I text Tessa from my driveway before I cross the street.
Going over to Liam’s. Strategy session. Mock questions, he said. I’ll keep my phone on. Home by ten.
The typing dots appear, disappear, reappear. Then: Fine. But if you don’t answer me by ten fifteen, I call Navarro and Ruiz. I’m not kidding.
I stare at the screen until my reflection blurs in the glass, then slide the phone into my pocket and step into the fog.
Maple Hollow feels weirdly quiet tonight, the kind of hush that follows a loud argument. The slope of the street disappears under a soft white sheet; headlights from a car turning at the top of the hill smear sideways across damp pavement and over the fronts of our houses. Somewhere down on the arterial, the freeway hum chews at the air. My porch camera blinks blue behind me as I cross to Liam’s, another lens ready to tell a version of this walk later.
His house glows in cool rectangles—smart bulbs behind tall windows, shades half-drawn to the exact line the HOA brochure loves. I lift my hand to knock, but the door opens before I touch it.
“Right on time,” he says.
He stands there in jeans and a dark sweater, barefoot, hair still damp from a shower. The smell of soap and coffee lingers around him, sharp and strangely clean against the wet pine from outside.
“You said you wanted a plan,” he adds.
“You said mock deposition,” I say. “I’ve seen those in your shows.”
“This is friendlier,” he says. “In theory.”
He steps back to let me in.
The office looks different with the overheads on full. Usually the room glows blue from monitors; tonight the recessed lights blaze down, flattening everything. The desk, the shelves, even the dust motes look exposed.
“Sit there,” he says, pointing to a straight-backed chair in front of his desk, not the comfortable one by the wall.
I sit. The wood bites into the backs of my thighs. The bulb over my head buzzes faintly, a high whine that vibrates in my teeth.
Liam pulls a small digital recorder from a drawer and sets it on the desk between us. The red record button looks larger than it is.
“We already did an interview,” I say. “Remember? With the mugs and your fake NPR voice.”
“That was you talking to me,” he says. “This is you talking to the people who want to rip you apart. I play them now.”
He pulls another lamp over so it shines straight on my face, leaving his in partial shadow. Every true-crime reenactment I’ve ever watched minus the actor’s bad wig clicks into place.
“Harsh,” I say.
“Deliberate,” he replies. “That’s the light you get in conference rooms and hearing rooms. Better to feel it here first.”
Micro-hook: For a second I picture Evelyn Hart across from me instead of him, her polished smile never curving all the way to her eyes.
He presses the button. A soft beep, then a tiny red eye winks on.
“State your name for the record,” he says, voice switching registers. Cooler, harder. He slides into it like a jacket that fits.
“You know my name,” I say.
“And in the actual room, they’ll know it too,” he says. “Say it anyway.”
I lick my lips. “Mara Ellison.”
“Spell your last name.”
I do.
“Age?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Occupation?”
“Novelist.” The word sticks. “Suspense novelist. Domestic thrillers, technically.”
His eyebrow lifts the tiniest amount. “So you create stories about conspiracies and hidden motives for a living.”
“I write about people,” I say.
“On the record, that line sounds defensive,” he says. “Let it sit. Keep going. How many books published?”
I answer. My own bio starts to sound like something I’ve rehearsed, which, in a way, I have.
Liam flips a page on his legal pad. The scratch of his pen earlier left faint spirals in the paper, little whirlpools waiting to catch me.
“Ms. Ellison,” he says, that formal “Ms” turning me into a stranger, “you’ve undergone trauma-focused therapy since your son’s accident, correct?”
“Yes.”
“What type of therapy?”
“EMDR, mostly. Eye movement stuff. And cognitive—that’s not relevant.”
“I’ll decide what’s relevant,” he says, falling fully into the role now. “EMDR can alter how people recall events, correct?”
My stomach contracts. “It can help people access memories.”
“And it can create images that feel real even when they are symbolic rather than factual. Your own therapist told you that, didn’t she?”
I grip the edge of the chair. The wood digs crescents into my palms.
“Yes,” I say.
“So when you describe visions of being in the car with your son, grabbing the wheel, those could be symbolic?”
