Page 63 of Darkwater Lane

I don’t want to show him, but I also don’t want him to be blindsided if he comes across it on his own. Feeling sick, I turn my phone to face him.

He takes it from me and begins to read. I slide from my seat and move to the coffeemaker. I need caffeine badly. Once I’ve brewed apot, I push a mug onto the table in front of Sam. He’s still staring at the phone screen, the muscle in his jaw working overtime. His body is tense, ready to lash out, but there’s nothing to hit, no way to expel the anger boiling inside him.

“We’ll get Kez or someone at the station to make a statement,” I tell him. “Send it to the news and demand a retraction. Threaten them with a defamation suit if they don’t.”

He tosses the phone across the table toward me. “Except everything in that headline is technically true. Iama murder suspect. And Iwasimplicated in sex trafficking. Even though it’s all bullshit. It doesn’t matter what the truth is. People believe what they want to.”

“Unless you make them believe differently,” I counter.

He shrugs. I can see some of the fight leaving him. I can’t let that happen. I need him to stay strong.

I think back to what Madison said at the police station in Knoxville, about how our story is written by others because we remain silent. I hate to admit it, but she had a point. “Maybe we need to reconsider talking to the press,” I suggest.

He snorts. “No thanks.”

I’m not surprised he dismisses the possibility so easily. In the past, I would have as well. Something needs to change, though. My therapist is fond of reciting the Henry Ford quote, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”

The reality is, what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working. We face more online hate now than we ever have. It isn’t abating. If anything, it’s getting worse.

“I’m serious. We need more than just a statement. We need something that people will pay attention to.”

“If you haven’t noticed, no one cares about alleged criminals. Everyone assumes that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I’ve got smoke billowing out of me everywhere. Besides, are you forgetting Howie Hamlin?”

I shudder at the memory. Of course I haven’t forgotten him. More than a dozen news outlets had reached out to interview me after I killed Melvin and we’d agreed to go on Howie Hamlin’s show after receiving numerous assurances that he wouldn’t deviate from the topics we’d approved.

Within moments of beginning the interview, he ambushed me. He brought Miranda Tidewell in to essentially accuse me of being Melvin’s accomplice. I’d stormed out. That was my last attempt at playing nice with the media. I swore I would never put myself through that again.

Now, nearly three years later, I’m reconsidering.

“People don’t want to hear from me, Gwen,” Sam adds. “They want to believe the worst about people. Let them.”

I can’t accept that. Not when it’s not just us we have to consider.

I slowly spin the coffee cup, watching the steam seep into the air. The ceramic is warm in my hands—uncomfortably so. I think about Madison’s argument at the police station in Knoxville. I hate parroting her words, but she has a point. “It isn’t fair to the kids.”

He winces at the statement, but I continue. “I found a shoebox full of acceptance letters in Lanny’s room the other day. Stanford, Berkeley, Smith, Princeton. Top colleges all over the country. She applied to all of them in secret. She even got a private mailbox so we wouldn’t know about it.”

Sam looks as bewildered as I felt at the time. Hell, I still feel that way. “Why?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. And I don’t know how to talk to her about it. But a part of me can’t help but wonder if it’s because of Melvin. Because of us—all of this.” I wave my hand around the broken house, the splintered door to her room, and the clothes strewn on the floor from her closet when they dragged her out.

“Remember when she visited Reyne U? She was so excited. She used your last name and, for the first time, she could be a normal kid. And then she had to leave early, and word got out who she was,and that was the end of her anonymity. Once again, she became Melvin Royal’s daughter.

“I think she’s worried she can’t be her own person. And the thing is, she’s right. WithThe Royal Murders, wherever she goes to school, everyone’s going to know who she is. It’s not like there are a million Lannys in the world. It’s a pretty distinctive and recognizable name.”

“But she had to have started applying to these schools before the podcast launched. I’m not even sure it was on our radar back then,” he points out.

It’s true, but the point remains the same. “Consider it from her point of view. Imagine going away to one of these schools, and it’s parents’ weekend. If you were Lanny, would you want us there?”

He stares down at his coffee, his expression resigned. “And you think going public will change that?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. “But I don’t see how it could make things worse.”

The corner of his lip twitches. “You should know better than to say something like that by now. You’re only tempting fate.”

“Maybe I’m tired of playing it safe.”

This time, his smile is genuine. “Gwen Proctor, I don’t know a human in this world who would say that you’re the type to play it safe.”

---