The weeks before the trial were the hardest of my life. Daniel and I met almost every day, going over testimony, preparing for cross-examination, rehearsing answers to the cruel questions Dana's lawyers would ask. They would try to paint me as a bitter, jealous older woman who could not stand to see her friend succeed. They would ask why I had never published the book myself, as if my slow, careful writing process were a crime. They would ask about Tom, about my grief, about whether I was "confused" after his death. Daniel taught me to answer slowly, truthfully, and without anger. "The jury," he said, "needs to see the real Nora. Not the angry Nora, not the scared Nora. The real one. The woman who wrote a beautiful book and had it stolen."
Sophie was preparing, too. She met with Daniel three times, going over her testimony about the memoir, the payments, the nondisclosure agreement she had signed under pressure. She was terrified of facing Dana in court, but she was also determined. "If I don't testify," she told me one evening, "she'll do this to someone else's daughter someday. I can't live with that." Grace Ellery, the Vermont writer, agreed to testify as well. Three victims, three stolen books, one thief. The pattern was now impossible to ignore.
Then Dana's lawyers played their dirtiest card. They subpoenaed my medical records, arguing that my grief after Tom's death had affected my memory and that I might be "misremembering" who wrote the book. It was a cruel, invasive move, and Daniel fought it furiously. The judge, to her credit, limited what they could access — only records directly related to memory or cognition, nothing else — and my doctor wrote a letter stating, clearly, that my memory and cognition were completely normal. But the attempt itself told me everything about Dana's side: they had no real defense, so they were trying to make the case about me instead of about them.
Frank, meanwhile, found the final piece of the financial puzzle. He discovered that Richard had been skimming from the royalty accounts for years, moving small amounts — $5,000 here, $8,000 there — into a personal account that Dana did not even know about. Richard had been stealing from his own partners. When Daniel shared this information with Dana's lawyers — as he was legally required to do in discovery — Dana was furious. She confronted Richard in a parking lot outside their lawyer's office, and Frank, who happened to be watching, heard her shout, "You've been lying to me, too? Everyone lies to me!" For a moment, I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. Then I remembered the stack of shrink-wrapped books on her coffee table, and the door closing gently in my face, and the pity evaporated like morning fog.
The night before the trial, I could not sleep. I sat at my kitchen table, the same table where I had first read that email about the #1 bestseller, and I wrote a letter to Tom. I told him everything that had happened, everything I had survived, everything I was about to do. I told him I wished he were there, and that I hoped he would be proud. Then I folded the letter, put it in the drawer where I kept his old watch, and went to bed. Tomorrow, I would walk into a courtroom and tell the truth, in front of strangers, about the worst year of my life. And I was ready.
