UNION | Put yourself on the watery outskirts of a small S.C. textile town, and watch as a young woman hesitates in the dark on the brink of a decision.

We may never know exactly what spiraled through her mind as she sat in her car, chewing her nails, caressing the emergency brake. Maybe even she cannot tell us.

This we do know: Ten years ago Monday, Susan Vaughan Smith, voted "friendliest girl" of her 1989 high-school class, let the car roll into John D. Long Lake, her two sleeping sons inside, strapped in their car seats.

For minutes on that mild evening Oct. 25, 1994, she stood, hands over her ears, as the Mazda Protege plunged into the water, floated and sank.

Then, she lied.

After Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, drowned, Susan begged for the boys' safe return, concocting a story that took roost like a wild bird in the country's collective imagination.

She said a black man shoved her at gunpoint from her car and drove off with her babies, as she lay screaming on the road.

I believed her.

Did you?

Never mind her dry eyes. No mother would kill her children, then fan a nine-day search, keeping her loved ones and an audience of millions in a state of frantic exhaustion.

I've come back to the little town of Union, 65 miles southwest of Charlotte, because I need to understand some things.

How desperate must a mother be to kill her own children?

How do the people who loved both her and the boys get on with their lives?

Does a town ever recover?

Onto the shoulders of Union"Oh God! Oh God, no! What have I done? Why did you let

this happen? I wanted to turn around so bad and go back, but I knew it was too late. I was an absolute mental case! I couldn't believe what I had done." - From Susan Smith's confession

I remember Union during the search, the media swelling the town far beyond its 10,000 residents.

I remember the brave yellow ribbons. The stubborn hope.

I remember a town lifted up and out of itself - holding prayer vigils, serving fried-chicken dinners to the media.

I remember how Carlisle Henderson wound down his WBCU "Gospel Show."

"Have faith!" he said. "Hey, those kids could be alive and well and fine. Two minutes from now, we could all be rejoicing."

We never rejoiced.

On Nov. 3, Susan confessed.

"I broke down ... and told [Union County] Sheriff Howard Wells the truth," she wrote. "I felt like the world was lifted off my shoulders."

And onto the shoulders of Union.

The divers went down, and yes, the little boys were upside down in the Mazda, one small hand pressed against a back window.

After she confessed, we had to wonder which Susan Smith had murdered: a woman so undone by her breakup with a wealthy boyfriend that she killed her children because he said he wasn't interested in kids?

Or was she a woman in despair, a victim of depression and sexual abuse, who meant to drown herself with her sons but jumped free as her instinct to live won out over her instinct to mother?

Or some of both?

A smiling mask

So my quest begins.

On a recent morning, I stroll Union's near-empty Main Street for the first time since the media packed up their satellite cameras and headed home.

Mo Brown, who owns Old Country Antiques, reinforces a pattern I'll see over and over: People here, maybe everywhere, don't look far below the surface.

Brown once worked with Susan Smith's father, Harry Vaughan, who killed himself when Susan was 6.

Brown had no inkling of trouble. "He did not look to me like a depressed person," Brown says. "He was just a handsome young guy, except that he was very reserved. Nothing to make you think he had any problems."

Farther up Main, Ola Jean Kelly, director of the Union County Museum, already has heard I'm nosing around, and, as far as she's concerned, she says the tragedy is buried.

"Union existed before," she says in tones reserved for flu epidemics, the Union Army and other tragic events, "and we have gone on after."

The town has recovered then?

"Donahue, Oprah, Jesse Jackson came here expecting to find a community divided racially," Chamber of Commerce executive Torrance Inman says. "Instead, they found a community united - united to find the children, united in our grief, united in our pride."

United in spirit, perhaps. But long torn between the haves and have-nots - mill owners and millworkers. And with the closing of those mills - the county has lost a dozen in the past 10 years - the town is torn between the employed and unemployed.

And, as everywhere, torn between appearances and reality.

The courthouse Reality won out during the July 1995 trial.

