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Chapter One

“Save my babies! Oh my God!”

Amanda Hamm was hysterical, jumping up and down, pointing to the water, screaming her aching plea to the first emergency worker to arrive after her frantic 911 call.

The tall woman with wavy chestnut hair was being held in check by her boyfriend, Maurice LaGrone Jr., his arms wrapped around Amanda’s waist. Now he turned her around, forcing her head into his shoulder, trying to prevent her from seeing the desperate scene about to unfold some 70 yards from where they stood.

DeWitt County Sheriff’s Department Sergeant Timothy Collins looked toward the waters of Clinton Lake. A vehicle was submerged, not far from a boat ramp. Tail lights—not what he would expect—reflected through the water. Usually it was headlights you’d see when a car or truck, on a slippery ramp, was dragged backwards into the water by an attached boat trailer. This green 1997 Oldsmobile Cutlass had gone into the lake front-end first—not backwards. The hood of the four-door car dipped downward in seven feet of water. The vehicle’s rear portion was closer to the shore, resting in water just over four feet deep.

As other rescuers began to arrive, Collins quickly turned to what brought him and the others to the lake at breakneck speeds—saving children trapped inside the submerged car.

He removed his gun belt and ran into the water, noticing part of the car’s antenna was above the water. The lake was calm but so murky that when he dove under water, he could see nothing. Collins felt his way along to a door handle on the vehicle’s passenger side. He opened the front door with little effort. But the weight of his wet uniform and bullet-proof vest pulled him down. He swam, then waded back to shore where he removed the vest.

Meanwhile a second deputy replaced Collins at the front passenger door. Reaching through the inky water, his hands felt an infant car seat. It was empty. He grabbed it and pushed it behind him. His next desperate reach produced a little girl, not much more than an infant, floating face down in the front portion of the car. He flipped the toddler onto her back and pushed her over to Collins who rushed her to paramedics waiting on the boat ramp.

So began the hand-to-hand relay between first responders who used every ounce of instinct and training to save the children.

A Clinton ambulance pulled into the parking lot with two emergency medical technicians on board. One of them waded into the water and took a second child, a young boy, maybe 50 pounds, from a deputy and hurried him to a partner.

The second EMT performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the boy as she helped carry him from the lake. Once inside the ambulance, the unconscious child vomited frequently, making it difficult to force air into his lungs through an oxygen mask placed on his face. The rescuer did chest compressions, paused to check for a pulse that wasn’t returning and screamed for help when the little girl was delivered to the back of the ambulance. Two firefighters responded and immediately applied to the girl the same life-saving maneuvers being used on her brother.

Back in the lake, an EMT was pulling still another boy, younger, from his floating posture in the rear of the car. The boy’s feet had been snagged in the tentacles of a seat belt. The emergency responder rushed him to shore, lay him on the ground and began CPR outside the ambulance hectic with activity aimed at saving the boy’s brother and sister.

Watching the drama unfold from a fishing boat was Darren Leggett. The timing of his trip back to shore after an evening on the lake had put him in the midst of the turmoil. A woman’s screams of “my kids are dead” had competed with the grumble of his boat’s motor. Setting aside initial hesitancy to become involved with what looked like a domestic situation between a bi-racial couple, Leggett had moved his boat closer to see what he could do. That’s when the first police unit arrived.

Leggett relayed to officers the meager but crucial information he had gleaned from the couple: There were three kids in the car. Now it was obvious to him that the two boys and little girl were all in extreme distress.

As the sun set on the surreal scene, Maurice consoled Amanda, continuing to hold her back from the ambulance and the commotion as the first, second, then third child was pulled from Clinton Lake. They remained near the pay phone they had used to summon help in the parking lot within clear view of the lake.

A Clinton firefighter was behind the wheel of the ambulance as it pulled out for the sprint to Clinton’s hospital with six-year-old Christopher, 23-month-old Kyleigh and four rescuers on board. The desperate labor to save the youngsters would continue for all of the five-minute ride.

With a second ambulance not yet at the scene, rescue workers decided to transport three-year-old Austin in the rear of the fire department vehicle. One EMT continued life-saving efforts in the back of the SUV as another firefighter hurried them to the hospital.

It had taken first responders less than two minutes after they arrived to get the kids out of the submerged car. But it was hard to tell how long the children had been in the water. Their small bodies appeared lifeless.

