“This is fucking outrageous!” she angrily complained to Jake shortly after reading the article. “They didn’t talk to a single person I worked with, a single student I taught, but they’re saying I was a bad teacher? I was an awesome teacher! And they’re saying I was told to resign because I was dating you? What the hell is that about? Nobody in the district even knew I was dating you until today!”
Jake had been sympathetic but otherwise unhelpful. “I’m sorry, hon,” he told her. “We got a free ride up until now, but that free ride is over. I’m afraid this won’t be the last or the worst you’ll hear from our friends in the popular press.”
And, of course, he was right. Now that the story had broken, both the Watcher and other celebrity watching publications began to dig deeper into her life. Reporters popped up quite frequently when she was out at the grocery store, or when she was shopping, even when she was in the parking lot at Culpepper Studios going into or leaving work. They always approached and began to launch questions at her, asking her if Jake was abusing her, if she was aware of his domestic violence background, if she was aware of the well-publicized infidelity he had displayed in the past, if Jake had bought that car for her, a dozen other questions, all of them inflammatory. She refused to answer any of them, always walked away as quickly as possible whenever this happened, but it still kept happening with depressing regularity.
Paparazzi photographed her endlessly as well. Sometimes she saw them—they were often blatant enough to just stand in front of her and start shooting—and sometimes she didn’t. Her picture appeared everywhere, on magazines, in newspapers, and on television shows such as Entertainment Weekly and Celebrity Files.
What was worse, however, was that the reporters had now branched out and started harassing people that knew her. Her parents had been one of their first targets, getting a visit from a Hollywood Reporter journalist only two days after the initial Watcher article had appeared. Joseph and Robin Best had still been trying to absorb the fact that the man their daughter had been living in sin with for the past year was Jake Kingsley, who, to devout Mormons such as themselves, was quite close to epitome-of-all-evil status. Though Joseph had not spoken to his daughter in more than three years, he had had no problem telling the journalist exactly what he thought of Jake and his daughter’s relationship with him.
“He’s a hell bound sinner right up there with Adolph Hitler himself,” Joseph was quoted as saying. “He corrupts the youth of this great country with his music and engages in perversions and sin without remorse. There is a special corner of Hell where he’ll spend eternity. And as for Laura, she has certainly destroyed any hope she might have had of entering the Kingdom of Heaven unless she pulls herself away from this atrocious relationship and comes back to the values she was raised with.”
Her mother’s statement was a bit gentler but no less judgmental. “Laura became corrupted and drew away from her faith back in college, but she was always a good girl underneath. Now, however, I’m not sure how this Kingsley character managed to pull her so far over to the dark side, but I want her to know that I’ll be here for her when she’s ready to repent. All of us in her family will be here for her.”
And on the subject of whether or not Jake was beating her, raping her, or abusing her, Robin Best had this to offer: “We don’t know what’s going on with her. Ever since she moved out of the apartment she was in before and into Jake Kingsley’s house, we hardly ever hear from her. She never comes over to visit anymore and we only talk on the phone about once a month or so. She’s always very mysterious and noncommittal about what is going on in her personal life. I know that one of the characteristics of an abusive relationship is that the man will try to keep the woman isolated from her family and friends to keep her under control. I very much fear for Laura’s safety and I pray for her every night.”
This article had prompted Laura to actually use profanity while talking to her mother for the first time in her life.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Mom!” she’d yelled at Robin on the phone shortly after reading the article. “What the hell are you trying to do to me?”
“Laura!” her mother barked, shocked. “Do not take the savior’s name in vain!”
“Fuck the savior!” she returned, as angry as she had ever been with anyone, even Dr. Dave when he had been trying to rape her.
“I will not listen to you blaspheme, young lady!” Robin told her firmly. “One more word of it and I will hang up.”
Laura took a deep breath, composed herself a bit, and then said, “Okay, sorry, Mom. I’ll try to keep my mouth under control here.”
“You never used language like that before you started seeing that ... that horrible man!”
“You don’t know anything about him, Mom,” Laura said.
“I know what I’ve read in the papers,” she returned. “I know he beats women regularly, that he worships Satan, and that he stands for the corruption of our youth.”
“He doesn’t do any of...”
“And I know that you hid the fact that you were with him from us,” she continued. “Does that sound like someone involved in a healthy relationship?”
“I didn’t tell you about him because I thought you might overreact,” Laura said. “And that’s exactly what you’ve done. Why in the name of G ... uh ... everything that is holy did you talk to those reporters? Did you read the article they published based on that interview?”
“I read it,” she said. “They did not misquote either one of us.”
“Mother, neither you nor Dad has ever even met Jake. You know nothing about him except what they publish in those rags. He is the sweetest, most considerate man I’ve ever met and I love him. He has never laid a hand on me in anger, has never done anything sexual to me that I didn’t consent to, has...”
“Then you admit you’re sleeping with him out of wedlock?”
“Of course I’m sleeping with him!” she barked, exasperated. “This is 1993, Mom, not the freaking fifties! Did you really think I was living in a man’s house for the past eight months and not sleeping with him?”
“That is not the way you were raised, Laura,” Robin told her sternly. “You are putting your very soul at risk.”
“I’ll worry about my soul, mother. You worry about your mouth.”
“Excuse me?”
“Please, for the love of God and all that He stands for, do not talk to any more reporters about me or about Jake. Just refuse to talk to them if they show up. If you have any love for me as a daughter, you will do this for me.”
“I do love you, Laura,” Robin told her. “Despite the path you’ve taken and the choices you’ve made, you are still my daughter.”
“And I love you too, Mom,” she said. “Now please, don’t talk to those sleazebags anymore. Will you promise me that?”
“I promise,” Robin said with a sigh.
And so far, that promise had been kept. Even after the next episode of American Watcher came out and featured nude pictures of Laura and Jake taken by good old Paul Peterson himself.
The shots were of she and Jake in the hot tub on Jake’s deck, where they had been having an after dinner soak one evening. Jake’s back yard was completely surrounded by privacy hedges that stood twelve feet high and blocked the view of the swimming pool and hot tub area from the prying eyes of any of his neighbors unless they wanted to climb a ladder and peer over (which, some of them had done on occasion back in the early days of his residency there). Since the hot tub was shielded from view (or so they thought) they typically did not wear bathing suits in it when they enjoyed its use. Such had been the case on this late afternoon.