The courthouse steps are empty today, but I see them back then - hundreds pushing their way up, eager to grab a seat in the creaky-floored courtroom where witness after witness described a Susan Smith who, like her father, could put on a happy face.

We also saw a prominent stepfather who sexually abused Susan. A devoted mother who kept the lid on family troubles. And a young husband who adored his sons but cheated on his wife.

By the 10th day of the trial, the stale, mingled odor of shame and sorrow hung heavy in the room. The hometown jury could have sentenced Susan to death. Instead they punished her with life in prison, with the possibility of parole in 30 years.

Susan disappeared through a courtroom door. It was time now for the actors in the tragedy to take up their daily lives - remembering, mourning, forgetting and remembering and mourning all over again.

Susan is at the Leath Correctional Facility in Greenwood, where she was moved in 2000 after two guards admitted having sex with her at the Columbia prison where she first was sent.

She works as a teacher's assistant. Her mother says she tutors fellow inmates in math, algebra and calculus. She will be eligible for parole in 2024, on the 30th anniversary of her confession.

David Smith, her ex-husband, is remarried with two more children. He is an assistant manager of a Wal-Mart in Spartanburg.

Linda Russell, Susan's mother, got on with her life by writing a reflective book about her daughter. She still lives in Union and regularly visits Susan in prison.

Beverly Russell, Susan's former stepfather, lives a quiet life outside Spartanburg as an income-tax consultant.

The mother "I finally decided the best way I could protect her was for me to have both of them under the same roof. At least I

would know where they were." -

Linda Russell, referring to her decision to stay with her husband after she learned of the sexual abuse, in "My Daughter Susan

Smith"

Early in 1995, Linda separated from Beverly Russell, who, during Susan's trial, admitted to the world he'd been sexually involved with his stepdaughter when she was a teen and a young adult. The divorce was final in 1998.

Linda Russell, 60, still says her daughter is mentally ill. She says Susan does not get the treatment she needs. "There's 500 women and one counselor," Russell says by phone from Union. "None of them are getting what they need."

She says: "I've said before, and I'll say it again: I think Susan's punishment was too harsh."

Her attitude toward depression and secrecy has changed.

After each of Susan's suicide attempts - at 13 and 18 - Russell naively assumed her daughter was better, she writes in her book.

The first time, Susan had shown a suicide note to her teacher. Russell disapproved.

"What concerned me tremendously," she writes, "was the fact that she was talking with other people about things that should have been kept within our family."

Russell writes that she regrets not telling young Susan the details of her father's suicide. Because Susan didn't ask, Russell assumed she didn't want to know.

But there's no indication she regrets staying with Bev after he first touched her daughter.

"Divorce wasn't something that would affect only the three of us," she writes.

"It would tear apart our whole family and the relationships that had been built between my children and Bev's and both our families."

The stepfather"The possibility of filing charges against Bev overwhelmed me. ... I even woke up during the night, thinking about how Susan would look if this went public, what people would say, how a lawyer would rip her apart on the witness stand, that Bev could get a prison sentence." - Linda Russell in her book

Beverly Russell, now 58, picks up the phone at the Jackson-Hewitt tax office in Duncan. He's polite but firm: "I hope you understand. It's a tough issue for us, and I just don't want to get into an interview."

Before the boys died, Beverly Russell, nephew of an S.C. governor, owned an appliance store on Union's Main Street. He belonged to the Christian Coalition and represented Union County on the state GOP executive committee.

On the stand, he wept.

"I had responsiblities to you in which I have utterly failed," he read from a Father's Day letter he'd written to Susan the month before. "Many say that failure has nothing to do with Oct. 25, but I believe differently."

In 1988, Beverly Russell had testified that he first fondled Susan when she was almost 16. The family went for counseling. Russell told the court at Susan's trial that sexual activity between the two happened at least twice more, once two months before the murders.

He seemed to wilt with remorse as he begged the jury to spare his stepdaughter's life. He mortgaged his house to help pay for Susan's defense and underwent incest counseling.

