Chapter 55: Her Hand Did Not Shake
The deposition was held in a conference room on the fortieth floor, all glass and weather, the kind of room that makes people honest or makes them perform.
Vera wore navy, the color she used to wear to church, back when she still went to be seen.
She had her own lawyer now, a reserved woman Owen had recommended, paid for out of a fund I did not discuss with anyone.
She sat down across from the firm's lawyer, folded her hands, and raised her right hand like a woman who had been rehearsing in front of a mirror.
I was there. Parties may attend. I wanted her to see my face and know it was not a threat.
Just a witness to hers.
Vera nodded at me when she came in. A small nod, the kind that costs nothing and means something.
The lawyer was gentle. The gentle ones are the ones to fear.
Mrs. Wexler, did your son ask you to hold anything for him, in the weeks after his termination?
Yes, she said. A small drive. He said it was his insurance.
What did you tell him?
I told him no.
Did he say what was on it?
He said it was the truth about what they did to him.
Did you believe him?
A pause. The court reporter's fingers waited. Even the building seemed to hold its breath. Her own lawyer looked down at the table.
No, she said. I have known my son for forty-one years. I know what his truths are for.
Grant's new lawyer, a tired man from a firm that takes payment plans, objected twice and lost twice.
Then they walked her through the rest.
The two hundred thousand. The failed boutique that had consumed her own savings first. The years of lying about both.
Did your son know the money came from Victor Hale?
He knew, she said. I told him. He said it was our business, not hers.
The storage unit. The account in her name that she had signed for and never controlled.
And then the question the whole claim lived or died on.
Did Nora Hale ever direct the firm's fraud review?
No.
Did she ask the firm to fire your son?
No.
He asked her to stop it, did he not?
Vera looked at me then, and something old moved behind her eyes.
He sat on her porch and begged, she said. And she told him it was not hers to stop. She could have lied to be kind. She did not lie, and she did not stop it, because it was never hers.
One more question, the lawyer said. Why tell the truth today, when it costs you the most?
Vera folded her hands tighter.
Because I spent twenty years lying for the men in this family, she said. And all it ever bought me was more lying.
The firm's lawyer thanked her.
Grant's lawyer did not ask her anything at all.
The court reporter marked the final exhibit.
There was nothing to ask. The case against me ended in that chair, without ceremony, in a conference room with bad coffee.
Grant was waiting in the parking garage when we came down.
He looked smaller than his coat.
His collar was wrong, I noticed. Fifteen years of ironing his collars, and I noticed.
Mom, he said.
Vera kept walking.
Mom. Please.
She did not slow down. She did not look back. She passed her son as if he were a house she used to live in.
He called after her once more. Her name. The whole of it.
The garage threw it back at him.
I watched him standing between the concrete pillars, one hand still half-raised.
And I felt nothing I had to apologize for.