Chapter 8 - The Deposition
The conference room at Sterling, Vance & Cross was completely silent except for the low, rhythmic hum of the court reporter’s machine.
It was Friday, eight days after I had found the champagne silk robe on my side of the bed.
Daniel sat across the mahogany table between two attorneys who looked like they were being paid by the hour to attend an execution they had no interest in preventing. Thomas Vance, eighty-eight years old, looked through his bifocals at the four-inch stack of bank drafts with the bewildered distaste of a man who had practiced law during the Eisenhower administration and could not fathom why anyone would write down their crimes in a black notebook.
Beside Daniel sat Paige Mercer.
She wasn't wearing periwinkle today. She was wearing a charcoal wool suit that looked like it had been purchased off the rack forty-eight hours ago. Her hair was pulled back into a severe, flat bun. Her makeup was minimal, her eyes puffy and shadowed.
Across from them sat Sarah Sterling, her Montblanc pen resting beside a legal pad covered in neat, blue-ink timelines. I sat to Sarah’s right, wearing my navy blazer and the gold watch my father had given me when I graduated from college.
"State your full name and address for the record," Sarah said to Paige.
"Paige Evelyn Mercer," she whispered. "712 Selwyn Avenue, Apartment 4B, Charlotte."
"Ms. Mercer," Sarah began, her voice steady and rhythmic, "prior to November 14th of this year, were you aware that the entity known as *Blue Heron Creative LLC* was receiving regular monthly disbursements from an account titled under *Catawba Ridge Holdings*?"
Paige’s lawyer, a young woman from a boutique firm who looked like she hadn't slept since Tuesday, tapped Paige’s wrist. "My client will answer only as to her administrative role within Mercer & Croft."
"Your client will answer the question as framed, or we will adjourn this room and walk down the hall to the grand jury room where Judge Whiting is presiding over the financial crimes docket," Sarah said without looking up from her pad.
Paige swallowed. Her throat clicked. "Yes. I was aware."
"And were you aware that the funds in that account were derived from a home equity credit line encumbering the primary residence of Claire and Daniel Vance?"
"I... I didn't ask where the money came from," Paige whispered.
"Did you ask when forty-two hundred dollars was wired directly from that account to the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles to cover the sales tax on your 2023 Range Rover?" Sarah asked, sliding a document across the table.
Paige didn't look at the paper. "Daniel told me that was a signing bonus."
"A signing bonus from an LLC that had no employees, no office, and no clients other than your own agency?"
"Objection," Paige’s lawyer muttered, but there was no conviction in her voice.
"Let's move to Exhibit Fourteen," Sarah said, sliding another paper across the wood.
It was a photograph.
Not a legal document. A photograph taken from Paige’s public Instagram account from three months ago.
In the photo, Paige was sitting on the cedar dock at the lake house, holding the loon mug in both hands, wearing my Savannah straw hat, looking out over the water while the sun set behind the loblolly pines. The caption read: *My sanctuary. Building a life from the ground up.*
Daniel stared at the photograph as if it were an unexploded mortar shell that had just landed between his coffee cup and his yellow pad.
"Ms. Mercer," Sarah said, "is that the dock at 144 Heron Cove Lane?"
"Yes," Paige whispered.
"And who owned that dock on the day that photograph was taken?"
"Daniel did," Paige said, her voice rising with a small, pathetic spark of defiance. "He told me he owned it outright."
Sarah turned her head slightly toward Daniel. "Mr. Vance, did you own that property outright on August 12th?"
Daniel didn't look up. His hands were clasped between his thighs. "No," he muttered.
"Speak into the microphone, Mr. Vance," the court reporter said.
"No," Daniel said louder, his face turning that familiar, mottled red. "The property was held in a joint tenancy with right of survivorship with my wife, Claire."
"And did you inform Ms. Mercer that your wife had contributed sixty percent of the purchase price from her inheritance?" Sarah asked.
"I didn't discuss my wife's inheritance with her," Daniel spat.