For a time, Beverly Russell visited Susan in prison. "I never encouraged or discouraged the visits," Linda Russell writes. "I felt she should make the decision. One day, she simply told me she had taken him off her list."

The husband"When I thought back over the visit, what struck me most was that she didn't seem really sorry, despite saying she was again and again. If the roles were reversed, I would have been stretched out on the floor, wrapped around her ankles ... wailing for forgiveness." - David Smith in his

1995 book, "Beyond All Reason:

My Life with Susan Smith"

Alex and Michael were his life, David Smith testified in court, sobbing. He said he didn't know what he'd do without them. After the trial, he had his wife's car destroyed, and he moved with his girlfriend Tiffany Moss to Pensacola, Fla.

In 1998, David returned to South Carolina and eventually came out of a severe depression.

Now he's a father again. A daughter, Savannah, with Moss, was born in December 2000, and Nicolas, a son with another woman, was born in January 2003, and lives with his mother. In April 2003, David and Tiffany Moss married.

At the Wal-Mart in Spartanburg, David, 34, is easy to spot.

David?

"Ma'am?"

Have time for one question?

"Yes," he says.

Have you forgiven her?

"Oh, yeah."

How?

"Had to," he says. "Not forgiving her was holding me back."

David agrees to talk later. He gives me his cell number and says to leave him a message, and he'll call right back. He does not call back. The next day he calls to say he's been sick. We agree to talk the next evening. When I call, he doesn't answer.

The next week, I return to Wal-Mart. An employee tells me David Smith will be on a conference call for a long time.

At 8 that night, he leaves me a voice mail at work.

He apologizes, then says, "I just wanted to let you know, I'm not going to do an interview."

The boyfriend "I was in love with someone very much, but he didn't love me and never would." - from Susan Smith's confession

"Susan, I'm sure that your kids are good kids, but it really wouldn't matter how good they may be. ... I just don't want children." - Tom Findlay in a

Oct. 17, 1994, letter

In August 1994, David and Susan separated for a third and final time. In September, a month before the murders, Linda Russell writes, Susan hired a detective who saw Tiffany Moss leaving David's apartment at 4 a.m.

Susan filed for divorce Sept. 22.

To countersue, David didn't have to look far. Susan, according to her pretrial interviews, was sleeping with two men at Conso Products Co., where she worked as a $17,000-a-year secretary.

One, she said, was Cary Findlay, now 65, who owned Conso, once the world's largest manufacturer of decorative fabric trim.

The other was Findlay's son Tom Findlay, then head of graphic design.

An Auburn graduate, Tom, now 37, was known as "the catch." He and Susan started dating in January 1994, during an earlier separation from David.

Their romance ended at a hot tub party less than two weeks before the murders, when Tom saw Susan fondling the husband of one of her good friends.

In the next 10 days, as testimony would reveal, events sped toward a crisis.

On Monday, Oct. 17, 1994, Susan gave Tom a note apologizing for her behavior at the party. She said she hoped they'd remain friends.

Tom responded with a lengthy, typed letter. Their backgrounds were very different, he wrote, and he wasn't ready for kids.

But he was proud of her for going back to school, he said, and assured her she was very special.

That Friday, David seized his opportunity. While he was over visiting, Susan fell asleep, according to Linda Russell's book, and David rifled her purse. He found Tom's letter.

That same night, Tiffany Moss made copies, Linda Russell writes. The next day, David slipped the letter back into Susan's purse, then confronted her.

Susan confessed to her relationships with both Findlays.

David threatened to tell Cary Findlay's wife, Linda Russell writes, and to expose Susan's relationship with her stepfather.

Susan felt trapped. On Tuesday, Oct. 25, 1994, at a picnic table outside of Conso, she wept as she told Tom everything. An hour or so later, still tearful, she went to his office and tried to return his Auburn sweatshirt.

He wouldn't take it. Instead, he assured Susan he'd forgiven her about his father and that they'd still be friends.

Susan left work, returning about 5:30 p.m., to tell Tom that what she'd told him earlier about his father was a joke.

