Why don't you go by the account of her own husband, recently relayed to interrogators. She made about as much as he did, not half....about as much. Why would it speak "volumes" to you, that she went "half way across the country", to where her parents live? Do you think he would have curtailed his adultery and stopped wasting the family money on some person at work if she had gone, for instance, only 1/4 way across the country?
Maybe you've never had 2 very small kids, a 15 week pregnancy, several illnesses, so you can't understand, maybe, how much being with parents (hers and his) for some summer weeks would make sense. Except for CW murdering the whole family, what signs of "chaos", what "toll" did she deal with, other than the husband brutally killing her and tiny kids and desecrating their bodies?