Chapter 73 - The Woman Who Said No
Rebecca wore green to court.
Not my old dress.
Not a symbol she announced.
Just a color she liked.
I noticed because I had spent too many months treating clothing as part of an evidentiary record.
She sat beside me in the waiting area and smoothed the cuff.
“Too bright?”
“No.”
“Good. I refuse to dress like a guilty filing cabinet.”
I laughed.
It helped.
Her testimony began with the investment proposal.
Then the documents she denied authorizing.
Then Hayes.
The attorney she believed represented her independently.
The settlement she signed after being told the problem had been resolved.
She did not claim to have understood the full network then.
She described what she asked and what she was told.
When the prosecutor reached her warning about me, Rebecca’s voice changed.
Not dramatically.
Enough.
She had written that if Thomas meant Audrey Miller, he should leave me out.
The message was displayed.
I looked at the words.
For years, they had waited inside a file while I lived the consequences of not receiving them.
The defense questioned why she stopped trying to contact my family.
Rebecca answered.
Thomas said my father knew.
Hayes said the matter was handled.
She had already spent money and emotional energy escaping her own involvement.
She wanted the situation finished.
“Was that a mistake?” she was asked.
“Yes.”
The answer was clear.
She did not make herself a hero.
That made her harder to reduce to a bitter former girlfriend.
One attorney suggested that disappointment over Julian influenced her present account.
Rebecca looked toward him.
“I was disappointed before I saw documents bearing my name that I had not authorized. The documents are a separate problem.”
I pressed my lips together.
I did not smile.
The court was not a place to reward a good line.
But later, outside, I held her so tightly she complained she needed her ribs.
“You were good.”
“I was terrified.”
“Both.”
She nodded.
Both.
That afternoon, records associated with Northbridge were addressed through witnesses able to establish their source and business use.
Celia did not sit at a defendant’s table in this proceeding.
Her conduct was still being examined separately.
That did not make every record bearing her company’s name irrelevant.
The prosecutor connected certain messages and payment records to the defendants’ actions.
The court addressed objections.
Some material was admitted for particular purposes.
Some questions were limited.
It was not the unrestricted public exposure I had once imagined wanting.
It was more exact.
The invoice associated with my engagement appeared.
Twenty thousand dollars.
The description.
The surrounding correspondence.
A defense attorney argued that the term family relationship conversion referred to professional development.
I watched the jury look at the dates.
No one could climb inside my marriage and measure every feeling.
The records could still show what adults chose to bill.
That distinction was enough.
During a break, Owen Reed contacted Sarah.
His office had received another request for information from Northbridge’s counsel.
He was preserving everything.
He also asked that his earlier referral not be described publicly as a service I requested.
Sarah confirmed the record accurately reflected my denial.
He thanked her.
I found it unexpectedly reassuring that he wanted his own conduct described correctly.
Truth was not something I alone needed.
At home, Natalie arrived with a stack of study cards.
She had a test.
The children were asleep.
We sat at the kitchen table while I asked questions from one side and she answered from the other.
For forty minutes, the only testimony in the house concerned course material.
Then she put the cards down.
“Did Rebecca get through it?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She looked toward the hallway.
“How is Leo?”
“Angry that his model submarine can’t go in the bath.”
“A serious injustice.”
“Apparently.”
We laughed.
The next morning, Daniel returned to the witness stand.
The defense intended to challenge his account more aggressively.
He had lied.
He had committed harmful acts.
He wanted consideration.
All true.
The question was whether those truths made every document he identified false.
I arrived late and sat near the back.
Daniel looked thinner.
When asked whether he had used a false name with Natalie, he answered yes.
When asked whether he had stolen from me, he answered yes.
When asked whether he was now blaming others to save himself, he looked toward the jury.
“I am responsible for what I did,” he said.
Then the attorney asked the question that made the room tighten.
“Were you responsible for deciding to involve the child?”
Daniel gripped the edge of the witness chair.
“Yes,” he said.
May you like
I stopped breathing.
Then he added, “And I told Russell what I intended to do.”
