her own turmoil, Kathleen took the time to listen to her daughter and help her cope.
She explained to Caitlin that her problem was only with one girl who was cruel to her, not with the whole class. “Don't let one little thing become a generalization,” Kathleen told her. With every passing year, Caitlin developed a deeper appreciation for the consistency and constancy of her mother's advice and in her ability to break problems down to their bare essentials.
The last hurrah for the Atwater family was a trip to Disney World. Like millions of kids before her, Caitlin was enchanted. She did not like the teacups because her Dad—in a burst of enthusiasm—made them spin too fast for her taste. She was a bit leery of Space Mountain, too—a little too dark and a little too scary. But she was wild about Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in Frontierland. She squealed with delight as she zipped in and out of the deserted gold mine on the runaway mine train.
They picked up a set of four Disney placemats on that trip. Caitlin claimed the one with Cinderella on it as her
own. When the table was set for dinner, that mat always marked her place.

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