Deputy Bruce Randolph directed Amanda and Maurice into the back seat of his patrol car for the high-speed ride to the hospital.

“Is there somebody we can call?” he asked as the police vehicle tore down Route 10, lights and siren going.

“I can’t breathe,” Amanda gasped. She was wet and cold. “Do you think my kids will be okay?”

Maurice held her. “Sweet Jesus,” he said. “Let these kids be all right.”

Randolph was determined to get Amanda to the hospital as quickly as possible in case there were questions she needed to answer for the medical staff. But his haste seemed to add to Maurice’s anxiety. Several times he asked the officer to slow down from his speed of 100 mph.

Chapter Two

Dr. David Gill was in the middle of his routine emergency room shift at Clinton’s Dr. John Warner Hospital when he heard a police radio dispatch about a multi-victim accident. Additional doctors and nurses were immediately summoned to beef up the small hospital’s skeletal medical staff supervised by a single physician.

As the three children arrived in the two emergency vehicles, he recognized them. Their mother brought one or more of them to the ER almost monthly for treatment of what generally was nothing more than a case of the sniffles. Now they were rushed to separate treatment rooms and individually paired with a doctor and nurse prepared to put every shred of their medical knowledge, skill and energy into trying to revive the three children.

The two-story hospital’s parking lot was overflowing with emergency vehicles when Randolph’s squad car screeched to a stop. He moved quickly through the ER’s automatic doors and, looking behind, saw Amanda and Maurice were slow to emerge from the vehicle. Once inside, Amanda rushed to get to her children, but she was stayed by nurses otherwise busy organizing life-saving resources.

Maurice remained closer to the entrance, away from the first-floor hallway and two treatment rooms where the three children were taken. It was already crowded with rescuers, police and even some family members. Amanda’s mother Ann Danison and aunt Kathy Clifton had been brought to the hospital by Ann’s fiancé, Lindy Powers. He had been watching TV when he got an urgent call: Bring Amanda’s mother to the hospital right away, the receptionist told him, offering no details.

Lindy and Ann were engaged and living in her childhood home on Clinton’s north side. With no specifics to offer about the nature of the emergency, Powers pulled Ann and her sister from a church meeting they were attending. Their ailing mother had probably taken a turn for the worse, they speculated, as they drove the few blocks to the hospital. But that thought evaporated as Lindy maneuvered his car through the maze of emergency vehicles. Something was massively wrong, he thought, and it almost certainly didn’t involve his fiancé’s mother. What they saw was a chaotic nightmare.

When Ann first heard, then spotted her daughter in the hallway, Amanda was screaming and crying, angry because she wasn’t being allowed to see her children. As she hugged Amanda, Ann was curious why her daughter’s clothing and hair were wet. She saw Maurice further down the hallway, yowling as if he were drunk, a sound unlike any cries Ann had ever heard before.

Overwhelmed with fear and dizziness, Ann couldn’t bring herself to ask Amanda what had happened to her grandchildren and was instead helped to a nearby waiting room where she was given oxygen. Amanda passed the hallway but joined her mother periodically, laying her head on her mother’s lap and crying, “I want my babies.”

Lindy Powers stood by helplessly as he watched utter despair saturate his future wife and stepdaughter. He felt it, too.

Dr. Brit Williams, a physician summoned for the emergency and assigned to Christopher, was guardedly optimistic when rescue workers told him his patient had been in the water about 15 minutes—not so long, he thought, that the boy couldn’t be revived.

As he worked on the six-year-old, Dr. Williams determined a blood oxygen level of 20—far below a normal 80 to 100. Warmed liquid packs were applied to the boy’s body. Warm saline was infused through an IV in an effort to raise his body temperature above its 92 degrees. The doctor noted Christopher’s airway was full of water, a factor that added to his growing skepticism about how long the boy was said to have been underwater.

Meanwhile Dr. Gill was working on Austin, who had arrived with no detectable pulse or blood pressure. Still, the doctor believed the child might be saved.

Blankets were placed over Austin to raise his low body temperature while Dr. Gill tried to restart the boy’s heart. Forty-five minutes into the resuscitation effort, the temperature had risen to 98 but the heart would not beat.

Dr. Gill found the boy’s mother in the hospital’s chapel at the end of the hall and broke the news to her. Austin was gone.

