Epilogue

EPILOGUE

THE INTERVIEW; GRATITUDE

" S o, Mr. Morgan." Nina Price, the interviewer, is a beautiful Black beautiful woman in her thirties, dressed in a neat, modest navy skirt suit, black hair in long, loose spirals. "You've had an eventful couple of years."

I nod, laughing quietly. "You could say that, yes."

"I'm sure most of our viewers are familiar with the basic outlines of your story, but let's recap, shall we?" She consults her notecards.

"Sounds good," I say. "There's a couple of things you could skip if you were so inclined."

She laughs, showing even, white teeth. "Where's the fun in that?" Another moment, scanning her notes, and then she focuses back on me. "Five years ago this week, you were arrested and jailed on a laundry list of charges. Before that, you had a moderately successful career as an actor, primarily in action movies."

I chuckle. "Moderately successful is being nice."

"Is it safe to say that the arrest changed the trajectory of your life?" she asks.

I nod. "Oh god, yes. It changed everything." I shift positions in the leather chair, keeping my eyes on the interviewer rather than the cameras and lights. "I'm not excusing my behavior—that day or any before it. I was in a bad place. I was trapped in a toxic, loveless marriage, and I was struggling with anger; not just about the marriage, but a lot of things—personal things."

"The death of your brother, right? You've spoken of that in interviews for your directorial debut, Lifeline .”

"Yeah, that's part of it—A big part. It was a lot of things, though. I was angry and I wasn't handling it well. The day in question, I’d just signed my divorce papers, and I was…god, what was I? Relieved? Bitter? A lot of both, I think. I got drunk—very, very drunk. And I…well, there's no other way to put it—I lost it. I hurt people—an innocent bystander who bumped into me and several of the police officers who responded to the situation. But being arrested, honestly, was the best thing that ever happened to me."

"Can you explain why such a horrible, traumatic event—traumatic for you, not just the victims—would be a good thing?" She shuffles her cards, sliding the front card to the back.

"It forced me to look at myself and my life. Who I am. What kind of person I am. What I want out of life. I ended up selling both of my properties in LA and borrowed a cabin from a friend of mine. I needed to get away somewhere I could…" I shrug. "I dunno. Do some soul-searching, I guess."

"But it wasn't soul-searching you found, was it?"

I laugh, shaking my head. "No, it certainly wasn't, Nina."

"Can you tell me what you did find?"

"I found the love of my life."

"Tell me about her. Tell me how you met." Another shuffle of the cards.

I sigh, thinking. "My friend had also loaned out the other part of the property. There are two cabins on a little lake, and I was supposed to be staying in one—the smaller one, my friend's workshop. The other was going to be occupied over the holiday season by the sister of his deceased wife. She'd gone through some very hard times herself and needed a getaway. The idea was we'd keep to ourselves and get the peace and quiet we both needed."

"But that's not exactly how it happened, is it?"

“Not quite." I smile, thinking back. "The first day I was there, she tried to start a fire in the fireplace and forgot to open the flue. And that was it. One look, and I was hooked. We kept finding reasons to interact, and then somehow we fell in love. To this day, it seems surreal, even still. Meeting Lilith changed my life. Changed me."

"Tell me about her."

"Oh god, how long do you have?" I laugh, shaking my head with a sigh. "She's short and fierce. She’s a lawyer. She’s funny. Beautiful. Smart. Kind. She's endlessly patient with me, and believe me, I can be difficult. I've done a lot of work on myself and I've definitely gotten better about my anger, but I still get irritable sometimes when things don’t go right. She can calm me down with a touch, and everything is okay."

"You and Lilith have been married for how long now?"

"Three years."

"And you have kids together, yes?"

"Yes. We adopted Charlie two years ago and Mackenzie last year. Charlie is three, and Mackenzie is a year—we got her right after she was born.”

"Why did you adopt?"

