Stand Your Ground: A Novel (28 page)

They didn’t mention our marriage until they broke the story about Caleb. Then, we were married. Then, they tore our marriage apart.

I couldn’t figure out how Wyatt and his people got away with it. But when I’d complained, the attorney, Byron Powell, that we’d had to hire, said that there was nothing they could do about leaks when sources weren’t revealed.

After all of those thoughts, I answered Tyrone, “If you thought that he wouldn’t be convicted, why did you go through all of this? Why did you push? With the Guardians?” I only asked him to remind him of the reasons why he’d participated in the marches and protests and interviews. I wanted him to remember that what we’d been through was worth it, even if it was just to get our time in court.

He shrugged. “For a moment, I thought it might work. But I forgot where we lived. For a moment, I thought I was living in a country that was the land of the free. I thought I was living in a place where there was justice for all. For a moment, I forgot that I was living in America.”

This was just his hurt speaking. Tyrone wanted this trial as much as I did. He prayed for a conviction as much as I prayed. But the beat down that I’d taken in the media had more than beat down Tyrone; it had broken his heart.

“I’m
only testifying for our son.” I repeated what he already knew. “I want the chance to tell the truth.”

When he didn’t say anything, I lifted my hand and moved in slow motion until I touched his. Then I held his hand. And I breathed when Tyrone didn’t pull away.

That was good. That was something.

“I love you, Tyrone. I don’t want to lose you.”

If this were a different time and another place, Tyrone would have told me that he loved me, too. And that I would never lose him.

But he didn’t say anything.

All he did was take the television off of pause.

As the reporter droned on about the trial that was beginning today, Tyrone held my hand. He hadn’t said that he loved me, but he was showing it.

That was good. That was something.

F
rom the front seat of our eight-passenger SUV, our attorney explained how the normally forty-five-minute ride would be much longer today. Between the rush-hour traffic and blocked-off streets, it would take double the time to get to the courthouse.

Over the past months, we’d done this ride so many times in the name of our son.

In May, we’d stood on the courthouse steps, shoulder to shoulder with leaders of the NAACP.

“Think about the basic tenet of the law,” Tyrone had said to the crowd of thousands. “This law says that the natural order of a dispute is that first, you kill the other guy. Then, you claim self-defense. Finally, because the only other witness is dead, you walk away.”
He had to pause for a moment because of the jeers from the crowd. “Oh, and don’t forget this . . . after you’ve committed murder in the name of Stand Your Ground, you get to keep your gun!”

The crowd exploded with boos before the chant began, “Enough! Enough! Enough!”

The next week, we stood with the Urban League.

“Wyatt Spencer is just another statistic,” Tyrone told the audience. “Another statistic for Stand Your Ground. Because, you see, when you’re white and you kill someone black, you have a much greater chance of having that murder justified if you say you were standing your ground. How can this country in good conscience continue with this law?”

Then, Tyrone led the chant, “Enough! Enough! Enough!”

We even got involved with the sororities and fraternities of the Divine Nine, reminding college students that every great civil rights movement began with young people.

“My son would have been just like you, on the campus of UPenn,” Tyrone said at a gathering of undergraduate students from all the colleges in the Philadelphia area. “I don’t know if Marquis would have pledged Omega, or if he would have become an Alpha or a Kappa or an Iota. But if Wyatt Spencer hadn’t taken his life, I know that my son would have grown into a man who would have made a difference. Now he will never have that chance.”

“Enough! Enough! Enough!” the students chanted.

I had never felt so close to my husband as when we stood together and watched our son become a national symbol of injustice while Wyatt Spencer became the face of all that was wrong with the Stand Your Ground law.

But then on June 3, Wyatt Spencer’s team had been unleashed. And on June 5, everything changed.

It was supposed to be a beautiful day—our first wonderful one since we’d lost Marquis. Tyrone had arranged for me to spend six hours at Angel’s Spa with Syreeta, followed by a romantic dinner with him and me.

But then, Tyrone hadn’t shown up; he’d just texted me to come home. I’d rushed into our house, praying that I wouldn’t be faced with another tragedy.