“Oh my God, no! No!” Amanda screamed. She fell to the floor.

With miracles and medical wonders exhausted, doctors pronounced both boys dead at 9:15 p.m.

Dr. Tricia Scerba had been about to sit down to dinner with guests at her Clinton home when Dr. Gill called, asking her to come to the hospital right away to help with the emergency. She had arrived at 8 p.m., minutes before the ambulance, and met with Drs. Gill and Williams. They quickly decided that she, a pediatrician, would care for the youngest victim.

Dr. Scerba, too, began to question the report that the children had been submerged for 15 minutes when she discovered how much water was in the baby’s lungs and stomach and its body temperature was only 85 degrees. After 40 minutes of effort, Kyleigh’s body temperature had risen to 97 degrees and her heart began to beat sporadically. Dr. Scerba met Amanda in the small chapel. Surrounded by family members, she briefed Amanda on her daughter’s grave condition and plans to airlift her to a children’s hospital an hour away in Peoria. If Amanda was going to have time with Kyleigh, it needed to happen right away, the doctor told her.

Amanda followed the doctor to the treatment room where the little girl lay on a gurney. “I’m sorry,” Amanda said. “I’m sorry,” she repeated several times.

Dr. Scerba, seeking a better understanding of what had happened, asked Amanda.

“We went to the lake before going home to watch movies,” Amanda told the doctor. “We were getting ready to leave and he got confused on which way. He put it in the wrong gear and hit the gas and we sped into the lake. He got mixed up.”

“Did you try to get them out?” the doctor asked.

“It was all tangled.” Amanda struggled to put words together. “I couldn’t find anything. I’m so sorry.”

It was the first of many apologies Amanda would be offering authorities and those closest to the children. They all sought—nearly demanded—an explanation that made more sense, one that more closely mirrored feelings that the mother could have—should have—saved her children.

At 9:40 p.m., a helicopter set down in the parking lot of a nearby Dairy Queen restaurant that served as a landing site for medical transports. A nurse accompanied Kyleigh on the 30-minute flight to St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria.

Trauma produces myriad reactions. Some people are calm and focused, putting all their energy into dealing with what’s in front of them. Others become hysterical, draining away any ability to manage the ordeal, replacing it with paralyzing fear and anxiety. With two brothers dead on tables in the emergency room and their little sister clinging to life on a medical transport, questions began to surface in hushed tones and subtle observations among those who responded to the call for help.

“There’s something wrong with this,” one EMT told Dr. Gill. “We got in there and the water was so shallow. It wasn’t hard to get them out.”

Detective Rick Hawn, a 10-year-year veteran with the DeWitt County Sheriff’s Department, had just finished photographing the nude bodies of Christopher and Austin when Amanda was allowed to see her sons, starting with Austin. Standing in the corner of the treatment room littered with medical supplies spent in the futile attempt to save a life, Hawn closely observed Amanda’s demeanor and reactions and those of her cousin, Jackie Blackburn, who was with her.

Blackburn loved her three young relatives but barely tolerated their mother. She considered Amanda an inadequate parent based on multiple relationships that never worked out—most especially her most recent lover. Blackburn couldn’t overlook the fact that Maurice’s roving eyes had once settled on her.

“I love you Austin,” Amanda said to her younger son as she plunged her face into the pillow still supporting his head on the gurney. “I want you to come home with me. Why did this have to happen to you?”

Minutes later in another room, Amanda and her cousin spent time with Christopher. Again, Amanda buried her face in a pillow and didn’t look directly at the deceased child.

“I love you so much,” she said. Tears did not come. “You were doing so good in school. I never wanted anything to happen to you. I’m so sorry. I tried so hard.”

Hawn didn’t take his eyes off Amanda. He assessed her every move and how she expressed her grief. His observations, and those of others who witnessed the adrenaline-filled moments at the lake and hospital, would shape perceptions, a lengthy investigation and its conclusions.

Yet those closest to Amanda knew tears and raw emotion had long been extinguished in her as she dealt with the trauma and abuse of her childhood. As an adult, Amanda hid her wounds as best she could, sometimes becoming defensive, almost armored, when life’s challenges were more than she could manage.

Hawn, however, was unaware of Amanda’s past struggles. He knew only what his instincts as a police officer told him: This situation had the distinct whiff of a potential crime.