"My wife had to have an emergency hysterectomy. That's part of what drove her to the cabins five years ago. She realized after the surgery that she did want to have kids—she wanted to be a mother. So then, after we got married, we discussed our options. She has some eggs frozen, but neither of us loved the idea of a surrogate, so we chose to adopt."

"Tell me about your kids, Reece." She gives me an easy, professional grin.

"Charlie is a little hellion. That boy can get into trouble faster than you'd believe. He's into everything, all the time. But he's so funny and so smart. He loves his little sister, and loves to help take care of her. Mackenzie is just a wonder. The sweetest thing you'll ever meet. She's pretty young yet, so her real personality is still forming, but she's just calm and quiet and easy so far. Knock on wood, right? I love them both so much, and I can't imagine life without them."

She examines her cards again, and then shifts positions. "So, changing tracks. Your career has changed a bit, hasn't it?"

I nod, laughing. "Just a little bit."

"Can you tell us how you transitioned from acting to directing?"

"Sort of by accident, to be honest. After Lily and I decided we were going to be together, we had to figure out what that looked like. At the time, my career was…in question, shall we say."

"You weren't sure you'd ever work again, isn’t that right?" She smiles again, shuffles her cards, glances briefly at the camera, and then at me.

"Pretty much, yeah. The Labors of Hercules had bombed miserably, and all anyone cared about was what was on TMZ about me, not my movies. I wasn't sure I wanted to go back to work in Hollywood. But I wasn't sure what else to do—the only marketable skill I had was construction, and I was several years out of that field. Lilith works for a firm here in Atlanta, so we decided I'd relocate here for a while. There's a pretty thriving film and TV scene here, so I figured I’d see where I could go. I decided to focus on being behind the camera because, honestly, I wasn't ready for public attention yet. It was slow going at first, I'll tell you that. It was a good year or so of editing and re-writing scripts, taking small jobs on minor sets—basically putting in the work of learning the ropes of filmmaking on the other side of the camera. Eventually, a director named Elizabeth Moore took a chance on me. She made me the A-D for a little project called Talking To Myself , a two-hander indie film.

"Liz and I worked together for a few more projects over the next two years, and then I finally got a chance to sit in a real director's chair for a project called Lifeline . It was about a young man dealing with his younger brother's struggles with addiction. I got a chance to read early versions of the script, and it really spoke to me—it's something I have real, personal experience with. It could be about me and my brother Robby."

I choke up, look away, and gather myself. It takes a few tries to swallow the hot knot in my throat.

"So, I, uh…” I clear my throat and start over. “I pretty much begged and groveled for a chance to direct it. It was so far out of my fieldhouse in terms of the films I used to act in, and I had only had the one director’s credit to my name, but it felt like an opportunity to maybe show the world and myself that I'm more than just…" I raise my arm and flex my bicep, patting it with my other hand. "This. You know?"

"I think I speak for a lot of people when I say how surprised I was when early trailers for that came out, listing you as the director. I hope you don't take offense when my initial reaction was, ‘Wait, that guy directed it?’” Her smile is meant to take the sting out of the backhanded compliment.

"No offense taken—I get it. I'm not an obvious choice, right? Like, that guy? The big beefcake villain from Atlas ? That guy is directing this movie? Yeah, I get it." I let out a self-deprecating laugh. "I'm just thankful the studio took a chance on me. I have to publicly thank Liz because she campaigned hard for me to have the helm on the project. She was originally tapped to direct, but she told them in no uncertain terms that I was the better choice. They gave me ninety days to impress them, so I went to work."

"Was it cathartic for you, working on subject material so close to home, Reece?"

"Oh, absolutely. Very much so. There were a couple scenes where I had to take a break because it was too hard. It was like watching Robby all over again."

“In the film, Ricky defeats his demons. He overcomes addiction, thanks in large part to the efforts of his brother, Rafe. Despite being a hard watch, it does have a happy ending. Sorry, I suppose I just spoiled it for those who haven't seen it." She laughs in the direction of the camera.