“They don’t feel symbolic,” I say.
“That’s not an answer,” he says. “Yes or no. Could they be?”
My heart hammers. I want to explain nuance, but I can hear, in his voice, how nuance opens side doors for people like Evelyn to walk through.
“Yes,” I say finally. “They could be.”
He nods once, like a judge granting a partial motion. “Family history of mental illness?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” he says. “Have any of your blood relatives experienced psychosis, mood disorders, or been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons?”
Heat crawls up my neck. “My aunt Elena. On my mother’s side.”
“Diagnosed with?”
“Schizoaffective, I think. They didn’t tell us much.”
“But you knew she heard voices,” he says. “You told me once she believed neighbors were spying on her through the TV.”
I swallow hard. The TV glow in his living room spills faintly down the hall; a commercial’s bright jingle drifts in, painfully cheerful.
“Yes,” I say.
“And you grew up watching your mother shut down any emotional expression out of fear you’d turn into Elena,” he continues. “So you learned to channel intense feelings into narrative instead.”
“We’re not doing a memoir seminar,” I snap.
“We are doing exactly that,” he says. “Opposing counsel pulls your aunt’s records. They quote your therapist’s notes about EMDR images. They pull clips of you talking about how you ‘rewrite reality’ for a living. Then they ask whether your brain might be building a story to protect you. I’m saving you from hearing that first from them.”
Micro-hook: His words land too cleanly, like he’s already sat in the other chair and tried those lines on for size.
“Fine,” I say through clenched teeth. “Ask the drinking question. You’re waiting to.”
The corner of his mouth tightens. “On the night of your son’s accident, did you consume alcohol?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Two glasses of wine.” I hesitate. “Maybe three.”
“You told the officer two, on record,” he says, eyes on his notes. “Not maybe three.”
I stare at him. “You pulled the report.”
“Of course I pulled the report,” he says. “They will too. Answer the question.”
“Two or three,” I say. My voice starts to fray. “It was a bad night.”
“You also take prescription medication, correct?” he asks. “For anxiety and sleep.”
“Yes, and before you go full After-School Special, my doctor knows that. They adjust the dose.”
“Package insert for your medication warns against mixing with alcohol,” he says. “Standard language. Do you always follow that warning?”
“Nobody always follows that warning,” I say. “Ask any nurse. Ask Tessa.”
“We’re not deposing your sister right now,” he says evenly. “We’re deposing you. Did you follow the warning that night?”
The buzzing light grows louder. My mouth tastes stale, like I chewed aspirin.
“No,” I say.
He nods again. No judgment, just collecting.
“So you were grieving, medicated, and had multiple glasses of wine,” he summarizes. “You then began conducting your own investigation. Pulling videos, confronting your ex-husband, following me, confronting corporate counsel in a public lobby. Given that context, can you understand why some people might question your objectivity?”
“My son died,” I say. “They hammered his car around a metal spear and called it road safety. I get to be a little biased.”
“That answer plays well on social media,” he says. “Not in a deposition transcript.”
I want to throw the recorder at his head.
He flips another page. “Let’s talk about your certainty,” he says. “You’ve told several people that you’re sure the crash wasn’t just drunk driving. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“And yet your own memories of the night shift. You’ve described missing minutes. Conflicting images. You’re not sure whether you were in the car or not.”
“I have the bodycam,” I say. “I saw myself arrive on foot.”
“But you also have the EMDR vision of being in the passenger seat,” he counters. “You’ve told me about both. You’ve written both into your draft chapters. Would you agree that your memory, in its current state, is unreliable?”
The word unreliable hits me harder than anything yet. It moves straight through my chest to the stack of notebooks on my dining room table where I try to be the reliable narrator for a living.
“I would agree that it’s complicated,” I say.
“That’s not the question,” he replies. “Yes or no.”
“I don’t want to give them that word,” I say.
“They will give it to you,” he says. “Better to own it on your terms.”
My vision blurs. The harsh ring of light above me warps in the glass of his monitors, creating multiple thin halos around my reflection. I watch myself sit in the chair from three angles, each one a little off.