At 7, two hours before the murders, Susan called co-worker Susan Brown at a bar in nearby Buffalo, where a group from Conso was having supper.

"Is Tom there?" Susan asked Brown.

"Yes," she said.

"Has he said anything about me?"

"No."

Susan was wearing Tom's sweatshirt when she fed her sons supper and led them to her car.

The boys We still see Alex and Michael in the photograph taken on Alex's first birthday. Michael's arm rests on the edge of a small wicker rocker, the other is around a barefooted Alex, whose open face beams trust.

Michael would've turned 13 on Oct. 10. He'd likely be an eighth-grader at Sims Junior High. Alex would've been 11 this past Aug. 5, a sixth-grader at Foster Park Elementary.

Barbara and Walt Garner, parents of Susan's best friend, baby-sat often for the boys.

"They'd be playing ball now," says Walt, who taught Michael to identify each tool in his workshop. Michael was "a little bit more serious," he recalls.

"Not a whole lot of things bothered Alex too much."

Someone mailed framed photos of Alex and Michael to Marie Barnes of Maple Shade, N.J. She still keeps them in her living room and on her bedside table.

Her 38-year-old son has the mind of a 2-year-old and, for eight years, Marie sent flowers to Alex and Michael's grave.

This summer, she and her husband plan a second trip to Union.

"I look at them," she says of Alex and Michael, "and I think, 'My God!'"

The scapegoats

The black carjacker, who never existed, lives on.

What a "brutal imagination" created that man, says black poet Cornelius Eady of New York, who used that title for both a play and a collection of poems.

Race relations are better today, says Mae Oria Powell, 65, of nearby Lockhart. Some people still hold onto the bitterness of Smith's allegations, she says. Most do not.

Gillian Edwards, who is 62 and lives in Union, agrees that race relations have improved. But he says he never believed Susan Smith's carjacker story. And he's still bitter so many white people did.

"We know ain't no black man going to steal nobody's children," he says. "And we know for sure no black male is going to steal nobody's white children."

Susan's confession set off a small but emotional demonstration by Edwards and other black Unionites, who descended on the courthouse after word of the murders spread.

The black scapegoat had been exposed as a lie.

Yet in his anger, Edwards refused to let it go. "Y'all taught us to be murderers," he says.

The mystery

Ten years ago, I drove down to the John D. Long Lake. I stared at the boat ramp, and I stared at the water, trying to fathom how the same woman who could feed and dress her children could roll them to their deaths.

Today, I have more facts.

I know, for instance, that two of Susan's favorite possessions were a tape recording of her father's voice and his coin collection. Did her troubles start the day her father died?

I'd guess earlier, since hers was a family tree ripe with symptoms of alcoholism and depression.

Life didn't get easier. As Walt Garner says: "Basically, Susan never had any man in her life that didn't hurt her in some way, form or fashion."

Did Tom Findlay's rejection bring back the pain of her father's suicide?

Another man, another abandonment.

Chapel Hill psychiatrist Dr. Seymour Halleck testified that Susan only felt depressed when alone and only felt suicidal when depressed. He speculated that if she'd been on the antidepressant Prozac, the boys might be alive.

"The key word is might," Halleck says today. "Nobody knows, but odds are it would've prevented it."

As Susan drove around that night, she chewed her nails and cried.

"As I rode and rode and rode, I felt even more anxiety coming upon me about not wanting to live," she wrote in her confession.

"I felt I couldn't be a good mom any more, but I didn't want my children to grow up without a mom. I felt I had to end our lives to protect us from any grief or harm."

This fall, I went back to the lake. There's a guard rail now where the boat ramp used to be. So I got out of my car and, again, I stared at the water.

Now I have some understanding of how people go on after tragedy. And I better grasp how a town will draw into itself as a way of forgetting or recovering.

I think I also understand Susan Smith better. I can sympathize with her loneliness, her desperation, maybe even her feeling that night that she had run out of choices.

But when I put myself in her car and see my two grown sons as babies strapped in the back, and try to imagine taking my hand off that brake, my mind stops cold.

It simply will go no further.