The few, final minutes Amanda spent with her sons in the sterile setting of a hospital emergency room came near the end of what had begun as a routine day in a busy household.

As was her habit, Amanda dropped off her three children at 8 a.m. at the parking lot of a grocery store where their babysitter was ending her shift as a crossing guard near Clinton Junior High. The babysitter gave the boys the Pop Tarts their mom had brought with them for breakfast as she took them to Douglas Elementary School. Then she drove to her home where she would look after Kyleigh for the next six hours.

Amanda went to her job at Grecian Gardens Restaurant while Maurice hung out at the apartment, playing video games. The days-long discord over her suspicions that he was involved with other women had been shrouding their relationship in near silence.

Yet the fear of losing her boyfriend, even one who cheated, kept her in the doomed relationship. Following fights over Maurice’s serial infidelity, it was always Amanda who went back.

After her restaurant shift ended at 2 p.m., Amanda stopped by a fast food restaurant a few blocks away to check on the status of her application for a second job. With no word available on the job, she went on to pick up Kyleigh from the sitter’s and go home until it was time to fetch the boys at school. She changed clothes, trying to avoid Maurice’s obvious frustration as she ignored him. She lacked the energy to initiate an argument over what was bothering her.

Amanda left the apartment with Kyleigh to get the boys and run a few payday errands.

She visited the housing authority office to make a payment on her overdue rent balance of 313 dollars. Tight finances continually put Amanda behind on her government-subsidized monthly rent of 142 dollars.

At a bank drive-up window, Amanda cashed two child support checks and made a payment on her six-year-old Cutlass before going to the DeWitt County courthouse where her mother worked as a secretary in the state’s attorney’s office. Amanda wanted to repay the 15 dollars she had borrowed from her mom earlier that week.

Christopher tapped on the window outside Ann’s office to get his grandma’s attention. He waved the money in his hand. Ann stepped outside to see her daughter and the other children who waited in the car. As always, the kids were thrilled to see her. Austin asked if he could spend the night with her, a request she turned down because she and Lindy were still unpacking boxes from their recent move into her childhood home.

“It’s my turn anyway,” Christopher reminded his brother.

It would be the last time Ann Danison would see her grandchildren alive.

In her final stop before going home, Amanda went by her Aunt Kathy’s house to talk to Kathy’s boyfriend about moving a bed to Amanda’s home for Kyleigh.

Back at the apartment, Maurice pressed Amanda for the reason for her chilly mood. She believed he knew. She also believed no good could come from talking about it just then.

Family dinner plans centered on the orange chicken Amanda planned to make. But her frustration grew when she was unable to find the cookbook with the recipe. Macaroni and cheese was a possibility, but Amanda suggested they take the children out to eat. It was, after all, payday, Sept. 2, 2003. And the day before the anniversary of their first date.

Tension followed the family into The Shack, a diner and Clinton’s oldest restaurant. As they occupied a booth near the door, eyes turned toward Maurice, as usual the only minority in the restaurant. He knew there would be stares. In Clinton, it was one thing to have a black man in the restaurant. It was something more for that black man to be with a white woman.

Before she sat down, Amanda went to use the restroom. Christopher and Austin followed. Kyleigh stayed behind, her high chair next to Maurice.

The waitress took drink orders from Maurice for the entire group: a lemonade for him, a Coke for Amanda, milk for the children. The waitress sensed disharmony between the two adults as Amanda and the boys returned from the restroom and the family awaited dinner.

Eager to finish his food and leave an uncomfortable environment made worse by the domestic discord, Maurice ignored the chit chat among the children about their food.

There was even disagreement about what to do after dinner. Maurice was interested in picking up some movies, getting the kids to bed and relaxing. It was still early, Amanda argued, her dream of the life she wanted for her family—happy times shared with children—again colliding with her boyfriend’s desires. She suggested they take the kids to Clinton Lake before calling it a night on a nice fall evening.

Maurice grudgingly agreed, pushing the speed limit as he drove east on Route 10. It was the first time he and Amanda had gone to the lake together. Amanda gave him directions, telling him to turn off the highway onto an asphalt-paved road lined with autumn-toned trees.

The west side access to the lake has an upper level parking lot where boaters park their vehicles and trailers. Maurice drove past the lot, down a hill towards the lake, stopping the car on the boat ramp, facing the water. The car’s front bumper was close to the water’s edge, offering the car’s occupants a perfect view of the lake.

