UP UNTIL NOW I never wanted to mention this, because I wanted to spare Larry’s parents the pain. That, and of course you want to preserve a loved one’s memory. You want to see them remembered in a positive light. And not do anything to interfere with that.
But now that they’re coming up with these allegations suggesting I was involved in some way, I just don’t see that I have a choice anymore. I have to defend myself.
My husband had a drug problem. We’re talking cocaine. There—I’ve finally said it. I mean, he never would have been a wife beater if his head hadn’t been so messed up. But I don’t want to talk about that part. I want people to remember Larry the way he was before drugs messed him up.
He was already starting to get mixed up with drugs when I met him, only I was too innocent and naive to recognize the signs. Can you imagine me, the one who led our campus Just Say No crusade, hooking up with a coke addict? Well, it happened. Which just goes to show you how pervasive this drug problem is. How insidious a disease we have here, that an honest, upright, Eagle Scout kind of person like my husband could succumb to the temptation. I mean, if Larry could give in to cocaine, that tells me nobody’s out of danger. Not you. Not me. Not Tom Brokaw himself.
The way I’ve finally figured it out, Larry must’ve got involved with Jimmy and Russell while I was producing my documentary. Maybe he lost his original supplier. Maybe they were just able to get him a better deal than he was finding in the city. Whatever.
They started getting all chummy. Sure it’s true Russell’s car was parked outside my condo that night. And you know why? He was dealing drugs to my husband. Naturally Jimmy knows his way around our place, but not because of his crazy story about the two of us having an affair. The only illicit activity going on in my home was my husband, snorting powder up his nose.
I began to suspect something last fall. His lack of motivation, etcetera. The way he was letting himself go, and letting go of his goals to really make something of himself. That’s why I tried to befriend the boys—build up their trust, make them see they had to leave Larry alone. I was even foolish enough to appeal to their sense of kindness and decency. Told them I wouldn’t turn them in, if they would just stop supplying my husband. Finally I even managed to get Larry to admit what was going on.
It was a beautiful, beautiful moment between us. I told him I loved him more than ever, and I’d help him kick this thing. He told me how sorry he was that he let me down. He begged me to forgive him for the times he’d hit me, and of course I said I would. We were never closer than we were that night. He promised he’d go into a rehab program, right after our anniversary. I can still see him, crying in my arms like a baby. And Walter, our puppy, licking the tears from his face. Right then and there I vowed that I’d spend the rest of my life as a journalist doing everything in my power to inform and educate the American public about the terrible epidemic of drug abuse. Just as soon as I got my husband through this hell.
And you know, we would have made it too. Our love was that strong. Only Larry owed Jimmy and Russell a lot of money. We told them we’d do whatever it took to pay the money back—sell our car, refinance the condo, I’d take a second job, anything. But they were impatient. Plus of course, James had this fixation on me, and that just made him hate Larry more.
I think now they must have been threatening Larry for some time before, you know, that night. He just didn’t want me to worry, so he never let on. He felt guilty enough already. He figured he’d take care of it himself. Only they got to him first.
I hate to go public with all of this. Now, when Joe and Angela have already been through so much. They’ll deny it of course. Who wants to believe their son was a wife beater and a cocaine addict? But the time has come for the truth to be known. And if our story keeps just one young couple like us, with everything to live for, from making the same mistakes that Larry did, then maybe he won’t have died in vain.
So now maybe you’ll understand what I was talking about in those remarks I made to Lydia on that crazy tape the DA plans to use to build a case against me. Maybe I said some things that sounded pretty strange, but I was just trying to protect my husband’s name. Only now that they’re dragging mine through the mud, I have no choice but to let my story be heard.