I found my husband in the family room, staring at the television. It had been so confusing to me, until I heard the reporter:

“According to this woman who didn’t want to be identified, there has long been speculation that Marquis might not even be Tyrone Johnson’s son. Mrs. Johnson is said to have been involved in a long-term affair with her pastor and many have questioned if the pastor is Marquis’s father . . .”

Even now, I remembered each of the stress lines that were etched in Tyrone’s face as he stared at the TV screen.

“
Oh, my God! How can they say that?” I shouted.

Tyrone said, “They can say it because it’s true.”

“That’s not true. It’s all a lie!”

“Except for the part where they said you had an affair . . .”

I had to take a breath. “They said I had a long-term affair.”

For the first time since I entered the room, Tyrone looked up at me. “If you had an affair that lasted longer than a moment, it was long-term to me.”

“Babe.” I lowered myself onto the sofa. “I’m sorry, so sorry.”

He was quiet for a moment as if he was pondering my apology. Finally, “Well, now that the world knows about your affair, maybe you should tell everyone that you’re sorry. Maybe that will make this all better.” Then, he’d stood and walked out of the family room, leaving me to watch the newscasters talking about my affair, alone.

That night when I went to sleep with Tyrone’s back to me, I’d already lost my son, and I prayed that now, I wouldn’t lose my husband.

Life with my husband hadn’t been the same since that day, since June 5.

Just as I had that thought, Tyrone reached across the car’s seat and took my hand. I looked up, but his eyes were on the window as we sped toward the Montgomery County courthouse.

I exhaled.

There was hope.

Meredith

I
was trembling so much that I fumbled, not able to get the seat belt to click into place.

“Are you okay?” Wyatt asked as he stood outside on the curb, talking to Newt. “You need help with that?”

I nodded. He leaned over me, snapped the seat belt into place, kissed my cheek, patted me on the head, then closed the door before he trotted around to the other side and slid in next to me.

“Ready to go!” Wyatt shouted to Andre once Newt took his place in the front passenger seat.

“Let’s hit it.” Andre eased the SUV onto the street.

As we pulled off, I still trembled. The way I’d been trembling for months. I hadn’t stopped since Wyatt found me in the bathroom that night, and told me that he knew what I’d seen without saying those words.

In the three months that had passed, he still hadn’t told me. But I knew that he saw me and I knew that he had warned me.

Wyatt went about his life as if there were no chance that he would ever go to jail. My husband was right about that—if public sentiment was any indication. Even though we were wealthy, people who didn’t have anywhere near the money we had set up all
kinds of websites to collect money for Wyatt’s defense. According to reports, donations to us quadrupled what had been raised for the Johnsons.

The Johnsons. Janice Johnson. I thought about her all the time.

“Are you all right, sweetheart?” Wyatt asked, taking my hand just as Andre turned onto the interstate.

I nodded and wondered if he noticed how my hand shook inside of his.

I knew why Wyatt was asking about me. Because today was not only the start of Wyatt’s trial, it was my debut.

It had been planned that way, part of the strategy. I’d been kept away from the courthouse and the cameras until today. The news stations had said very little about Wyatt Spencer’s wife. Because Newt wanted me to walk into court on this first day with my full and frizzy hair, and my crimson-colored lips, and . . . my baby bump.

That was supposed to take the world by surprise.

Today, Wyatt had me dressed properly for the part in a high-necked, knee-length, sleeveless navy dress that fit snugly around my five-months-pregnant belly. My pearls (no diamonds except for my wedding ring) finished the ensemble. Yes, I looked like the wife of a man who would never murder a kid on purpose.

It made me want to throw up, but thankfully my morning sickness had passed. At least I hoped it had passed.

“Look at all of this,” Andre shouted, and I peered through the tinted glass.

One side of the street was completely filled with vans and cameras, and microphones and people, lots of people doing interviews and being interviewed.

My mother would have loved this. It still surprised me that my mother didn’t want to come to court. Any time there was a camera,
Gloria Harris thought that was glamorous. But today, my mother had stepped up.