"No," Sarah agreed. "You discussed my client's wardrobe instead."
She slid Exhibit Fifteen across the table.
It was an itemized receipt from *Neiman Marcus* in South Park, dated October 4th.
*One mulberry silk bias-cut robe, champagne. $850.*
*Six designer day dresses, sizes 2 through 4. $4,200.*
*Billed to: Daniel Vance.*
*Shipping address: 144 Heron Cove Lane, Mooresville, NC.*
Paige looked at the receipt, then slowly turned her head toward Daniel.
"You told me you bought that robe in Milan," she said. Her voice wasn't corporate now; it was thin, sharp, full of that deep, sour disgust that only comes when a woman realizes she has been treated like a discount mistress by a man who couldn't even be bothered to invent an original lie.
Daniel didn't look at her. "Paige, please. Not now."
"You bought it at South Park?" she hissed, leaning across her lawyer toward him. "Two miles from your house? You used your firm credit card at the department store where your wife buys her shoes?"
"Ms. Mercer, please," her lawyer warned, tugging on her sleeve.
"Shut up!" Paige snapped, shaking her arm free. She looked across the table at me.
I was sitting perfectly still, my hands resting on the edge of the mahogany, watching her with the calm, curious expression of someone observing a specimen under a microscope.
"He told me he had an offshore fund," Paige said, her eyes locked on mine. "He told me he was going to buy out Mercer & Croft’s regional contracts and set up a private agency for me in Raleigh. He told me you were an invalid who couldn't leave the house because of your clinical depression."
Daniel flinched as if he’d been whipped. "Paige, for God’s sake—"
"He told me that!" she shouted, her voice echoing off the glass walls of the conference room. "He told me you spent all day in bed and that he stayed with you out of Christian charity because your father had died and you had no one else! That’s why I took the hat, Claire! I thought you were... I thought you were nothing!"
The court reporter’s machine stopped clicking.
The silence in the room was so thick, so heavy, that we could hear the air conditioning unit fifty floors above us cycling on.
I looked at Paige for three seconds. Then I looked at Daniel.
"I am not an invalid, Paige," I said, my voice quiet, clear, and perfectly steady. "I have never had clinical depression. I run three miles every morning, I manage two households, and I have kept this man’s financial crimes from landing him in federal prison for twelve years."
I stood up.
"Thomas," Sarah Sterling said to Daniel’s ancient attorney, "the settlement offer expires at 5:00 PM today. If the signatures are not on my desk by 4:59, we file the complaint in superior court and we deliver the commingling records to the district attorney’s office on Fourth Street."
Thomas Vance looked at Daniel. The old man didn't look angry; he looked profoundly, utterly disgusted.
"Sign it, Daniel," the old man said, his voice dry as parchment. "Sign it right now, or I am withdrawing as your counsel before I leave this room."
Daniel sat there, his head down, looking at the black Montblanc pen that Sarah had set on the table before him.
He reached out. His fingers were shaking so violently that he could barely grip the barrel.
He signed the first page.
Then the second.
Then the third.
With every stroke of the pen, he gave away the lake house. He gave away the colonial in Myers Park. He gave away sixty percent of his future partnership liquidation.
When he reached the final signature line—the one that released all claims to the children's education trusts and waived his right to contest sole legal custody—he stopped. A single tear fell from his nose, landing on the crisp white paper with a tiny, wet *smack*.
He looked up at me, his eyes red, wet, and completely broken.
"Claire," he whispered. "What am I supposed to do now?"
I picked up my handbag from the floor, smoothed the front of my navy blazer, and looked down at him.
"You should find a good contractor, Daniel," I said. "I hear the foundations in Charlotte can be very unstable."
I walked out of the conference room, through the brushed-steel lobby, and into the elevator.
May you like
As the doors closed, I saw Paige Mercer sitting alone in the corner of the reception area, her head in her hands, her designer jacket bunched around her elbows, while Daniel stood three feet away from her, screaming at his sister through a cracked cell phone.
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