Chapter 9: The Deposition
Grace called me the evening after Renata's deposition.
"How did it go?" I asked.
"Better than I expected.
Worse for her than she planned." I could hear Grace moving papers.
"She came in confident.
Her attorney is competent but not exceptional.
She had clearly rehearsed."
"What did she say?"
"She described a conversation she claimed to have had with Mike approximately five years ago — before his diagnosis, before Mia was born.
She said he told her he had received results from a fertility screening that concerned him.
She was very specific about the setting.
A restaurant.
A Tuesday.
She remembered what she ordered."
"That level of detail is suspicious."
"That was my read too.
When a witness is that precise about peripheral details, it often means the central claim has been constructed." Grace paused.
"So I asked her to describe Mike's emotional state during this conversation.
She said he was calm and matter-of-fact.
I asked her why a man sharing a private medical concern with a business partner would be calm and matter-of-fact.
She said he was a private person."
"He was," I said.
"But not about things that frightened him."
"That's exactly what I needed.
I asked her whether she had ever met Mia.
She said no.
I asked whether she had ever seen Mike interact with Mia — photographs, social media, anything.
She said she didn't follow his personal life."
"She didn't know him at all by the end."
"Which makes her testimony about a private conversation five years ago considerably less credible." Grace's voice was measured but I could hear the satisfaction underneath it.
"Then I asked about Thomas Greer."
I sat up straighter.
"She denied knowing him," Grace said.
"I showed her the email chain.
The first one — just the first one, with her name and his in the header.
She looked at her attorney.
Her attorney asked for a recess."
"Did she admit it after the recess?"
"She claimed the emails were about a separate business matter unrelated to the probate filing.
She said she had been exploring a potential investment in the company and had contacted Thomas in a professional capacity."
"That's not what the emails say."
"No.
It is not." Grace let that sit for a moment.
"Her attorney knows the full chain is coming.
I could see it in his face.
He's going to advise her to reconsider her participation in this filing."
"Will she pull her statement?"
"I think so.
Within the next forty-eight hours." A pause.
"And if she doesn't, the judge will see the full email chain at the hearing.
Either way, her credibility is gone."
I pressed my hand flat against the kitchen table.
"What about Daniel?" I asked.
"Daniel is the harder conversation." Grace's voice became more careful.
"He is genuinely grieving.
He made a bad decision and found a bad ally and let it go too far.
But his legal standing is real, and he hasn't withdrawn."
"Do you think he will?"
"I think he might, if he understood what the hearing would actually look like for him.
The email chain, Dr.
Okafor's testimony, Mike's letter — all of it together paints a picture of a coordinated effort to disinherit a four-year-old child.
No judge responds well to that." She paused.
"There's also the matter of Renata's private arrangement with Daniel.
We don't have documentation of it yet, but I've asked a colleague to look into it.
If there's a financial agreement between them, and it surfaces at the hearing, Daniel's motivation becomes very clear."
"He was going to share the inheritance with her."
"That would be my guess."
I thought of Mike's brother at the funeral.
The way he had stood apart.
The way he had looked at Mia.
"Grace," I said.
"Is there any world in which I should talk to Daniel directly?
Before the hearing?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"Normally I'd say no.
But given what you told me about his text — that he wants to resolve this without the hearing — I think there may be a version of that conversation that helps." She paused.
"Not to negotiate.
Not to offer him anything.
But to let him see who he's actually fighting."
"You mean bring Mia."
"I mean let him remember who Mike was."
I looked at Mia's drawings on the refrigerator.
The land crab.
A house with a very large sun.
A figure labeled DAD in Mia's careful, crooked letters, with a smaller figure beside it labeled MI.
"I'll think about it," I said.
"Don't wait too long," Grace said.
"The hearing is in six days."
After I hung up, I stood at the refrigerator for a long time looking at that drawing.
The figure labeled DAD had a small mark behind his ear.
Mia had drawn it there deliberately.
A tiny anchor.
The letter M.
She had put it there because that was where she had seen it.
On her father's skin, when he held her close.
May you like
She had recognized it on Harold because she had seen it on Mike first.
She had always known.