“I want to be home with Billy,” she’d said. “No need for him to be with a sitter when he can be with his glam-mom.”

That “glam-mom” was a bit over the top, but the sentiment was exactly what I needed.

A policeman waved us forward and Andre drove a few more feet then stopped. “This is where you get out,” he said, as if we were all going to a party.

As Wyatt jumped out I trembled even more. But now my chest hurt, too. Because of how hard my heart was beating.

Wyatt took my hand as if I couldn’t get out of the car alone; this was all part of the show. They had warned me that cameras would always be watching. So I spread my lips into that smile, and held Wyatt’s hand as I slid out of the SUV.

There were shouts all around us, and Newt led us through the narrow pathway and into the courthouse, then up an elevator and down the hall to the room where my husband’s future would be decided.

Inside, I paused and took it all in. I was surprised; this room looked exactly the way courtrooms did on all of those television shows. Only smaller. And older. A lot older. Like the benches were one hundred years old.

There were cameras in the corners; Wyatt had told me about that. The judge had decided that the trial would be televised so that more than the thirty-six people who would win the public seats in a daily lottery could see the proceedings.

Newt and Wyatt had already walked to the front of the room, and as I began to move to the left, I glanced to the right.

And there I saw her.

Janice Johnson.

Right away, I felt like I knew her.

When she looked up, I smiled. And when she smiled back, my smile got wider. Until I sat down behind Newt and Wyatt.

Then Janice looked from me to Newt and Wyatt, and by the time she looked back at me, her smile had gone away.

When Wyatt leaned over the rail to kiss me, Janice rolled her eyes and turned away.

Those seconds of warmth that we shared were completely over.

I
n the beginning, it was all so interesting. From the “all rise” to the judge hitting his gavel, it was just like on TV. I studied the jurors, the twelve and the two alternates, twelve white and two black, eight women and six men, exactly the way Wyatt had told me. Fourteen people who wouldn’t get the chance to go home until this was over since the judge had decided that the jury would be sequestered.

But then, as quickly as that gavel went down, that’s how fast that it went from good to bad.

It started with the opening arguments and the first words out of the prosecutor’s mouth.

“Wyatt Spencer is a murderer!”

I gasped, and glanced at Janice. But her eyes were straight ahead, watching the prosecutor (who really didn’t look like he was much older than sixteen) as he walked slowly back and forth in front of the jury box.

The prosecutor continued: “Wyatt Spencer fatally shot Marquis Johnson, on Monday, May twelfth, the day after Mother’s Day. And he shot him for no reason other than he was angry. He was upset that this
boy
would get out of his car.

“It is not a crime to confront someone who’s knocking on your car window,” the prosecutor said. “Wyatt Spencer started the confrontation when he approached Marquis’s car. And then, when the young man got out of his car, that grown man with a gun”—he paused and pointed to Wyatt—“finished the confrontation that he started. He finished it by taking away the promise and the hope and the future of a young man who on this day would have been a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania.

“And then, to make his crime even worse, after he shot Marquis, he planted a baseball bat at the scene. And he lied to the police and said that Marquis had attacked him with the bat.”

After those words, I could barely hear anything else; I was just stunned that the prosecutor, without my help, had gotten it totally right.

That had to mean that Wyatt was going to jail. The prosecutor had just told the whole truth.

But then, when one of the attorneys who’d been working with Newt got up, he didn’t make me feel much better.

Our side began, “Wyatt Spencer saw someone sitting in front of his house. The car was noisily idling on the street and Mr. Spencer did what anyone would do; he checked it out. He saw a young woman sitting in the passenger seat of the car, and from where he stood, it looked like she was crying. So now he’s more than curious: Mr. Spencer is concerned.

“All Wyatt Spencer was trying to do was to provide help that he thought was needed. But before he could find out the full story of what was happening
in front of his home
, he was confronted by Marquis Johnson. And, I say ‘confronted’ because why else would Marquis get out of his car? Marquis jumped out because he wanted a fight. He jumped out because he was going to attack Mr. Spencer.