“Stephanie?” Jesse says, eyebrows in the middle of her forehead, although Layla told her in advance she wanted to say this. Layla feels an impassioned obligation to take up for Stephanie, the woman she doesn’t know tried to hurt her in Morocco, the woman she doesn’t know succeeded in killing her aunt. My stomach burbles. This is the part of the day that I have been dreading most, and there was already so much to dread. Why, why does Layla always have to do the right thing?
“I know Stephanie messed up by lying in her book,” Layla says. “But I think that was her way of reaching out for help. We know now that Vince was hurting her, but she was too afraid or embarrassed to say that, so she made up this other abusive relationship in her book. And I don’t want people to forget her, and all she’s done for women.”
This is indefensible, what I can’t stop my daughter from doing: unwittingly pardoning my sister’s murderer.
But Layla was insistent. If she was doing this interview, then she was defending Stephanie, especially once it came out that Stephanie had changed her will right before she died, leaving all her worldly possessions to End It!, the national organization devoted to providing women of color with the financial means to leave their abusers. To me, this just read like an ironic punctuation point at the end of her original plan, which was to kill as many of us as possible before she killed herself. Violence against women by a woman who left the entirety of her estate to an organization dedicated to fighting violence against women. The depravity is enough to make your head spin.
A renowned intimate violence expert that Jesse interviewed on Facebook Live said it was possible that Stephanie anticipated the worst when she ended the relationship with Vince. And so, as though signing the divorce papers were akin to signing her own death warrant, Stephanie changed her will just in case Vince came after her. If she was going to become another statistic, at least some good would come out of it. Other women in her same position could be helped.
And it made sense, the expert added, that Vince would go after Brett too. Perpetrators of intimate partner suicide-murder tend to be overwhelmingly white and male, and tend to blame others for their feelings of powerlessness in a romantic relationship. It is never the man’s fault that his partner has abandoned him, it is always the doing of somebody else. He likely laid the entirety of the responsibility for the dissolution of his marriage at Brett’s feet, the expert neatly concluded.
Then there were all the cell phone videos of Brett and Stephanie, dancing at Talkhouse the night before they died, having the time of their lives celebrating Stephanie’s emancipation from Vince. Only a man would see this pure and unadulterated adoration these two women had for each other as a threat, Yvette had said in Brett’s homily. Only a man would feel compelled to snuff out these two beautiful lights. Naysayers have long disparaged what I do and what I stand for. Women have all the same rights as men—what am I shrieking on about? I shriek on until women have more than equal rights. I shriek on until women’s lives have equal value. Overnight, an Etsy merchant designed T-shirts silk-screened Shriek on that sold out in less than forty-eight hours. I don’t know where the proceeds went.
There were others who came forward, who told stories that cast suspicion on Stephanie, like the cabbie who drove the two home from Talkhouse and the high school senior, just eighteen(!), who Stephanie deflowered in the back alley of the bar. The detectives assigned to Brett’s case kept me apprised of each development, but they didn’t wander too far down any roads that didn’t have large yellow Vince as hater and killer of strong beautiful women theories staked at every turn.
There was also the question—that if it had been Stephanie who killed Brett, how did she manage to get my sister’s body into the trunk all by herself? Vince would have been the only one with the strength to do that, the detectives assured me. I had a simple workaround to that conjecture—adrenaline—but I didn’t bother to float it, the same way I didn’t tell them the other way Vince’s handprints could have ended up on the trunk of Jen’s car. What would be the point when I would then have to explain that I thought Stephanie did it, and what her motive was? I needed my sister to be remembered as a martyr for the resistance, not as her best friend’s husband’s mistress. Tribalism trumped truth, in the end.
I sometimes wonder what Jesse has offered Jen and Lauren to keep their silence. Surely they suspect Stephanie too. Their contracts have been renewed for a fifth season, as has mine, but that would seem to be the bare minimum. Even if it had gone down the way we said it had, it would be in poor taste for the show to come back without its surviving members.
“Stephanie was as much a victim as Brett was,” Jesse says, spelling it out clearly for everyone at home in case Layla hasn’t stated it plainly enough. “And the network plans to honor her legacy by matching Stephanie’s estate and donating that amount to End It!” Jesse meets Camera A’s glass eye. “And if you’re sitting at home and wondering how you can help, you can donate to End It! by visiting the link at the corner of your screen.” She addresses Layla again. “I know you have plans to help too. Tell me about those, Layla.”
“My mom and me”—the awkward phrasing plays a string in my heart. She’s still just a kid in so many ways—“are going to Morocco next month with more e-bikes. And we’re opening a store in Union Square that sells rugs and blankets made by the women we’ve met through SPOKE.”
“And we will be there to document your latest endeavors. Stay tuned after the hour for a special preview of Still SPOKE, which will follow Layla and Kelly as they work to keep Brett’s mission alive.” I didn’t understand the name of our spinoff. Jesse’s assistant had to explain to me that it was a play on the word “woke,” and then she had to explain to me what that meant. It means, like, being aware, she told me, rolling her eyes. But being aware of what? I asked. Social stuff, she answered after a hefty pause.
Jesse smiles at Layla with unreserved adulation. “Layla, Little Big C, I can’t thank you enough for being here. I think I speak for every woman watching when I say thank you for all you do.” She points her finger at the ceiling. It’s coated in flour. “We miss you, sister.”
Layla holds stock still, smiling a stiff smile, until the sound producer declares, “Got it!”
“Phew,” Jesse says, fanning her face with her hand. “That was tough, huh?” She holds up her phone. “Why don’t we take a selfie?”
A gaffer opens the door to the guest bedroom. It will take a while to pack up the equipment and clear out, and it’s been a long day. I let everyone go in front of me so they can get to it. As I’m walking out last, I run into Marc in the doorway, walking into the guest bedroom.
“Oops,” I say, stepping aside to let him through. “Sorry.”
But Marc just stands there. He glances over his shoulder, and when he’s sure no one is watching, he presses something small and plastic into my hand. “Take this,” he says.
I look down. I’m holding a black USB flash drive.
“I’ll do whatever you want to do with it. You know I loved her.” He wipes his eyes. “Ah, shit. I don’t want to cry in front of you. It must be so much worse for you.”
I close my fingers around the flash drive weakly, dreading its contents. I am so tired of having to make difficult decisions. “What’s on here?” I ask him.
“That weekend in the Hamptons, when Lauren went upstairs after the game? She passed out with her mic still on. I’m the only one who’s heard this.” Marc motions for me to pocket the device, which I do, reluctantly. “It’s something you should have. I can’t . . . it can’t be up to me what to do.” He plugs a runny nostril with a knuckle. “You’re her sister.” He means it wholeheartedly, but with his finger in his nose like that, the statement comes out nasally, girlishly aping. A PA approaches, and Marc clears his throat and finds a manlier voice. “Listen to it alone,” he tells me before doing an abrupt about-face.
CHAPTER 24
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