"Karl Rove was not yet a celebrity in 1997 when he told me the following story. In December 1969, during his freshman year in college, his father left his mother; and, shortly thereafter, his mother largely withdrew from his life. She 'packed up the car, had the house on the market, and moved to Reno and said good luck,' Rove recalled. After that, he was on his own. Rove put himself through two years at the University of Utah, working part time, earning a partial scholarship, and living in a makeshift bedroom under the attic eaves of his fraternity house. His father sent support checks, but his mother kept them, never telling her son. 'My mother was one of these people who really thought often of what it was that she wanted in life, and not necessarily what was good or right for her family,' Rove said. 'And that was just her way. She never grew up. She could never think long term. She was always in the moment.' When he was 21, Rove discovered that his father was not, in fact, his biological father and that he was the offspring of an earlier relationship. His real father had disappeared, and the man he knew as his father had adopted him. (Years later, he would track down his biological father, who refused to acknowledge that Karl was his son.) When Rove was in his mid-20s, his mother would call to borrow money. Occasionally, she sent him packages with magazines from his childhood or old, broken toys. 'It was like she was trying desperately to sort of keep this connection,' he recalled. Finally, in 1981, his mother 'drove out to the desert north of Reno and filled the car with carbon monoxide, and then left all of her children a letter saying, don't blame yourselves for this.' It was, Rove said, 'the classic [expletive]-you gesture.'"