Detroit – Soon after her husband took her family on a new path to Denver without her, Lynette Thompson lost her way.
In the four years since, she has seen her family splinter, lost track of her children and bounced from friends’ and family’s homes to being homeless in downtown Detroit.
Now she is in a shelter wondering whether her youngest child, 6-year-old Aarone Thompson of Aurora, is dead and if she’ll ever reconnect with all of her children.
“You see little girls go by that are similar to your daughter, and it’s devastating,” the 36-year-old said Sunday. “I lived a trying life myself – I’m exhausted.”
Denver was to be a turning point for Thompson. After growing up in and out of state custody and having a slew of dead- end relationships, she was ready to build the life she always wanted with the man she calls “the love of my life.”
“We thought (Denver) would be better,” she said. “It seemed like a beautiful place, not too much snow, and the schools were fine.”
The path to a new life didn’t materialize, however. Her family was never together again. Her husband, Aaron Thompson, fell in love with someone else.
He and his girlfriend, Shelley Lowe, are “persons of interest” in Aurora in the disappearance of Aarone. Police say she may have been dead for more than a year.
Thompson teeters between the memories of her family – the white Christmas tree, the green leather furniture – and her rage at Aaron.
“What happened? This is not Aaron,” she said. “I don’t know who this character is. Aaron was a beautiful man; that is why this is all so confusing.”
The couple met over Vlasic pickles at a Detroit factory. He worked hard, cared about her four kids and was thrilled when they had their own son and daughter, she said. Still, they faced tough times, unemployment and frequent moves.
She laughs when she recalls how a 1-year-old Aaroné slapped Aaron when he was snoring to see if he would stop.
For six years they were a family in Flint. Lynette and Aaron worked in factories for about $8 an hour when there was work. Sometimes she worked as a nurse’s aide. For a while they were on welfare.
Hard times and marital conflict pushed Lynette to move in 2001 to Denver, where her sister lives. She took her children but not her husband. They were back within weeks to reconcile.
Aaron Thompson and the children returned to Denver, but Lynette stayed behind to care for her foster mother, she said.
In Denver, Lynette said, Aaron took up with Lowe and refused to give Lynette contact information. Three of the older children were sent back to Detroit after nearly a school year.
But the two youngest stayed in Denver. To get them back, she would have had to file for custody. She didn’t have an address or phone number and no money for a lawyer. She says she did not abandon them; they were taken from her.
Lynette said she hasn’t seen Aarone since 2001, the last time she braided the girl’s hair.
No one who knows Lynette says she’s had it easy – but no one says she’s perfect, either.
Her oldest son, Kenyetta Fields, 19, who lived in Denver for nearly a year with Aaron Thompson and Lowe, says more could have been done to bring Aarone and her brother Aaron Jr., 11, back to Michigan.
“My mom should have got all of us when (me and my sister) came back,” Fields said while working at a Detroit carwash Sunday. “It shows she don’t keep up with her kids – there are six of us.” The older four are not Aaron Thompson’s children.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that, Lynette Thompson said. Her 16-year-old son, Hakeem, and 17-year-old daughter, Meonté, live separately with grandparents in Flint. Only 15-year old Shaunterius is with Lynette in the shelter.
“I’m not going to sit here and say I’m a perfect mother; there ain’t no perfect mothers,” she said. “I just wanted my kids to be raised better than I was.”
Now Lynette is crushed by the news of Aarone’s disappearance and wants Aaron Jr. back with her.
“Here I think she’s being taken care of by her father … and now she’s missing,” Lynette said.
Her children are also confounded.
Kenyetta said they had disagreements but called Aaron a “good man.”
Shaunterius agreed: “When me and (Kenyetta) was staying there, Big Aaron was fine, everything was cool, he was the same old stepdad. I remember the last time I saw my baby sister, she was just learning how to run.”
Lynette doesn’t have that memory.
“I look through her picture book, and I look in her father’s eyes (in pictures), and I just wonder,” she said. “It’s so hurtful. I don’t understand.”
Staff writer Elizabeth Aguilera can be reached at 303-820-1372 or eaguilera@denverpost.com.
