About Isabella

Lisa recalled that time differently. She later testified that Janet regularly blew up and belittled her, allegations Janet called a fiction designed to discredit her. "Again, it was the monthly blowups," Lisa testified. "She would restrain me from going into another room. She would ask me for a divorce again. She would tell me, though, that I couldn't make it on my own."

When Isabella was born, Janet had the honor of cutting the umbilical cord. Recalling the euphoria of the birth, Janet said: "There is no drug in the world that good. It was awesome. I remember, she sucked my pinkie."

Lisa and Janet had researched how best to bond with the baby, Janet recalled in an interview. They slept together with Isabella in a family bed. "Every two or three hours, Isabella would wake up so Lisa could nurse her," Janet said. "I would take Isabella from that point. I would burp her . . . I would rock her. She would go back to sleep on my heartbeat."

Janet's parents were enthralled and embraced Isabella as their newest grandchild, they said. "It was such a gift to have a baby in the family again," Ruth, now 70, recalled. Ruth and Bucky were bemused, but happy to join in, when Janet and Lisa ceremoniously planted Isabella's placenta beneath an apple tree sapling at the Jenkinses' vacation home in Berryville, Va. The little tree grew at the base of a hillside with space for more little trees, which suited Ruth and Bucky fine. "We wanted lots and lots of grandchildren," Ruth said.

That August, when Isabella was 4 months old, the Miller-Jenkinses moved to Vermont. They wanted to live in a state that recognized their commitment to each other and offered them legal protections as a family, Janet said.

They bought a Victorian house in Fair Haven, a quiet village where there are summer band concerts on the town green. Janet, the provider, got a job as a security guard, working nights. Lisa stayed home with the baby full time. Eventually, the women again ran a day-care business in their home. According to Janet, their relationship was "very close at that time."

Janet's parents came to visit for Isabella's first birthday. They worried that their daughter, who had always taken the lead role as financial provider, was working so hard to support Lisa and Isabella that she was exhausting herself, Ruth said. "They really loved one another," Bucky recalled.

Lisa eventually hoped to get pregnant again, both women said. A health-care professional Lisa consulted about expanding their family counseled her that Janet should legally adopt Isabella, Lisa testified. According to Lisa, Janet refused to adopt Isabella. Janet later denied under oath that she and Lisa had ever discussed adoption.

Lisa said she felt isolated and lonely in Vermont. According to Lisa, Janet continued to have an explosive temper. And Lisa came to believe that they had fundamentally different values, she said. "There were numerous incidents of Janet going to Webshots.com and putting up naked women on the screen saver, and I would ask her to please change it," Lisa testified. "I don't have clean hands, either. Previously, before . . . the baby was born, [pornography] was used in our relationship. When we moved to Vermont, Isabella was 4 months old, and I said this stuff has to go . . . There's a baby in this house now. I don't want that."

Financial woes increased tensions in the Miller-Jenkins household. Janet would later declare bankruptcy, saying she was roughly $50,000 in debt. Some of that debt, Janet said, was from Lisa's fertility treatments.

By late 2003, efforts to have a second child had failed. Janet recalled that Lisa was grief-stricken. But Lisa said she was relieved she wasn't going to have another baby, and she took it as an opportunity to leave.

After a year in Vermont, Lisa told Janet she wanted to move home to Virginia, alone with Isabella. Lisa said in an interview that Janet gave her a deadline for getting out of the house. Janet denied that and said she viewed their parting as a trial separation. The women worked out an informal understanding that Isabella, then 17 months old, would live with Lisa, but Janet would pay several hundred dollars monthly in child support and visit Isabella regularly.