The Dark Side - Danielle Steel Page 0,65

Maybe Zoe wanted a piece of that kind of admiration, and the only way she could get it was by making Jaime sick, or letting her get hurt. Mom, are you sure about this, I mean about Zoe?”

“No, I’m not,” she said honestly, “which is why I haven’t talked to you about it. From everything I’ve read, the puzzle pieces fit, and she’s a match with the pathology, but you’d be a better judge of it than I. I have a book about Munchausen by proxy in layman’s terms, if you want to read it. It’s frightening, especially when you read the case studies. People with this disorder can be, or become, extremely dangerous. And after what you tell me happened in Florida, I think you need to watch Jaime closely. Does Zoe know how upset you are?”

“Maybe. I’ve only just started figuring it out myself. I’m not sure what I think.” Constance nodded, and picked at her pasta, and he did the same.

“There’s also a different form of the disorder, which is simply called Munchausen, where adults pretend to be ill, but they aren’t, they just want attention. In Munchausen by proxy, the illnesses and injuries are not pretend, they’re real, caused by a parent, usually a mother, and it is far more scary. They can also attack the elderly. Most victims are under the age of six, because they don’t understand what they’re seeing, and can rarely report it accurately. People with Munchausen by proxy are usually accomplished liars and get away with it. And what they do, and how they do it, is extremely difficult to prove. They’re often above reproach and no one would suspect them,” which was true of Zoe, champion of abused children and devoted mother. Nothing his mother was telling him was good news, but in some ways it was a relief, to finally hear the truth, if it was the truth about Zoe. It sounded to him like it was. He trusted his mother and valued her opinions immensely.

“How do you stop them?”

“You can’t. You can’t change them. The child or the victim has to be removed from them to be safe. That’s the bad news for you here. If we’re right, you may have some hard choices to make at some point, for Jaime’s sake.” He nodded, but didn’t comment. After all, he wasn’t sure yet. This was just a theory. “Some of them wind up behind bars, sometimes for murdering their own children. Most of them go undetected, and you just have to hope the child survives, physically and psychologically. Some cases are less extreme. I thought that about Zoe at first, but I’m more concerned now. If Jaime had drowned, she could have played the grieving parent. It’s always about playing a role, star mother mostly. What they want is praise and attention heaped on them. They appear to be perfect, but they’re severely damaged. The old saying ‘too good to be true’ seems to apply here. I’ll lend you the book I mentioned, if you want to read it.”

“I want to,” he said with a look of determination. “Christ, Mom, I hope you’re wrong about this.”

“So do I, Austin. But I don’t think I am. I’ll drop it off at your office. Don’t let her see it,” Constance said wisely.

“I won’t. I promise.” Austin looked frightened and his mother’s heart ached for him.

“You know, the poisons under your kitchen sink were a perfect example. She left them there so Jaime could get in to them, and if she had, they would have killed her. And she did it after bragging about being the safety warden. Not exactly.” He shuddered as he thought about it and remembered Zoe saying that they had to respect Jaime, and teach her boundaries, and leave the poisons in plain sight so she could learn not to touch them, as a two-year-old. It was crazy, and he’d had to move them himself. And there was the gate she had taken off the stairs after he’d set it up. There were so many examples he couldn’t even begin to remember them all.

Austin looked even more sober when he hugged his mother and left her after lunch.

She went home afterward, put the book in a manila envelope, and dropped it off at his office an hour later. He read the description on the jacket flap when he got it, and it was even worse than his mother had described. Munchausen by proxy was terrifying,