THE NEW YORKER –
July 21, 2025 – When Christine was nine years old, her mother, Mary, said, “Come here. I want to tell you a secret.” They sat on a brown couch in their living room, in Santa Ana, California. Mary, who was forty-three, said that a man she had known in medical school, a professor, was sending her messages about a plan to take her away and live in a mansion together. “I remember feeling really excited, because that fit with my sense of what should be happening,” Christine said. “I was really into ‘Harry Potter’ and the idea that, if you are part of the select, you can see a bigger story happening out there.”
Mary leaned over and began separating strands of Christine’s hair, as if searching for lice. “Does he put listening devices in your hair?” Mary asked, about the professor. “Does he ever ask you to say things to me?”
Christine, the older of two sisters, said, “I believed everything she said until she accused me of something that I knew wasn’t true.” Mary had always been tender and doting and practical, and, Christine said, “I just had this feeling in my body that she was not the same.”
Her sister, Angie, who is seven years younger, learned to follow their mother’s instructions, whether or not they made sense. “I was taught the rules of her delusions at the same time as I was taught other rules and norms about the world,” Angie said. She came to view her mother’s stories about the professor, and about friends who were part of his mission, as akin to tales in the Bible. “It’s kind of like, O.K., some of these people are real, and some of these people aren’t real,” she said.