What happened next traumatized and divided the community. It also put Amanda and Maurice on a collision course with the criminal justice system and a fight for their lives.

Chapter Three

For Amanda Hamm and Maurice LaGrone Jr., the tragic outcome of an end-of-summer journey to the lake had been paved with years of rejection, mistreatment and mistakes that disrupted every step of their lives. When their paths intersected in September of 2002, Amanda was 26, a single mother working at the same minimum wage position where Maurice, 27 at the time, was trying to make enough money to get by.

The search for a stable life started early for Amanda. Growing up in the central Illinois town of 7,000 that gave its name to the nearby lake, Amanda was 11 years old when her mother, Ann, married Mark Walston, a utility company worker who cared enough to adopt Amanda. Her natural father had left the family when she was three. He surrendered parental rights after her mother married Walston.

The emotional pain brought on by her biological father’s abandonment stayed with Amanda and worsened when her mother and adoptive father split after eight years.

Lingering trauma and upheaval in her family life led Amanda to her first suicide attempt at age 14; she was hospitalized after swallowing 42 aspirin.

Learning difficulties put her on a special education track in school and left her feeling apart from other students, especially popular girls able to choose their friends and turn down dates Amanda was never offered. Thin and nearly six feet tall, she was taunted by classmates who called her “Stork.”

Amanda was chronically late for school because she stopped to smoke behind a convenience store. She faked being ill to avoid classes and received a letter just two months before graduation threatening expulsion. So, she dropped out and later obtained a high school equivalency certificate. With her functioning ability ranked on the low average end of the IQ scale by school counselors, the certificate spoke more to Amanda’s determination to support herself financially than her skills as a student.

Having watched her mother rotate among romantic relationships, Amanda craved the attention and affection of men. She sought proof she was worthy of love. Her abuse as a child and later as a young woman surely colored her relationships with male partners. Always the goal was to find a man whose love would be loyal and long lasting. If she could find that devotion, Amanda would cling to it as bedrock for the stable family she yearned for but was denied as a child. Her reckless and often desperate search for a partner produced the opposite results: three pregnancies in six years with three different men.

From their conception, Christopher, Austin and Kyleigh sailed along rocky shores. Amanda had met Christopher’s father, Greg Hamm, while they both worked temp jobs obtained thorough an employment agency and married in February of 1997. Little Christopher was born three months later. Within two years, they were divorced. A half-year relationship with Craig Brown produced Austin in November 1999. An even shorter interlude with Shane Senters, a man she had known for about a decade, resulted in the birth of Kyleigh less than two years after that.

Each time, sex preceded commitment, and when the sex ended, so did the relationship. Amanda found herself alone after each disappointment, working two, sometimes three, minimum wage jobs to pay the bills. The series of missteps had proved costly for her—economically and emotionally.

Maurice LaGrone Jr. was equally trapped by his dysfunctional background.

As he entered his teen years in St. Louis, Maurice watched a drug habit swallow up his mother. Doris Woodley disappeared for weeks at a time. She sought treatment yet slipped deeper into the dark world of crack cocaine. Maurice was sent to live within a circle of family members, developing a strong connection with younger cousins.

At 15, he was shuffled north to Bloomington, Ill., to stay with his father and stepmother. Maurice loved music, especially singing. Church activities at the Living Word Church occupied much of his time. There was choir practice on Tuesdays and Saturdays, Bible study classes on Wednesdays and services on Sunday. School work was not a priority.

The addictions to alcohol and crack cocaine that controlled the life of Maurice’s mother had the same stranglehold on his father. He watched as his dad, sitting in a living room chair, sorted marijuana seeds. Maurice described the move from the family chaos in St. Louis to Bloomington as “a jump out of the jelly into a jam.”

Maurice had a knack when it came to convincing women that he was there for them—at least for the amount of time he was willing to invest in the relationship.

Such an opportunity with a 17-year-old girl swayed Maurice to drop out of Bloomington High School during his junior year. He was just 16 when he took up with the young woman, whose status as a single mother was the start of a pattern for Maurice. At three years, it was to be his longest-lasting relationship, one in which she trusted Maurice to babysit her infant son, who came to call him “dad.” He also held a string of minimum wage jobs.

At age 20, Maurice was grief stricken but not surprised when he received word his mother’s body had been found in a dumpster in St. Louis. Police believed she had been beaten to death with a shovel. A suspect was later convicted of her rape and murder.

