Blood Sugar(67)
I gushed with sincerity and relief, “Oh, Gertrude. I’m so glad you’re here! Your support means the world to me. Thank you.”
Before she could respond, I ducked my head into my car. Roman got in quickly behind me and shut the door. We drove off. I’m sure a cameraman caught her miffed expression, but I never saw the photo. I did not want to take the time to look for it.
Once I was released on bail, all four of the “deaths in my orbit” were public news, and I was the most salacious and talked-about story in Miami. I pushed the strippers-selling-illegal-exotic-reptiles-in-the-Champagne-room scandal that had been dominating the news to the second page. And no one cared to read about the gang shoot-outs at Miami International Airport anymore. And the story about the mayor getting caught smoking meth with a male prostitute seemed old hat. These other local news stories were exciting, but they didn’t elicit much debate, so they faded to the background. My story stayed in the news because I created a city divided. A wall of belief separated those who thought I was a hardworking, caring, loving wife and therapist and those who thought that I was, as one paper dubbed me, “the Purple Widow.” A take on the ruthless black widow moniker but substituting in what was clearly my favorite color.
Reporters dredged up hundreds of old photos of me wearing purple clothes. And everything I had ever signed or written in pen was in purple ink. My emails were sent in purple text. And my front door and window trim were painted purple. Jason was so accepting of my love of the hue, he had no issue with it being the accent color on our house.
Gossip traveled and gained speed like it was rolling downhill. “Four dead people and those are only the ones we know about!” “Maybe she’s killed hundreds!” “I heard she only uses one pen at a time. Total psycho.”
I hoped the Purple Widow sobriquet would go away, but it stuck, and soon every news source in the county adopted it. And Hannah, who never thought for a second that I killed her father until Detective Jackson visited her and all this blew up, was now totally convinced of it. And she gave interviews about me whenever she could, showed photos of us from high school, and used my infamy to propel her own business. She created a Vampire in the Sun T-shirt that read, “Killed by the Purple Widow.” The batch sold out in less than an hour, and she was then courted to sell her entire line in department stores nationally. I wasn’t even angry. Good for her, I thought. Let her make millions off my misfortune. Because the truth was, I did kill her disgusting rapist of a father.
Hannah wasn’t the only one to profit off my ruinous life. Jason’s former place of employment had a leg up because unlike the other news stations, they had insider information. They ran in-depth interviews with the on-camera anchors who had had the pleasure of working with him. And who had also met me at various holiday parties and birthday parties and some who even attended our wedding in Key West.
“Were you shocked to hear this development that Ruby Simon was a suspect in Jason’s death?”
“Did you feel like she was a cold-blooded killer? Excuse me, an ‘alleged’ cold-blooded killer?”
“Could you sense something was off about her?”
“Did Jason express he felt unsafe in his own home?”
“What signs were there, if any, that Jason was in danger?”
“And what signs can you, the viewer at home, look out for in preventing your own possible murder? Stay tuned until after the weather to find out!”
Gertrude was also interviewed a lot. She came across as reasonable and trustworthy and heartbroken that her only child was dead. When she was pretending to be nervous about saying too much, she would fidget with her necklace, a gold chain with a small gold frog charm. Her face and voice and existence filled me with so much rage that I thought about driving to her house and stabbing her to death. With a blade so small it would take hundreds of thrusts and cause her maximum pain before she expired. And then sitting in the bloodbath and waiting for Detective Jackson to arrive and haul me off to jail again. I thought witnessing her last gasp might be worth a life in prison, behind steel bars and inside concrete walls. Just put me away for killing her, and forget you ever accused me of killing her son.
But I would not drive over to murder her. Because I thought of Ellie and my adorable niece. I thought of my parents, who believed in my innocence and goodness. And I knew that I couldn’t shatter all that. So instead of stabbing Gertrude to death, I turned off her sanctimonious interviews.
Photos of my wedding surfaced, although I never gave anyone permission to release them, and it seemed nothing about my marriage was private anymore. I was losing Jason all over again because I was losing what remained of our intimacy to a city devouring my story. The news station Jason had worked for was now running trashy segments about my drug-fueled youth, when just months before they were running conscientious type-1-diabetes-awareness campaigns.
And slowly a city divided seemed not so divided anymore. The wall got chipped away and broken down and became a pile of rubble. The city finally united in what they deemed my clear guilt. Because in the end it was more fun for the public to hate me than to believe me. And the good citizens of Miami wanted to see me pay for my many sins. “The electric chair for the Purple Widow!” I was not allowed to travel, as part of my bail agreement, so I was stuck staying in the city I dearly loved as it turned against me. I couldn’t go to my favorite corner coffee shop without encountering angry stares. I couldn’t go to the beach without being surrounded by untrusting lifeguards. I couldn’t step outside my house without hearing spiteful whispers from my purple door. I was stuck inside my own walls.