The deposition room at Calder & Associates was not designed for comfort. The chairs were hard, the lighting was fluorescent, and the air conditioning had been set to a temperature that made Nora pull her cardigan tight around her shoulders. A court reporter sat in the corner, her stenotype machine clicking softly as she prepared to record every word. A video camera on a tripod faced the witness chair, its red light blinking steadily.
Nora had been deposed before—routine testimony in routine cases, nothing like this. But those depositions had been about medication errors and pharmacy protocols, not about her daughter's psychological condition, not about dead cats and broken bones and a woman named Eulalie Voss who had spent eight years dismantling her life.
Katherine Voss sat across the table, flanked by two junior attorneys from the FVAA's legal team. She had the same surname as Eulalie but none of the same theatrical menace. Where Eulalie smiled, Katherine frowned. Where Eulalie leaned forward, Katherine leaned back. She was a government lawyer, cautious and precise, and her questions would be designed to build a record, not to entertain an audience.
Emory Calder sat beside Nora, a legal pad in front of him, his pen uncapped. He had spent three hours the previous evening preparing her for this moment, walking her through the questions Katherine Voss was likely to ask, coaching her on how to answer.
"Keep your responses short. Don't volunteer information. If you don't understand a question, ask for clarification. If you need a break, ask for one. And remember: everything you say is being recorded. Not just by the court reporter. This deposition will be filed with the court. It will become part of the public record. The internet will find it."
Nora had nodded, absorbing the instructions like a patient receiving a diagnosis. She had been living in the public record for weeks now. One more document would not change anything.
Katherine Voss began with routine questions—Nora's employment history, her educational background, her job responsibilities at the FVAA. Nora answered them mechanically, reciting dates and titles that felt like artifacts from a previous life.
Then Katherine shifted.
"Mrs. Babb, you stated in your complaint that Walter Wilkie made discriminatory comments about your age during a private meeting on March 14 of this year. You recorded that meeting. Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"Why did you record it?"
Nora hesitated. Calder had warned her that this question was coming. "Because I suspected that Mr. Wilkie was going to say something inappropriate. He had been excluding me from meetings, reassigning my duties, making comments about 'new blood' and 'digital fluency.' I wanted a record of our conversation."
"So you went into the meeting expecting discrimination?"
"I went into the meeting expecting to be treated unfairly. There's a difference."
Katherine made a note on her legal pad. "You've also stated that you were demoted, that your caseload was reduced, and that you were excluded from professional development opportunities. But the FVAA's personnel records show that your caseload reduction was part of a broader restructuring that affected multiple employees, not just you. And the professional development opportunities you reference—a conference on pharmaceutical informatics, a training seminar on new dispensing software—were offered to employees who had completed prerequisite coursework that you had not completed. Isn't it possible that these decisions were based on qualifications rather than age?"
"No," Nora said. "The prerequisite coursework was never mentioned to me until after I filed my grievance. The restructuring only affected employees over the age of fifty. And the younger pharmacists who took over my duties had fewer years of experience and lower performance ratings than I did."
"According to your performance reviews, which you've submitted as exhibits. But the FVAA has submitted different performance reviews—ones that document attendance issues, errors in prescription verification, and complaints from colleagues about interpersonal conflicts. How do you explain the discrepancy?"
"Those reviews were written after I filed my grievance. They don't reflect my actual performance. They reflect an attempt to create a paper trail that would justify discrimination."
Katherine raised an eyebrow. "You're alleging that the agency fabricated performance reviews?"
"I'm alleging that the agency retroactively created documentation to justify decisions that had already been made."
"That's a serious accusation, Mrs. Babb. Do you have evidence to support it?"
Calder interjected. "Objection. This is a deposition, not a trial. My client isn't required to present evidence at this stage. We'll present our evidence at the appropriate time."
Katherine nodded, unfazed. "Let me turn to a different topic. Are you familiar with a woman named Eulalie Voss?"
Nora felt her spine stiffen. "Yes."
"How did you become aware of her?"
"Through her website. The BabbTruth website. She's been publishing information about my family for weeks. She's also been impersonating me online, fabricating evidence, and coordinating with someone inside the FVAA to obtain confidential personnel records."
"You're referring to Tess Morris, Mr. Wilkie's administrative assistant."
"Yes."
"Ms. Morris has denied any coordination with Eulalie Voss. She has stated, in a sworn affidavit, that she has never communicated with Ms. Voss about your case or any other matter."
"Then she's lying," Nora said. "My daughter recovered emails between Ms. Morris and Ms. Voss. Emails that predate my lawsuit. Emails that discuss my personnel records and my discrimination claim."
Katherine paused. She glanced at her junior attorneys, and something passed between them—a flicker of uncertainty, quickly suppressed.
"Mrs. Babb, your daughter—Lena Babb—is the same daughter who has been the subject of intense public scrutiny in recent weeks. The same daughter who recorded herself watching a classmate fall down a flight of stairs. The same daughter who, by her own admission, broke into a psychologist's office and filed a false complaint that nearly destroyed his career. Is that correct?"
Calder leaned forward. "Objection. Relevance."
"It goes to the witness's credibility," Katherine said. "And to the credibility of the evidence she's citing."
"Overruled," said the court reporter, without looking up from her machine. "The witness will answer."
Nora took a breath. "Yes. That's my daughter."
"And you're asking this court to believe that your daughter—a fourteen-year-old with a documented history of manipulation and deception—has obtained evidence that the FVAA's own internal investigation has not found?"
