Chapter 11 - The Deposition Room
The defense attorney’s office was situated in a glass-and-steel building overlooking the canal. Ryan sat between Sarah Chen and an associate, his dark suit smelling faintly of dry-cleaning bags. Across the polished mahogany table sat Clara, accompanied by the assistant district attorney and a victim-witness coordinator.
Ryan looked at her once, his breath catching. She had cut her hair short—above the shoulders now, tucking cleanly behind her ears. She wore a simple charcoal blazer and no jewelry, not even the thin silver ring her grandmother had left her.
She did not look back at him. Her eyes were fixed on the court reporter’s little machine, watching the woman’s fingers dance across the keys like spiders.
"State your name for the record," the reporter asked.
"Clara Marie Miller." Her voice was steady, louder than Ryan had heard it in years. It lacked the tentative, rising inflection she had used whenever she asked him what time he would be home for dinner.
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For three hours, she answered questions about dates, times, decibels of shouting, and the sequence of movements that ended with her against the living room baseboard. She didn't embellish. She didn't use adjectives like cruel or vicious. She used verbs: He grabbed. He twisted. He threw. He followed.
Hearing his actions stripped of his internal justifications and presented as cold, chronological nouns made Ryan’s head drop lower and lower until he was staring at his own thumbs linked in his lap. He had no defense. There was no context in the English language that made those verbs sound like love.
