Trust Miranda Tidewell to realize that it’s just the right environment to destroy us with a minimum of effort. Make a slanted documentary, launch some outrageous claims, find something that feels true about them, and sell it hard and often. The delusional and the emotionally disturbed will find something in it to comfort them. The lazy will rely on it as unlikely but possible. And in a year or two, the lazy will convince themselves “better safe than sorry” and pass it along as truth. She’s smart to do it this way. A documentary—even peddling half truths and lies—has a certain amount of built-in credibility.
People will believe it because the same mind-set insists that my innocence, my horror and grief, is just an act. That I had to know, be part of it. Because if they had to admit it was real, that they could be vulnerable to the same terrifying, random events that hit me like a wrecking ball . . . that’s far too frightening.
Better to fight an imaginary demon than face real ones.
The more I think about it, the angrier I get. I do want to go back into the studio, and I want to rip that smug host’s ears off with the volume of my yelling.
That’s a good reason not to go back.
“Hey. You okay?” Sam’s voice is quiet, and it steadies me out of the vibrating rage and into something a little less violent.
“No,” I say. “It was an on-air ambush. I suppose you know Miranda Tidewell.”
I see him stiffen. The glance he throws me is wide-eyed and shocked.
“Holy shit,” Sam says. “She was in the studio? With you?”
“Absolutely. She’s saying the Lost Angels group is making a documentary,” I tell him. “About me. I suppose they can’t avoid dragging you into it too.”
“Oh my God.” Sam looks absolutely wrecked. I wonder if he’s met Miranda; he might have, after coming back from Afghanistan. He’d missed my trial and acquittal, so he came into the horror show late in the game. Miranda would have wanted him on her side . . . and I remember with an uneasy twinge that Sam was on that side for a while. At least the side of those who believed I was guilty. “Okay. We need to get out of here and go straight home.” If he wants to tell me I told you so, he holds back, for which I’m deeply grateful. He’d warned me not to rely on the goodwill of television personalities. He’d been right.
I’d promised the kids a fun day in Knoxville after the show. But I know that ship has sailed; the last thing I want to do is have them vulnerable out in public, with at least some percentage of the city on alert for us after that disaster. Some jerk won’t be able to resist the bait, and I am not having my kids harassed. “Yes,” I agree. “Sorry, guys. I know I promised we’d stay the afternoon, but—”
“You’re looking out for us,” Lanny says. Connor, predictably, doesn’t say anything. “We get it. But, Mom . . . we can handle things.” She says that with the absurd confidence of a fifteen-year-old, and I’m terrified that she means it.
“Well, I can’t handle things right now,” I say, because that way I’m not insulting either of them by pretending that they haven’t been through hell and back. “I know this is a long trip for nothing. I’m sorry. I really didn’t see this coming.” I should have. If I’d been on guard, watching the internet like I should have . . .
“It’s okay,” my son finally says. “We understand.”
That’s sweeter than I deserve, and suddenly I’m even angrier that there are people out there treating us like paper targets. My kids are as real, and as incredible, as they come. And I will fight for them to the end.
Sam says, “How about some ice cream for the road?”
“Ice cream!” Connor says, suddenly animated. “Oreo ice cream?”
“Whatever you want, my dude,” Sam says. “Lanny?”
I look into the rearview mirror. She’s wrinkling her nose, but she says, “Sure.” A concession. “Mom? Are we back at DEFCON One, or what?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “Sweetie, I just don’t know. But for now, I think we have to be very, very careful.”
We make the drive back to Stillhouse Lake and our house without incident, though I’m hyperalert for anything. The ice cream is good, and Connor is in an expansive mood after wolfing down both his and half his sister’s; I’d worry about his eating habits, but the morning pastry is an anomaly, and my son’s metabolism keeps him rail-thin anyway. He’s putting on height and muscle, a process that’s slow now, but I can see that it’ll accelerate soon. Good. It’s an unfortunate fact of our lives: I need my kids to grow up faster than normal. That’s been true since the day our lives blew up. Burn in hell, Melvin.
The past few years haven’t been easy for Lanny and Connor. Or me. But I’d thought we were easing into some kind of peace, finally. We had Sam, who was as fiercely protective of them as I was, who’d followed me up into the wilderness to win them back. We had a home. We had at least a tentative kind of acceptance from friends and some of the neighbors.
But after this . . . I don’t know. I just don’t.
“Let me out here,” I tell Sam. “I’ll get the mail. You guys get dinner going, okay?”
“Okay, but you know this means you lose your vote.”
“You hold my proxy vote,” I say. “Something healthy?”
“Boo,” my kids say in chorus. I roll my eyes and wave them on up the hill.
I used a pretext of checking the mail, but as I stand there, I pull out my phone and dial. When the answering service picks up on the other end, I tell them I need an immediate callback from Dr. Marks. They’re cool and professional, the people in that office; they’ve heard it all. I suppose I should have put more distress into the message, but Dr. Marks knows me. She’ll understand the message.
It’s only a few minutes later when the call comes. Katherine Marks. “Gwen,” she says, and as always, her voice is crisp, calm, oddly soothing. “How’d the television appearance go today?”
“Did you watch?”
“No, I’m afraid I couldn’t. I had clients.”
“Well . . .” I shift a little, reluctant to admit it now that I’m actually on the phone with her. “Not well. I had the . . . the thing we talked about.”
“You reacted to the camera?”
“Yes.” Paradoxically, the second I admit it, all the memories come tumbling back. I thought I was past this, though Dr. Marks had warned me that this particular kind of post-traumatic stress might keep rebounding on me. It goes deep. That day and night at Killman Creek, I’d believed, really believed, that I was going to die as Melvin Royal’s victim. Tortured to death for an audience paying to see it happen, and all of it, all of it, happening in front of the unblinking eye of a video camera. “I kept seeing it all over again. I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t control it.”
“Do you want to come see me?”
“I can’t,” I say. What I mean is, I don’t want to. I want to hide here, at home with my family. “I was hoping you might be able to just . . .”
“Talk you through it?” she finishes, just a little wryness in the tone. “You’ve been remarkably reluctant to dig deep into this. Are you saying you’re ready to do that now?”