“I decided to protect my children,” I say. “Many of those messages are about them, and I refuse to make those public. I’m not making their torment into public entertainment. I’m here to tell the truth, not publicize the lies.”
I feel a brief, shining moment of calm as I say it; I’m in the right, I know I am, and I think the audience knows it too.
But then he turns on me.
“Gwen . . .” He slides a bit forward in his chair, angles toward me, a confessional in the making. “Are you aware of the documentary?”
I feel like the chair is melting underneath me, sinking me into the center of the earth. “What documentary?” I’m aware of the edge I’ve put on the word. I can’t stop myself. “What are you talking about?”
It’s subtle, but I see a little flicker of enthusiasm flash in his eyes. “We’ll get to that in just a moment. But first, there was a video that briefly surfaced that seemed to confirm that you were involved in your ex-husband’s case—”
What fucking documentary? I take a deep breath to calm myself, and say, “The video was an expert fake, and the FBI has confirmed that fact; you can look up the press release. The fact that there’s even a question about this at all just points up the continuing harassment I have to face every day, as do my kids.” I’m still trying to turn this disaster around. I can’t think what else to do.
“Well, let’s talk about that. Melvin Royal seems to have a significant and growing number of defenders assembling online who believe that either he had no real guilt in this entire crime spree, or that you share equal blame. Don’t you think those people have a right to express their opinions?”
I want to smash my fist into his face. I want to scream. I want to run so badly my legs shake with the urge. “If their opinions include saying that I should be flayed alive and my children murdered in front of me, then no. I don’t.” My voice has the force of fury. I swallow a burn in the back of my throat. Taste bile. “What documentary are you talking about?”
“Yes, that’s a perfect opportunity to introduce our other guest today. Mrs. Tidewell? Would you please join us?”
I realize that the people I’d been aware of moving in the background were the bearded microphone handler and the floor director, and as I turn slightly, I see someone new stepping up onto the riser. I know her, and it feels like I’m plunging off the edge of the world.
Miranda Tidewell. Rich, connected, and terminally angry. She’s got reason to be; her daughter, Vivian, was my husband’s second victim. But since the beginning she’s believed that I shared the blame, that I should have known and stopped him, or that I did it right alongside him. She’s been a knife in my back from the moment Melvin was arrested. It was principally her advocacy that made sure I was arrested, too, and tried, though the evidence was slim at best, and based on a cracked foundation of perjury by a neighbor.
Miranda wanted me on death row alongside Melvin. And from the look she gives me as she steps up to take the third chair, the chair I’d been wondering about . . . she still does.
The contrast between us is stark. While we’re both white women, my hair’s dark, my clothes plain and serviceable. She has upswept hair the color of pale gold, expensive jewelry, and she’s wearing a designer business suit. She looks television-ready, down to her pitch-perfect makeup.
She doesn’t even look at me, though I’m staring at her. She accepts Howie Hamlin’s handshake and sits down in the chair with elegance and ease. “Thank you for inviting me to be on this morning, Mr. Hamlin,” she says. “And for hearing our side. The families of the victims of Melvin and Gina Royal appreciate your outreach.”
I need to get up and walk away.
She doesn’t acknowledge my presence in the slightest. I don’t have any idea how to ignore hers. The whole world has taken on an eerie, whispering unreality, as if I’ve sunk deep into the ocean.
“Of course. And the group you represent is called . . .”
“The Lost Angels,” she says. “After the children, sisters, mothers, and more-distant relatives and friends that were taken from us.”
“I understand that the Lost Angels have come up with the funding to launch the filming of a full documentary that you say will fully explain this case. But with Melvin Royal dead, and Ms. Proctor completely exonerated, what benefit do you see coming from this expense?”
I want to scream, throw something, get the hell off this stage, but I can’t. I need to listen. Howie Hamlin, whether he intends to or not, is doing me a huge favor by alerting me that the Lost Angels—a group I haven’t heard from in a long time—is active and working. I’d really thought they’d had enough, had moved on with their grief and their lives. But apparently not.
“Well, obviously we’re not interested in a new criminal trial; Mrs. Royal was acquitted by a jury of her peers,” Miranda says. “What we do believe in is the court of public opinion, which has been so incredibly effective in other miscarriages of justice when the guilty go unpunished. We will be laying out our full case for the public, in the form of this new, in-depth documentary that goes deep into the life of Gina Royal.”
“Is this documentary finished?”
“It’s just beginning,” Miranda says, and turns her attention suddenly on me. The hatred in her eyes is just exactly the same intensity it was on the day she sat in the courtroom as I was acquitted and released. I haven’t seen her since then, but it’s like no time has passed at all.
This is all so monstrous that for a moment I can’t even quite believe what I’ve heard. I can’t move. I can’t think. I just stare at this woman, who seems otherwise so normal, and I can’t fathom how someone could be this . . . obsessed. For years. “You can’t do this,” I say. “You can’t tear my life, the lives of my children, apart like this. Again.”
“I’m not,” Miranda says. “I’m simply funding a documentary, which will be released to the internet and film festivals all over the world when we’re done. It’s . . . a labor of love, if you will. To honor your husband’s victims. Our children. And I look forward to hearing your opinion, Mrs. Royal. I think you’ll quite like the actress we have playing you in the dramatic re-creations.”
She wants a scene. She’s here to provoke one. To make me lose my shit and choke her right here on this stage, with Howie Hamlin and half the state of Tennessee as the horrified witnesses. I need to play this game, and play it well.
So I sit back. “I’ll look forward to it,” I say. “And I’ll be glad for the chance to put out my own statements correcting any inaccuracies. And as you probably know, not all the family members are on your side.”
“No,” Miranda agrees. “I’m afraid some of them believe in your particular brand of victimhood. It’s too bad, really.” She’s probably talking about Sam, but she’s being careful; the last thing she wants is to attempt to smear him right now. It would make her look a lot less legitimate, and a lot more vindictive.
“It’s too bad that you haven’t been able to find a positive way out of your own grief, Mrs. Tidewell,” I say, and I mean it. “I’m sorry for what happened to your daughter, and I wish you could find peace with the justice that was already served. Her killer is dead.”