"It's not a spoiler. The ending is no secret. It's not a twist. The movie is about the journey Rafe and Robby—sorry, Ricky—go on together."

She seizes on my gaffe. "Did you do that a lot during filming? Call Ricky Robby?"

I grin sheepishly. "Yeah, I did."

"The real story of your life didn't exactly have the happy ending of the film, did it?" She asks.

"No, unfortunately, it did not. Robby did pass away from an overdose."

"That had a huge impact on your life, didn't it?"

"Huge, yeah. My mother died not too long after. And then, a few months after my mother passed, I shattered my knee one game before we were set to play in the Rose Bowl. I'd been getting offers from the NFL, so that was kind of a rough year for me—lost my brother, my mother, and the career I’d spent my life up to that point working for, all within the space of less than six months."

"And then a few years later, everything changed again," she prompts.

"This time for the better. I'd still be lost if not for Lilith. She showed me who I really am—by seeing something in me I didn't see myself at the time. She saw my worth and refused to let me not see it."

"Is it fair to say she saved your life?"

"Hell yes," I say immediately. "Sorry. Heck yes. She absolutely saved my life. I'm not saying I was thinking of self-harm or anything, but I just had no clue what I was going to do or who I was. Lily showed me how to become myself. She supported me and encouraged me while I was working as a gaffer and best boy and whatever else. She told me she was proud of me all the time when I felt like I was going backward, you know? She was providing for us. We were living in her condo. I was starting over, and it was tough. But she believed in me and kept me going. When I doubted my ability to direct something like Lifeline , she shook me out of it. Encouraged me to dig into my creativity. To believe in myself."

"She sounds pretty amazing."

"The most amazing. She's my hero."

"What is she doing now?"

"She's a senior partner at a law firm specializing in appellate law. She does a lot of work with The Innocence Project, helping get innocent and wrongly convicted prisoners out of jail."

She flips her cards again, scans, and then focuses on me. "Which brings us to your most recent project. What can you tell us about it?"

"It's in post right now, and we're looking at a Christmas release, although we haven’t nailed down a date yet. It's actually a story that came to us through my wife's work. Two years ago, she was brought on board with a team of lawyers and activists fighting to get a wrongfully convicted man out of prison. His name is Reggie McMillan, and he was convicted in 1998 of a brutal quadruple homicide. There was no direct evidence, no eyewitnesses, nothing tying him to the crime except a single grainy security camera image that could have been of anyone. He’d been denied appeal after appeal for years until The Innocence Project took his case. The movie is about the fight to get him released. Spoiler alert—they did. The movie chronicles the immense amount of work it took to get him in front of a judge and how he's rebuilt his life since his release. It's a feel-good film that we hope leaves you believing in the goodness of people, in the willingness of a few good people to stand up and fight for those who have been denied a voice of their own."

"Who plays Reggie?" "A fantastic newcomer named Henry Wade Robinson. He's from the Atlanta area, and he's insanely talented."

"How instrumental was your wife in putting this film together, Reece?"

I smile, shake my head, and laugh. "Is there something stronger than instrumental? It would not have happened without her. She brought us Reggie. She was also the legal advisor throughout the process."

"What was it like working with your wife on this project?"

"Incredible. She's actually got a producer credit on it—she fought me on it, but I insisted and got my way. After some…negotiation."

"Do I want to know what that means?"I just smile. "I think you can put two and two together, Nina." I wave my hand, laughing. "Actually, the truth is, we traded. She was recently brought on to be a part of a documentary about The Innocence Project and some of their higher profile cases, which Reggie's is, as well as a couple of others she's helped with. So she let me give her a producer credit, and I, in turn, have been helping out with the documentary, finding them local crews and making introductions, things like that."

Another card shuffle. “Do you miss acting, Reece?"

I shrug. "I mean, sometimes. I miss the physicality of the roles I used to play. The stunts were fun. Fight scenes were always my favorite. I miss that."

