A Father's Love (13 page)

Moreover, she had married a family law attorney, someone who had to have known better than to condone the abduction of a child from one country to another. Ironically, the Lins e Silva family was Brazil's preeminent legal family when it came to dealing with Hague cases. When anyone in the United States called the International Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers in an attempt to find an attorney in Brazil who was skilled in family law and could help in an abduction case, the Lins e Silva law practice was the one most often recommended.

Pamela helped Wendy set up her own Orkut account, so she could monitor Bruna's activities on her profile page. About a week later, Wendy noticed that it appeared that Bruna had made a change to her profile, in the section under “passions.” Wendy asked Pamela to translate. Bruna now listed “J.P. and my children, Sean and Chiara.”

“This wasn't here last time, was it?” Wendy asked Pamela.

“No, it wasn't,” Pamela said.

“Maybe J.P. has a child by another marriage,” Wendy suggested. Pamela went onto Bruna's site, read the notes on her “wall,” and translated the Portuguese for Wendy. “It looks like she is pregnant and they are having a girl and they are going to name her Chiara.” They couldn't tell how far along Bruna was, but there was no doubt that she was pregnant.

 

 

ALTHOUGH ONE OF Bruna's complaints about life in New Jersey was that she had to work, in one of her early calls describing how great life was for her in Brazil, she disclosed that she had opened a fashion
attillie
, a business in which she could design and sell clothes. She was back in Brazil little more than a year before her mother helped her set up a children's clothing boutique in Ipanema. She had studied design in Milan, so it made sense that she would want to use her education and skills, but the hypocrisy of her saying that she didn't want to live in New Jersey because she had to work irritated and insulted me. Teaching school and being home early each afternoon, and having holidays and summers off, was much easier than running her own business every day.

In her court papers, she had tried to turn this around, claiming, “I was forced to work and pay for our family's health insurance.” We did in fact change our health plan from my Screen Actors Guild policy to her school's plan a couple of months before she abducted Sean.

When I first became aware of Bruna's statements regarding our health insurance, I wondered,
Is getting health insurance through a spouse's employment such a horrible thing?
Then, after talking with a number of friends, I realized that it was not at all uncommon for a married couple to secure coverage through a spouse's workplace. A relative of ours was in the insurance business, but because his wife was a public school teacher and her group health insurance provided better coverage for less money than his company offered, he had gone with her policy.

Then I thought that perhaps in Brazil, health insurance was purchased differently than in the United States, that people there regarded me as a loser because we changed our policy and obtained our health insurance through Bruna's employment the last few months she lived in America. It was certainly one of the Ribeiros' caustic complaints about me once Bruna left. When I asked my lawyer in Brazil how most couples handled health insurance there, he replied, “Exactly the same. The couple usually opts for whichever insurance gives them the best coverage and price, whether it is through the husband's employment or the wife's.” I realized again that Bruna was simply grasping at straws, trying to find some excuse for her actions.

She ran off with our child! Why? Because we got our health insurance through her employer instead of mine? It was a foolish and frivolous smoke screen.

Beyond that, to think that she could possibly have supported our family on her salary, teaching at a small private school, was ridiculous. Yet she perpetuated the notion in Brazil that she was the main breadwinner in our family.

 

 

NEAR THE END of May 2008, Wendy went on Orkut again and found a picture from one of Bruna's boutique fashion shows for her line of little girls' clothing. Sean was in the picture and Bruna was obviously pregnant. Wendy later discovered information about a party for Sean in which J.P. was referring to Sean as his son. The more Wendy uncovered, the more frustrated she became at me for allowing Bruna any hold over my life.

Actually, nothing that Bruna did surprised me anymore, and in some ways nothing, apart from her keeping Sean from me, affected me. By that time I had emotionally detached myself from her. My concerns were for Sean and Sean alone. If anything, Bruna's actions made it easier for me not to suffer over the end of our marriage. How could I express any emotion for this person who had done such horrible things not only to me but to her own child? The cruel, selfish person with whom I was now dealing was so unlike the woman to whom I'd thought I was married. In some ways, Bruna's infidelity and her stone-hearted attitude made it easier for me to focus on Sean.

When Wendy found out that Bruna had opened a boutique and was now pregnant, she pressed me to move on as well. “Bruna has moved on with her life. But what about us, David? Where are we? What are you going to do? Are you ready to move on with your life?” I understood her frustration, but I was too consumed with my concern for Sean to be completely aware of the torture I was unwittingly inflicting upon her. She obviously saw a possible future with me, as I did with her. But I had difficulty focusing for long on anything other than getting Sean home—and Sean was not yet home.

 

BETWEEN JUNE AND August 2008, Bruna's and J.P.'s Orkut sites were quiet, and Wendy and Pamela found no new information. In fact, they assumed that Bruna had already given birth to her baby, and had taken a maternity leave from her boutique. Then, in mid-August, Wendy checked Orkut again and found a photo of Bruna showing that she was still very much pregnant. “Wow, she's going to have that baby any day now.”

A
LTHOUGH FRUSTRATED WITH THE LACK OF FORWARD PROGRESS in our relationship, Wendy never pushed me too hard, perhaps because she knew of my intense, passionate, all-consuming commitment to bringing Sean home. But she often tried to refocus my attention on us, on our future, if we were even to have one together. At times her frustration simply got the best of her, and she needed some space. But I wouldn't let that space grow too large; I was persistent in trying to keep us together. I believed then, as I do now, that having Wendy in my life was a godsend.