“Fine,” I say quietly. “Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, my memory is unreliable.” The taste of the admission is copper and old pennies. “So is everyone’s.”
He writes that down too.
“Last line of questioning for this round,” he says. His voice drops half a degree colder. “Ms. Ellison, is it fair to say that believing in a larger conspiracy around the guardrail makes your son’s death easier to live with than believing he simply made a terrible choice and you didn’t stop him?”
A cold draft slides under the office door, lifting the hairs on my arms.
“No,” I say.
“Really?” Liam tilts his head. He looks at the recorder, not me. “No part of you finds comfort in the idea that powerful forces engineered this tragedy?”
“Comfort?” I repeat. “You think any part of this is comfortable?”
“You told your sister you ‘need a villain,’” he says. “Her words from your text thread.”
My brain jolts. “You read my texts?”
“You handed me your phone to pull that anonymous email chain,” he says. “Old notifications pop up. I’m thorough.”
The betrayal stings. Not new, but freshly lit.
“Answer the question,” he adds. “Isn’t it true that blaming the guardrail company lets you sidestep your own guilt as a parent?”
The words land like a blunt instrument.
I open my mouth and nothing comes out. Air scrapes in, raw.
“You weren’t at the party,” he continues, each sentence a blow. “You didn’t see how drunk he was. You didn’t take his keys. You wrote another chapter while your son got into a car. Is chasing corporate malfeasance, at least in part, a way to avoid that fact?”
The room narrows. My fingers go numb. Every breath pulls glass into my lungs.
“Stop,” I croak.
“This is exactly what opposing counsel will say,” he pushes. “Better we—”
“I said stop.” My voice cracks open on the word.
Tears hit before I can brace. Hot, humiliating, instant. They blur the monitors, the lamp, Liam’s steely outline into smears of light and shadow, like headlights through a wet windshield.
“Turn it off,” I say. “Turn the fucking thing off, Liam.”
For one stretched second, he doesn’t move. Then his hand comes down on the recorder. The red light dies. The silence that follows feels too loud.
Micro-hook: In the reflection on the black monitor, I swear I still see a tiny red glow.
I fold over, elbows on my knees, palms pressed to my eyes. My breath shudders like I’ve just run uphill out in the cul-de-sac.
“Mara,” he says, softer now. The adversarial edge drops from his voice like a prop gun put away.
“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t comfort me right after you’ve ripped me open for sport.”
“It’s not sport,” he says. I hear the chair creak as he comes around the desk. “Look at me.”
I don’t. He kneels anyway, field of vision shifting, his face lower now, level with mine. The room smells like him and coffee and the faint burnt-dust scent of overworked lights.
“You know what they’ll do with that line,” he says quietly. “‘Needed a villain.’ ‘Bad mother looking for someone else to blame.’ That’s their favorite angle. Grieving parent plus guilt equals unhinged hysteric. I’m trying to drag that out here so it doesn’t blindside you later.”
“Congratulations,” I say. My words hitch. “Mission accomplished.”
He reaches out, hesitates, then rests a hand on the arm of my chair instead of on me. Barely there, a contact point that doesn’t demand anything.
“Listen,” he says. “You answered exactly how they want you to answer. Full force, no filter. That’s why we record this.”
“So you can sell the tape?” I snap, lifting my head. My cheeks burn, my nose runs, and I hate that he sees all of it.
“So you can hear the difference between what you mean and what lands,” he says. “There’s a gap. We’re going to close it.”
He stands, goes to the desk, and rewinds the recorder a little. When he presses play, my own voice fills the room, tinny and too loud.
‘They hammered his car around a metal spear and called it road safety. I get to be a little biased.’
On playback, I sound wild. The words I believe in flare too hot through the tiny speaker, losing shape.
“Great sound bite,” he says. “Terrible deposition answer.”
“So what do you want me to say?” I ask, throat rough. “That I trust the process? That I’m just here to help?”
He clicks the recorder off and picks up his legal pad. The page is full of my phrases, underlined and circled, arrows pointing to alternatives.