"I'm asking the court to look at the evidence," Nora said. "Not at my daughter's history. The emails exist. They have timestamps. They have metadata. They can be verified independently of anything Lena has done."
"But your daughter is the one who obtained them. Through methods that you have not fully explained. Methods that may, for all we know, be illegal."
"I don't know the details of how she obtained them," Nora admitted. "But the evidence is real. If the FVAA wants to dispute its authenticity, they can examine it themselves."
Katherine made another note. The room was silent except for the clicking of the stenotype machine and the hum of the video camera. Nora could feel the weight of the recording, the knowledge that every word she spoke was being preserved, transcribed, disseminated. The internet would find this deposition. The commenters would analyze it. Eulalie Voss would probably publish excerpts on the BabbTruth website, annotated with her own commentary.
"Let me ask you something else," Katherine said. "You've stated publicly that your daughter is not a monster. You've described her as a child who was failed by the systems that were supposed to protect her. But the evidence—the video, the recordings, the notes she kept—shows a pattern of behavior that many people would describe as monstrous. How do you reconcile those two things?"
Nora was silent for a long moment. Calder had told her to keep her answers short, but this question demanded something more.
"My daughter is not a monster," she said finally. "She is a child who was born with a condition that makes it difficult for her to feel empathy. She did not choose that condition. She did not ask for it. And for most of her life, she did not understand it. She documented her own behavior because she was trying to understand something that didn't make sense to her—why she didn't feel what other people felt, why she could watch someone suffer and feel nothing. Those notes, that video—they're not evidence of evil. They're evidence of a child trying to study herself because no one else was studying her."
"And whose fault is that? That no one was studying her?"
"Mine," Nora said. "I should have gotten her help when the first signs appeared. I should have followed up on Dr. Hester's recommendation. I should have been a better mother. But I wasn't. And I have to live with that."
Katherine regarded her for a moment, her expression unreadable. Then she closed her legal pad.
"No further questions at this time," she said. "But I reserve the right to recall this witness as the case proceeds."
The deposition ended. The court reporter packed up her machine. The video camera stopped recording. Nora sat in the hard chair, her cardigan wrapped around her shoulders, and felt the exhaustion settle over her like a physical weight.
Calder walked her out of the building and into the gray Valdorian afternoon. "You did well," he said. "Better than I expected. The part about Lena—that was honest. Juries respond to honesty."
"Will there be a jury?"
"If the case goes to trial. But most discrimination cases settle. Now that the court has denied the motion to dismiss, the FVAA knows they're facing discovery. They're going to have to turn over those emails. They're going to have to explain Tess Morris's involvement. They may decide that settlement is cheaper than the alternative."
Nora nodded. A settlement would mean money, perhaps, and a nondisclosure agreement. It would mean an end to the legal battle, if not the larger war. But it would also mean silence—another kind of silence, the kind that came with a price tag.
"What about Eulalie?" she asked. "The complaint to the Attorney General?"
"Filed this morning. It will take time, but the evidence is strong. The fabricated posts, the edited recordings, the coordination with Tess Morris—it's a pattern of harassment that goes back years. And Lena's screen recording, the fragments she captured from Eulalie's tablet, show that there are other victims. Other families she's targeted. If any of them come forward, it will strengthen the case considerably."
Nora thought of the files Lena had described—folders with other names, other cases, other families who had been dismantled by the same machine that was now grinding through the Babbs' lives. She wondered if any of them would speak. She wondered if she would, in their position.
She drove home through the familiar streets of Riverstone, past the library where she had first met Eulalie, past the police station where she had told Detective Keene about the earring box, past the school where a loose carpet runner had changed everything. The town looked the same as it always had. But nothing about it felt the same.
When she arrived home, Daniel was waiting in the living room. He had been on the phone with his union representative, he told her—the suspension from the warehouse had been extended, pending a full review. His employer was concerned about the ongoing media attention. They were worried that his presence at the warehouse was creating a "hostile work environment."
"They're going to fire me," he said. "The union can fight it, but the writing is on the wall. They don't want someone whose name is trending on true-crime platforms."
Nora sat down beside him. She had no words of comfort, no reassurances to offer. The machine was still grinding, and it was taking everything with it—their careers, their reputations, their sense of who they were and what they had built.
"Lena asked me something today," Daniel said. "She asked if we regretted adopting her."
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her the truth. That I've asked myself the same question. That I don't have an answer."
Nora closed her eyes. The house was quiet around them, the same house they had bought fourteen years ago, the same oak tree shedding its bark in the backyard, the same yellow walls that had been chosen to welcome a child who had never quite arrived.
"Maybe there isn't an answer," she said. "Maybe the question is wrong. Maybe it's not about regret or not-regret. Maybe it's about what we do now. With what we know. With what we have left."
Daniel was silent for a long time. Then he said, "What do we have left?"
Nora opened her eyes. She looked at her husband, at the lines on his face, at the exhaustion in his eyes. She thought of Lena, upstairs in her room, surrounded by charcoal sketches of leafless trees and eyeless birds. She thought of the deposition, the questions she had answered and the questions she had not. She thought of Eulalie Voss, sitting in a coffee shop somewhere, planning her next move.
"We have the truth," she said. "Or at least, we have our version of it. And we have each other. That's not nothing."
Daniel nodded slowly. "That's not nothing," he repeated.
But the words felt fragile, provisional, a shelter built from scraps in the middle of a storm that was still raging. Outside, the oak tree creaked in the wind. Inside, the house waited. And upstairs, in a room with closed curtains, a fourteen-year-old girl was documenting everything, waiting for the next chapter to begin.
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