Chapter 7

The deposition was scheduled for nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning, in a conference room at a law firm two towns over. I drove through the same grey morning light that had been following me for weeks, my hands steady on the wheel, the manila envelope sitting on the passenger seat beside me.

Ellen had offered to come with me. Dale had offered to come with me. Rosa had offered, too, her voice trembling with a mixture of nerves and stubbornness.

In the end, I took Ellen.

Not because I needed the legal backup — I had a lawyer from corporate on my side, a sharp young woman named Priya who specialized in labor disputes. I needed Ellen because she was the one person who had been there, in the break cage, who had watched the whole thing, who knew what it was like to carry the weight of watching and not saying anything.

We pulled into the parking lot at 8:45. Ellen got out of the truck first, coffee cup in hand, looking at the four-story office building with a flat expression that gave nothing away.

"You ready?" she asked.

I looked at the envelope in my hands. Ellen's copy of the carbon copy. The safety-net copy. The one she'd had the foresight to make when HR first took the original.

"Ready as I'll ever be," I said.

The conference room was wood and glass, all polish and pretense. Mark's lawyer was a buzz-cut man in a grey suit who looked like he'd been sent to intimidate people since law school. Mark himself was sitting beside him, thinner than I remembered, his face a dull red that had lost all of its arrogance. He didn't look at me when I walked in.

I sat across from them, Ellen at my side. Priya placed a folder on the table in front of me — my statement, the corroborating documents, the timeline of events. And then, as the stenographer set up her machine, Mark's lawyer began.

"Ms. Rodriguez." The buzz-cut man leaned forward, all lawyerly menace. "Let's start with a simple question. How long have you resented Mark Teller?"

I blinked. "I don't resent him."

"You watch him take credit for your work, year after year, according to your own social media posts. You watch him climb the ladder while you stay on the line. And you expect us to believe there's no resentment?"