When Maurice’s relationship with the young woman ended, he returned to St. Louis where he lived with an aunt until he met and began a relationship with another young woman. The couple had a son who bore Maurice’s name. At two months of age and sleeping between his parents, the baby died of what was determined to be Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Not long after that, the couple broke up over the same issues that eventually toppled all of Maurice’s matches with women—an immaturity that led to an inability to keep a steady job.

Within a few months, Maurice had met and moved in with another single mother and her two children in a Farmington, Mo., apartment. He stayed two years before she grew tired of paying all the bills.

With other doors closed, Maurice returned to his father’s home in June 2002 where he shared cramped quarters with several stepbrothers and cousins. He was now 27.

Had Maurice compiled a work resume, it would have reflected a series of short-term jobs at fast food restaurants and temp positions where his pay averaged $6 an hour. It was at one of those jobs—a bulk mail packaging company in Heyworth, a small-town midway between Bloomington and Clinton—that he met Amanda Hamm.

At first, Maurice hardly noticed his co-worker, even though they worked side-by-side assembling packets of printed material for an insurance company. But after a while, her obvious attraction to him was hard to ignore. After all, he hadn’t had sex in weeks. They slept together on their first date on Sept. 3, 2002.

Amanda and her three children were living in a three-bedroom public housing apartment on Clinton’s east edge. Each morning she would drive 30 miles north to Bloomington to pick up her new boyfriend and then double-back 12 miles south to their jobs in Heyworth. After about a week, they agreed he should move in. For Maurice, it represented a liberated lifestyle, away from his father and stepmother.

There were several other low-wage jobs that came and went before Amanda and Maurice both got work at the Grecian Gardens Restaurant near their apartment, she waiting tables for $3.09 an hour plus tips, he washing dishes for $5.15 an hour.

From its start, the courtship of Maurice and Amanda was risky business. Not long after Maurice moved into her apartment, Amanda’s friends and relatives became wary of her new relationship. Yes, Maurice seemed to enjoy playing with the children, but his refusal to watch them while Amanda worked or ran errands put him in disfavor with Amanda’s mother. Besides, there was an impulsive side that made him less than a reliable caretaker for the children. Christopher and Austin told their babysitter about games Maurice played that involved knives and pretending to put their heads in the oven. Beyond that, Ann worried her daughter’s decision to date a black man could be an issue for her grandchildren in a town where African-Americans were less than one percent of the population.

Finances were tight. Food stamps worth 300 dollars supplemented the two restaurant paychecks and a total of about 400 dollars in monthly child support from the children’s three fathers—all stretched thin to pay the costs of housing and medical care not covered by public assistance. Yet cash was found for alcohol and drugs. Maurice liked a steady stream of marijuana, a drug Amanda also enjoyed as a way to relax.

Arguments flared over Maurice’s demands for frequent sex, over previous relationships and what might be going on when Amanda was at work. Friends believed the disputes sometimes turned physical. On at least three occasions, they saw Amanda with a blackened eye or bruises on her neck.

But the two stayed together for the limited benefits the other brought to the relationship. Amanda would never give up her dream of a functional family and even firmed up plans to attend a private college in downtown St. Louis—a plan that included Maurice and the three children.

On the college’s short application form, she expressed regret she had dropped out of high school but pride that she had attained her GED in 1997. “My second accomplishment and the one I am most proud of,” she wrote, “would be that for the past six years I have raised three wonderful and beautiful children on my own. Even with some struggles of everyday life, I pulled through and taken care of them in the best way possible. Now I am ready to give them and myself a better life and go for the career I want and need to succeed in my life.”

Amanda inquired about housing and made plans to send the kids to a daycare operated by Maurice’s half-sister there. With plans to study hospitality and tourism, she dreamed of becoming a travel agent—maybe moving to Las Vegas—and hoped her boyfriend might be inspired to complete a high school diploma program, maybe even take some college courses. Amanda longed for the things she knew made happy families happy: a sense of stability that comes with a steady and reliable partner and enough money to pay the bills with a little left over for some fun.

But the scope of Maurice’s vision seemed more limited. He was willing to stay the course until he became bored or something better came along.

Amanda told friends she liked Maurice’s smooth way of talking and good looks.

Their sex life, she said, was amazing.