Chapter 100: Paper Doesn't Take Sides
A deposition is a play with one audience member, and she is typing.
The big firm gave us their best conference room, thirty floors up, the lake laid out below like evidence.
Court reporter at the end of the table. Adaeze on my right. Water nobody drank.
Owen was not there.
He had driven me to the building and gone to a movie, like a man waiting out surgery.
The cello came in without his cello voice. Courtrooms get the performance. Depositions get the scalpels.
Mrs. Hale, he said. Let us talk about your ex-husband.
Adaeze had prepared me for seven hours of this. Her instructions fit on one card. Answer the question asked. Stop talking. Never do their job for them.
And one more, she had said. They have bought one outcome. Your temper. Do not let them leave with the merchandise.
He started gently. They always start gently.
You retaliated within hours of being served, he said. You froze new work to your husband's firm that same night.
I filed a conflict notice, preserved records, and froze new assignments, I said. No contract ended that night.
He raised an eyebrow for the record.
And nine days later the trust declined renewal, he said.
On the preset review date, I said. The recurring calendar came from a signed board resolution ten years before the divorce. I was recused. The committee voted without me.
He tried to fuse those events. The dates stayed separate.
Then you ordered an audit of your ex-husband's billing, he said.
Later, I said. After divorce discovery and court-ordered production exposed cross-matter anomalies and his signed routing slips. Independent counsel opened a focused audit on that evidence.
Not on anniversary night? he asked.
No.
Not before non-renewal?
No.
He did not ask for the exhibit number.
Hour two, he tried the mistress. Hour three, the storage unit. Hour four, my mother-in-law's debts, each question shaped like sympathy, swung like a bat.
He was not asking questions. He was auditioning adjectives.
Vindictive. Scorned. Obsessed.
He needed me to wear one of them, just once, just long enough for the transcript.
I thought about the gala. The clipboard. The pulse check.
This was the same room, wearing a tie.
At hour five, he leaned back and tried the direct approach.
Mrs. Hale, did you enjoy destroying him?
Adaeze did not move. She had told me she would not rescue me, because I did not need rescuing.
She was right.
I did not destroy anyone, I said. I stopped catching him. There is a difference, and it is documented.
He looked at the court reporter, as if the machine might have caught something he missed.
It had not.
The reporter changed her paper. The machine keeps its own opinions.
At hour six, he dropped the scalpel and picked up the petition's whole theory.
You used this trust as a weapon in your divorce, he said. That is the heart of this case, and we both know it.
No, I said.
I leaned forward, and for the first time in six hours, I gave him more than the question asked.
The trust acted on its rights, on its calendar, for its reasons, I said. Every action has a date. Every date has a source. Your client cannot turn sequence into retaliation by editing the order.
Paper doesn't take sides. That is why people who take sides hate paper.
He ended the deposition twenty minutes later.
They had seven hours of me, and nothing they could play at trial, and we all knew it. Adaeze gathered her pens one at a time, which is how she applauds.
I was at the door when the cello found his voice again, a little of it, just enough for one last line.
Enjoy the calm, Mrs. Hale, he said.
We cannot wait to hear what your husband's lawyer has to say.
Paula.
They had subpoenaed Paula.