"Think you'll ever go back in front of the camera?" She asks; a producer behind the cameras makes a wrap-it-up signal.

"Maybe. If I get sent the right script, I'd consider it. I'm really enjoying the work I'm doing now. I like the deeper, more serious projects. Not that there's anything wrong with the fun action movie stuff I started out doing, but just creatively, what I'm doing now challenges me on a deeper level. So I guess it'd have to be the right script."

"Okay, Reece. It's that time—our regular viewers know what's coming: the rapid-fire round to close us out. Five questions, and try to answer right off the bat, no thinking." She smiles, bright and professional and reassuring. “Ready?”

"I was born ready, Nina."

"All right. First question and I think most of our female viewers will be interested in this one: Would you ever take a role requiring graphic sex scenes?"

"No."

"Favorite director to work with?"

"Liz, of course. We have a new project lined up, but I can't say anything else about it right now."

"Director you'd love to work with?"

"Spielberg."

"If you could rewind time and take back one decision, what would it be?"

"None. Everything in my life has led me to where I am, and I'm deliriously happy. If I changed even one thing, I might not be here. I wouldn't have Lily or Charlie and Mackenzie."

"Last question: Cake or pie?" "Pie."

She flips through her cards one last time and then sets them face down on her thigh. "Well, Reece, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you for your time and honesty."

"Thank you for having me, Nina."

She turns to the studio audience. "Reece Morgan, everyone!" She rises from her chair, tucks her cards in her armpit, and applauds, cueing the audience to follow.

I rise as well, wave to the audience, embrace Nina, and do some more waving and smiling before the producers eventually wave me off-stage.

Lilith is waiting in the wings, Mackenzie on her hip, Charlie clinging to her leg. Mackenzie has her favorite stuffy, Babbit, a floppy gray stuffed rabbit, clutched in one hand, her eyes wide as she takes in the bustle around her. Charlie is bouncing up and down next to Lily, one hand knotted in the leg of her jeans.

"Dada!" He shouts and lets go of Lily to bolt to me.

With the utter trust of a child, he flings himself into the air a few feet away, sure that I’ll catch him. I do, of course, and toss him into the air, catch him, and blow raspberries on his belly until he's hysterical. By this point, Mack, as we call her, is going apeshit, squirming out of her mother's arms, trying to get to me.

"You'd better take this little monkey before she goes for a dive," Lily says, handing her to me.

I take Mack and pretend to gnaw on her while she squeals and screeches. "How are my two littlest monkeys?" I ask them.

"Dada on TV," Charlie says.

"I sure was, buddy."

"Dada," Mack echoes because her big brother is her hero, and she tries to mimic everything he does and says.

"Great interview, my love," Lily says, lifting on her toes to kiss me. "You killed it."

"Thanks, gorgeous."

"You really plugged the hell out of The Innocence Project," she says, grinning. "They'll like the exposure."

"Can’t be enough for the work they're doing." I hike my kids higher, kiss Lily's forehead, and lead the way out of the studio. "Does anyone like… ice cream ?”

Charlie and Mack both squeal in excitement while Lily rolls her eyes at me for giving them ice cream before dinner.

Later, in the car on the way home to our property on a small private lake outside Atlanta, Lily looks at me. "You really wouldn't change anything?"

I shake my head. "Nope. Not a thing. I mean, I wish I could give Robby a different ending, you know? And Mom. But those weren't choices I made. What I went through with Vivian?" I sigh, shrug. "It was hell. But I think it made me appreciate what I have with you all the more. So no, I wouldn't change that. I'd go through it a thousand times over again just to be with you, Lil. You're everything." I glance back at Charlie and Mack, zonked out in the back seat. "And them."

She moves our joined hands so she can kiss the back of my hand. "Love you, husband."

"Love you, too, wife."

That night, with Lily naked and sated and sleeping on my chest, I think back to that fateful Christmas. And I think about how eternally grateful I am that Lily forgot to open that stupid flue.