It should've been no surprise that within three hours of being returned home, Ashley sneaked out the bathroom window and ran off again. We discovered her absence relatively soon after she disappeared, but Mike and I were in a quandary. I was the team-mom of Nicole's softball team, and Nicole was supposed to play a game at the softball field. Softball was a family event, meaning usually we all went to cheer our kids on. Mike encouraged us to just go by ourselves and let him handle Ashley. He called his step-dad who promptly came over with Luanne to watch the youngest children while Mike took off looking for her in his truck. Within an hour he finally tracked her down between the 7-11 and the high school, and he brought her home thrashing and shouting to passers-by for help. Cal and Luanne took the twins and Andrew to their house.

As I said, I wasn’t home, and the details of the next hour were a little murky. Mike found an extra key-lock doorknob and, with his step-dad standing guard over our errant daughter, put it on Ashley’s bedroom door with the lock on the outside. Her window was seven feet off the ground, so he figured she’d stay put, and he locked her in her bedroom until I returned home. After his parents left, Mike stayed in the house, trying to check his anger without much success. He looked in on her every so often to make sure she was okay and still in her room, and Ashley continued to scream and kick at the walls for awhile.

Gradually she settled down and became quiet. About twenty minutes before my return home Mike checked on her again and found Ashley swinging from her ceiling fan by an electric cord. Cutting her down in a panic, Mike discovered that our daughter was still most definitely alive. He said it appeared like she changed her mind immediately and was throwing her legs out in an attempt to hook and climb on something and get down. But the hanging freaked Mike out, and he didn’t know what to do. Mystified by her now totally calm behavior, he was fixing her some soup for dinner when I got home. He explained the circumstances, said she didn’t look physically hurt, but he didn’t know what to do. I suggested that we contact the counselor from our church, Kerri Martin.

It would be 18 months before Ashley broke down and told me the truth. She faked her suicide attempt in an effort to get her dad’s attention. She was standing on a stool with the cord around her neck waiting to hear the key in the lock, and just before Mike walked in, she kicked the stool away. And when he got her down, she pretended to be semi-conscious. All of this was premeditated so Mike would find her and feel guilty. But at the time it seemed real enough, and Kerri was the only one we knew who had expertise in this area.

Mike and I had actually gone to see Kerri in February, due to the arguments over Ashley's behavior and attending high school. Mike had suggested we see a therapist because the fighting was getting out of hand, and I agreed. It was only after we were actually sitting in her office that I discovered that it was my husband's second visit with her- he'd already spoken to her and spilled the beans about our marital problems. I was very angry and felt tricked into seeing Kerri, and I was fearful that I'd been set up. But after I answered her questions and talked about my point of view, Kerri came out very vocally on my side. She told Mike he needed to stop putting so much pressure on me to be everything to everyone and start listening and respecting me. As she put it, "Julie is your wife, Mike. Not another one of the children."

Well, here we were with a suicidal daughter with a penchant for running away and what did we know? Kerri came out immediately to see us. We told her everything- the constant struggle to get Ashley to obey rules and act respectful, sending her off to school in January and how she’d started changing and acting even more belligerent. And the runaway, return home and suicide try.

Kerri talked to Ashley for a long time privately in her bedroom, and afterwards she told us she suspected her of using drugs. We were dealing with a depressed and desperate girl who wanted to fit in with the family but didn’t know how, and the acting out was her way of getting the attention she craved. In fact, she said, there was a good chance Ashley might try to hurt herself again. Without our guarantee that we were going to be able to watch her every minute and control her, Kerri didn’t think it was safe for Ashley to stay home. "Keeping up that kind of scrutiny is impossible, Julie. Especially with Mike having to work and you caring for the younger kids. You two just can't do it." Our only option was to send her to a psychiatric facility in which she’d get therapy and medication. And as much as it broke our hearts, it did seem as if hospitalizing her was our only recourse. Kerri called and made the arrangements. So early the following morning found us driving our teenaged daughter to San Ramon Hospital, a psychiatric facility.

And of course, Ashley hated us for it.