I hadn't been ready for the family trip to Boston that Wendy had proposed earlier in the summer, but eventually I realized the truth of her words: that I needed to love and to let people love me. Our first trip together finally came at the end of the baseball season, when Wendy and her children and I drove to Baltimore to see the Yankees play the Orioles. I had never been to Baltimore's Inner Harbor, located a short distance from Orioles Park at Camden Yards. So the trip was a milestone for me. Most of all, it was a pivotal point in Wendy's and my relationship.

THAT SUMMER, ANOTHER young woman from Brazil, Vanessa, came to work at Wendy's company. Like Pamela before her, she was placed at a desk right next to Wendy. Wendy had to laugh. She was now working between two Brazilian women. Throughout the summer, Wendy and her new Brazilian friends periodically checked Bruna's online postings.

On August 29, Wendy's birthday, the Friday before Labor Day, nobody was at work except Wendy and Vanessa. During a break, Wendy suggested that they go on Orkut to see if there was any new information. She discovered that one of Bruna's friends had written on her Orkut wall, “Bruna, don't worry, we'll take care of the store while you're gone.”

“What does that mean?” Wendy asked.

“She must have had the baby,” Vanessa said, “and her friends are helping with her boutique while she is attending to the baby and not working.”

Wendy didn't mention anything to me about having perused Bruna's site that day.

That Labor Day Monday, while I was out working a tuna fishing charter, Wendy returned to Bruna's Orkut site. She went to J. P. Lins e Silva's profile and used an online translation site to translate from the Portuguese. One of the comments on J.P.'s wall intrigued Wendy, but the computerized translation seemed stilted and strange, so she e-mailed the Portuguese message to Vanessa and asked her for a better translation.

About an hour later, Vanessa e-mailed Wendy back. “My God, Wendy! Someone died in João's family ... maybe Bruna. I don't know for sure!”

Vanessa sent her translation of the choppy message to Wendy:

Vanessa and Wendy exchanged a flurry of e-mails. “Something is not right,” Vanessa said. “I think Bruna might have died.”

“What! What are you talking about?”

Vanessa explained more of the context of the message to J.P., and although they couldn't be certain, it seemed that something tragic had occurred for which the friend was offering condolences and apologies to João Lins e Silva for not attending a Catholic mass held seven days following somebody's death. It appeared that the somebody who had died was Bruna.

Wendy called me around 5:00 PM. I was still at sea with my clients, returning from a fishing excursion. “Where are you? How much longer till you're back?”

“Still at sea, coming around. We're coming around the tip of Sandy Hook right now.”

“I might have something to tell you,” Wendy ventured.

“What?”

“I'm not going to tell you, because I'm not sure yet.”

“Does it have anything to do with us?” I asked.

“Kinda . . .”

“What did I do?” I asked, half joking.

“Nothing,” Wendy said.

“Okay, I'm going to lose you, because my cell phone service is fading in and out. Keep your phone on and I'll call you back later. I have to go,” I said.

While I was piloting the boat in to the marina, Wendy received more information by way of e-mails from Vanessa. “Wendy, Bruna died!” Vanessa sent Wendy a link to a newspaper article telling the story. “She died after having the baby; she bled to death. The baby lived, but Bruna died.”

Wendy reeled at the news. Finally, she asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes, that's why I sent you the newspaper article.”

Wendy called me again and again, but my phone sent her messages to voice mail. When she finally got me, she sounded very serious. “David?”

“Yes?”

“I have to tell you something.”

“What?” I said.

“Do you know how people sometimes say, ‘You need to sit down before I tell you this'?”

“Yeah,” I offered, wondering what in the world Wendy was going to tell me.

“You need to sit down,” she said.

“Okay, I'm sitting. What's wrong?”

Wendy's voice was strong. “Bruna's dead.”

“What!”

Wendy's words streamed together. “She's dead! She died having the baby!” She launched into an emotional outburst of sentences while I was still trying to process her initial statement. A million thoughts pummeled my mind all at once, but, almost like a computer sorting out the unimportant information, I sifted Wendy's information down to all that mattered. I didn't ask about the circumstances surrounding Bruna's death or any other details. There was only one question that mattered right now. When Wendy calmed down enough to hear me, I asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“How are you sure?”

“Vanessa found the article in
O Globo
[a major Brazilian newspaper and media conglomerate] and she sent me an e-mail link to the article stating that Bruna had bled to death during childbirth. The baby lived, but Bruna died.”

“I'm calling my lawyer,” I responded. “I have to call Ricardo.” Although my heart was pounding madly, I knew the importance of getting in touch with Ricardo in Brazil as soon as possible. My thoughts raced.
How could this go on any further? I have to get down there to Brazil. Sean needs me. My son is suffering. His mom just died. He's been apart from me for more than four years. He needs me. I have to get there to comfort him. I have to be with him. This time they have to let Sean and me see each other.
I was shaken, but at the risk of sounding callous, I must confess that when I heard the news, my first thoughts were not about Bruna. Certainly I was distraught and disturbed by her death. I didn't know the details, but I was sorry that Bruna had died.
How awful!
She had just turned thirty-four the week before. Nevertheless, my concerns were for Sean. My son was now bereft of both of his parents. This situation was getting worse and worse for everyone involved.