“I would need to review that.”
“That may have been personal.”
“I can’t say without context.”
Patricia always had the context.
At noon, Garrett requested a break.
We stepped into the hallway. I stood near the windows overlooking downtown Portland, where traffic moved along the wet streets below and people carried umbrellas like none of our private disasters could ever touch them.
Patricia stood beside me.
“You’re doing well,” she said.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“That is exactly what you’re doing well.”
Across the hall, Daniel and Melissa were not speaking to each other. Their attorneys were speaking separately, quickly, with lowered voices. Daniel kept one hand at the back of his neck. Melissa stood rigidly, her red-folder attorney leaning close.
That was when I saw it.
The first real crack.
Melissa looked at Daniel not with loyalty, not with concern, but with suspicion.
It was small.
It was enough.
When we returned to the room, the air had changed.
Daniel’s answers became more careful, but also more inconsistent. Melissa’s attorney objected more often. Garrett’s irritation sharpened into something almost defensive. The clean story they had brought into the room had begun to split under the weight of dates and bank records.
Then Patricia turned toward Melissa.
“Ms. Hart,” she said, voice even, “were you aware that Mrs. Whitmore had no knowledge of the funds transferred into your account?”
Melissa looked at her attorney.
Her attorney said, “My client will not answer that question as phrased.”
Patricia nodded, as if she had expected it.
“Were you aware that the funds used for your rent, childcare, and household expenses originated from accounts jointly held by Mr. and Mrs. Whitmore?”
“My client will not answer that.”
Daniel stared at the table.
Patricia’s gaze did not move.
“Were you aware, at any point during the years in question, that Mr. Whitmore represented these payments to his wife as something other than what they were?”
Melissa’s attorney’s hand tightened around her pen.
Daniel looked up sharply.
And Melissa, for the first time all day, stopped looking like a woman protecting a secret and started looking like a woman realizing she might have been standing inside one.
Her eyes moved from Patricia to Daniel.
Daniel whispered, “Melissa.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
The entire room heard it.
Patricia leaned forward slightly.
“Ms. Hart,” she said. “What exactly did Mr. Whitmore tell you?”
Melissa’s attorney reached toward her arm.
Garrett said, “We need a break.”
But Melissa did not look at either lawyer.
She looked at me.
And in that instant, before she spoke, I understood that the next sentence out of her mouth was the one Daniel had spent ten years making sure I never heard.
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Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.