Read A Fever in the Heart: And Other True Cases for Free Online Page B

the morning with his eyes sleepy and his hair tousled, and he was usually there as they all went to bed. In truth, Jerilee was living with two men, one her husband and one an interloper.
    But he was a disturbingly fascinating interloper. She knew that he drank a little, but she had no idea how much. Gabby was careful to be his most charming when he was with Jerilee. If there was an early hint that she found him special, perhaps it was the way she called him "Glynn" instead of Gabby, as everyone else did. She didn't like his nickname. It was Morris who began to see his best friend with more critical eyes. He saw traits in Gabby he had never noticed before. "Morris said he could just see a change in Glynn," Jerilee said much later. "And Glynn would drink for two or three days without sleeping and do things that were unlike his character. He took a gun up to his ex-wife's house and he made threats toward her, and Morris could just. .. well, he lost his respect for him."
    But Morris didn't immediately confide in Jerilee about the negative things he was seeing in Gabby. Since she hadn't known him at all well before he moved in with them, she couldn't see the alarming change. "I didn't know Glynn Moore that well previous to that,' she admitted.
    Morris didn't tell Jerilee how much Gabby was drinking, or how bizarre his behavior became when he did drink. He didn't tell her about the obsessive, almost psychotic jealousy Gabby was exhibiting toward Gay.
    Later, Jerilee would see the other side of Gabby, the one that made Morris pull back from the friendship. But by the time Morris distanced himself from his old coach, it was far too late to stop what was happening in his own home. Someone who wasn't there cannot possibly say when things began to go awry in the Blankenbaker marriage. One can only conjecture. Jerilee and Morris had been married eight years, and they had long since grown accustomed to each other. Gabby Moore was a new element in the equation. He clearly found Jerilee enchanting. He listened to what she had to say, and he was quick to jump up to help her clear the dinner table. It soon began to seem natural to have him there, he was like part of the family. And then it was more than that he was part of the family. Gabby Moore needed to talk about his feelings, and Jerilee listened. Gabby was, as a song popular in that era said, "a giant of a man brought down by love'a condition that is ultimately appealing to most women. At first, Jerilee probably felt sorry for him as she listened to him talk about his lost marriage. The only side to Gabby she had ever see nand that was at a distance was the macho coach, the sportsman, her husband's friend. Now, as he poured his heart out to her, she must have sensed that he had emotional depths she had never realized. Jerilee was undoubtedly touched when she saw how the end of his marriage had diminished his joy in life and in his successes. He would have made it seem that he was telling her secrets that no one else knew, that he trusted her enough to reveal weakness that he would show only to her. Jerilee must have realized why Morris had felt so sorry for him.
    His heart was broken, his children were lost to him, and every day was a challenge. Yet, somehow he gathered the strength to go on, to paste a smile on his face and go off to school to teach and to coach. The stage was set for disaster. Before he was aware of all the circumstances and the many-faceted sides to Gabby's personality, Morris had invited a predator into his home. He had thought nothing of leaving Gabby alone with Jerilee. He was disgusted when he realized how much Gabby was drinking disgusted and disappointed in the man he had once idolized, but Morris wasn't worried and he wasn't wary. He should have been. At some point Jerilee's relationship with Gabby had metamorphosed. Gabby no longer grieved for his lost wife and family, he was in love with his best friend's wife. Although he didn't tell her right away, watching