You might be surprised to know that I’m a woman of faith now. I haven’t made any big announcements to the press or anything. I told you before, I’m not in this for the publicity.
But my faith is real, and it’s carried me through some of the most difficult times here during my sentence.
I hear your husband is also a Christian. I’m glad about that. God knows this life is hard enough even with his Word to cling to in times of trouble.
I don’t want to preach at you, Justine. I really don’t. But maybe one day you’ll read these words and know in your own soul that they’re true. I hope so. I pray so.
I don’t have anything else in this life to cling to, which is probably why I’ve accepted my imminent death.
You don’t want to have a relationship with me. I get that. I understand. I really do. But maybe once you’ve heard my side of the story you’ll feel a little differently.
Dennis was abusive. I’m sure you’re familiar enough with the court case to know that much at least. But it wasn’t the physical blows, Justine. That’s not what did us in.
I still have nightmares about it. Did you know that? One of the guards here makes fun of me. Tells me if I’m so filled with remorse that I wake up screaming I shouldn’t have murdered my husband in the first place.
I tell her I’ll pray for her. I think that really gets under her skin.
The screams and the nightmares aren’t about the night your father died. Not at all.
The nightmares are about being trapped. Do you know what it’s like to be trapped, Justine? Stuck? I can’t move. It’s like trying to walk through cement that’s dried up all around you. You thrash and scream and try to get someone to help you out, but the only one who hears your cries is the man who poured the cement on you in the first place.
And he laughs.
Just throws his head back and laughs in your face, his breath hot, his palpable evil unbearable.
Laughing in your face.
People thought we had a perfect marriage. That’s what’s so distressing about the entire thing. If he hadn’t been a TV personality, if there hadn’t been a two-million-dollar life policy in place, if we’d been ugly or poor or from the wrong side of town, nobody would have cared when he got himself killed.
But that wasn’t the kind of couple we were.
I knew when I married a newscaster as popular as Dennis that I was subjecting myself to the public eye. I thought I knew what that meant. Thought I was ready. I was expecting some rude remarks, some comments about our differences in age or race.
I was even prepared for words like gold-digger and trophy bride getting thrown around. That’s just what happens when a young, attractive woman marries a millionaire who’s twice her age, right?
Well, Justine, I have news for you. There’s a reason a man like Dennis went through three other exes before settling on me. And there’s a reason his first wife attempted suicide (on more than one occasion) and why his second underwent a very public mental-health breakdown.
I should have seen the warning signs, but I was mesmerized. I was nothing but the intern, the minimum-wage employee whose job was to dress smartly and show up with Dennis’s coffee just the way he liked it. You probably don’t have to use your imagination all that much to picture what it was like when he paid me so much attention. Smothered me with gifts. Paid down my credit cards and set me up in one of the nicest apartment complexes in Detroit.
I was young and stupid, but that’s no excuse. I should have known better. I did know better. Right before we got engaged, I even tried to call things off. He tapped my home line. Can you believe it? He’d got it into his head that I was flirting with the weatherman, and he actually paid to get my phone tapped in order to try to prove I was cheating.
I told him we were done, and that’s when he showed me his true self. He reminded me about how much debt of mine he’d paid off. He knew lawyers, plenty of lawyers. It was either stay with him or get myself sued.
I should have let him bankrupt my savings account. Instead, I let him destroy my very soul.
Tapping my phone, it turns out, was only the beginning of Dennis’s madness. Once we were married, it only got worse. Following me to the store. Hiring his employees to track my whereabouts. He made up stories about crazy stalkers who were sending threatening letters to the news station and told me I couldn’t go anywhere without protection.
It wasn’t a bodyguard he hired for me. It was a prison guard.
A year into our marriage, I couldn’t leave the house. He told all our friends I’d had a nervous breakdown. Told my parents I’d been diagnosed as schizophrenic. Even convinced a doctor to prescribe drugs that kept me foggy, placid. Just the way he liked me.
You were the best thing that ever happened to me, Justine. When I found out I was pregnant, I felt for the first time in years like I had something to live for. A reason to exist. A reason to survive.
Dennis didn’t want children. I know it’s terrible to tell you this, but you have to know the truth. Dennis had no desire to become a dad. I had to hide the pregnancy from him. Starved myself in hopes I wouldn’t show. I couldn’t tell the doctor I was expecting, but I was terrified the pills would hurt you, so I’d take them while Dennis watched then force myself to throw them up.
You deserved so much better. You have no idea how terrible I feel when I read scientific studies that talk about prenatal health. I did what I could to take care of you. God knows I tried, but all I could do was keep your existence hidden from your father for as long as I could.
But Dennis found out anyway.
Of course he did.
And that’s when everything turned horribly wrong.