It was around this time that Miranda made her infamous appearance on Oprah. It was all a blur at the time — being led from a room full of snacks she was far too nervous to eat, stepping over cables, stepping onto a stage, sitting on a sofa, the sound of applause, the radiance and confidence of the woman across from her, some questions, some answers... How could she have let this happen? Didn't she check up on the stories the writers told her? Couldn't she see? Didn't she care?...

She felt like a corrupt politician stonewalling the press, like a criminal, like one of her disgraced writers. But Miranda knew that what she was saying to this woman, who hardly seemed real she was so very Oprah-like, was not only true, it was profound. Why did no one understand when she tried to explain? When she told them that her writers' stories were real-life stories even when they were lies?

"Because in real life people make things up," she said to Oprah.

But Oprah shook her iconic head, and Miranda was overwhelmed with shame.

She stayed in her loft for weeks after that, not answering the phone, not picking up calls from the clients whom she had tried to defend, ignoring the chorus of pleading voices on her answering machine: her mother, her sister, even the lawyer who was trying to defend her, for several publishers were now coming after her for fraud.

She lay in bed, tangled in her sheets, asking herself and her four walls in a loud keening voice: Why?

And then imagining, in the ironic voice with its Yiddish lilt that she had always playfully bestowed on God, a voice that answered by raising its shoulders and helplessly holding out its hands: Why not?

This is Miranda Weissmann, the answering machine said. This is your lawyer, the answering machine answered, and there is a lien on all your property until the lawsuit is settled, so couldn't you please call me back?