“Try this,” he says. “Next time, when they ask about your bias, try: ‘I’m a mother who lost her child. Of course I have feelings about that. That’s why I’ve tried to rely on documents and patterns, not just my hurt.’”
He hands me the pad. I stare at the neat script that carries my grief in his wording.
“You want me to sound reasonable,” I say.
“I want you to sound like someone they can’t dismiss in the first five minutes,” he says. “Juries respond well to humility. To acknowledging uncertainty without collapsing. Phrases like ‘from what I’ve been able to gather’ and ‘to the best of my knowledge’ signal that you’re not spinning fantasies.”
“But I am spinning something,” I say. “I’m standing here in your curated panopticon, reading lines off your legal pad.”
“You already tell stories,” he says quietly. “I’m helping you tell one they can’t twist as easily.”
He flips to another page.
“‘My memory has gaps’ plays badly,” he continues. “Try ‘My memory of that night is incomplete in places, which is why the documents matter so much to me.’ That tells the truth and anchors you to evidence.”
I mouth the words. They feel weird in my mouth, like a borrowed retainer.
“I don’t want to become your puppet,” I say. “No offense to your ventriloquist act.”
“Good,” he says. “Puppets creep me out. This isn’t about control; it’s about translation. You speak grief. They speak liability. I’m bilingual.”
I snort wetly despite myself. “You’re such a nerd.”
“With useful skill sets,” he says. His mouth curves, but his eyes stay serious. “And for the record, the parts of you that blew up tonight? Those are the parts that make you compelling. We don’t cut them out. We just…frame them.”
The word makes me glance at the dark monitor again, at my faint reflection in the glass. Framed, contained, cropped to fit.
“You know this gives you a lot of power,” I say. “You don’t just know what happened. You know how to make me sound like someone the world will either believe or dismiss.”
He leans against the desk, arms folded loosely. “I know,” he says. “I take that seriously.”
“Do you?” I ask. “Because I keep finding out the ways you’ve already edited me. On tape. In questions. In what you show me and what you don’t.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t look away. “You came here tonight because you watched Evelyn Hart draft you as a caricature on national TV,” he says. “You can let her script stand, or you can help me build another one. I can’t promise I’ll get everything right. I can promise I’ll show you the draft.”
“You’re talking to a writer,” I say. “You know I’m going to bleed all over the draft.”
“Good,” he says. “Blood reads honest.”
The way he says it pulls heat into my chest, someplace confusing and inconvenient. I look away.
He tears the page off the pad and folds it, slides it across the desk.
“Take this home,” he says. “Mark it up. Cross out what feels wrong, underline what feels true. We’ll run it again when you’re ready.”
“We?” I ask.
“You and me,” he says. “And whoever else you want in the room. Tessa, Navarro. Ruiz, if he ever admits he’s listening.”
I think of Tessa’s text, the ten fifteen deadline ticking closer. I check my phone. Ten oh seven. Her last message glows on the screen: Still alive?
“So I’m not doing this alone,” I say slowly.
“You’ve never been doing this alone,” he says. His gaze softens, but the recorder between us reminds me that nothing here is entirely off the record.
“You sure about that?” I ask.
He reaches for the recorder again, pops the tiny memory card out, and holds it up between his fingers. The plastic catches the light, small and dark, loaded with my voice.
“This stays with you,” he says. “I keep a backup on the drive, but you decide who hears the raw version.”
He places the card in my palm and curls my fingers over it. His hand is warm. The card presses a hard little square into my skin, like a brand.
“I’m trusting you with an edit,” he adds.
Uneasy gratitude rises, thick and tangled with suspicion. He is giving me something and taking something in the same gesture, and I can’t tell which part weighs more.
I close my fingers tighter around the card.
“What if, when this is over, I don’t recognize the person on the transcript?” I ask.
Liam’s eyes search mine. “Then we rewrite,” he says. “That’s what you do, right?”
I tuck the card into my pocket, next to my buzzing phone, and wonder whose story I’ll be standing in when I play it back—the one I’ve been trying to claw my way into, or the one Liam keeps rehearsing me for under this unforgiving light.