The copyright record changed everything. If my name was on the registration, Dana could claim I had agreed to the whole thing — that we were co-authors, that I was just bitter about the split. I needed to prove the signature was forged, and I needed help from someone who knew how these cases worked. Claire found the name: Daniel Okafor, a copyright attorney in Bangor, an hour and a half away, who had won cases for songwriters and photographers. His consultation fee was $350. I paid it out of my grocery money and drove to Bangor the next morning with my folder of proof clutched to my chest like a life preserver.
Daniel Okafor was not what I expected. He was young, maybe forty, calm, with a quiet voice and a habit of writing everything down in a leather notebook. He listened to my whole story without interrupting once, then he read my list of matching passages, looked at the copyright registration, and said, "Mrs. Ellison, this is not a misunderstanding. This is a theft, and it's a sloppy one. Forgers always leave a trail." He explained that if I could show my drafts predated her registration — and my emails to Dana with attachments did exactly that — and if a handwriting expert confirmed the forgery, we had a strong case. But he also warned me: "These cases take time. And the other side will say you gave her the manuscript willingly. They will say you two were collaborators."
Collaborators. The word made my stomach turn. Dana and I had been critique partners, yes. She had read my drafts. That was the whole point of a critique group — trust. Trust that your friend would help you make your book better, not steal it and sell it as her own.
Daniel took my case on a partial contingency — he believed in it that much — and his first move was to send a formal letter to Dana, to her publisher, and to Tidewater Ink LLC, demanding that sales stop and that all records be preserved. "This letter," he told me, "will make them nervous. Nervous people make mistakes." He was right. Within three days, Dana posted a long, tearful video online, telling her followers that she was being "attacked by a jealous former friend" and that she had "poured her soul" into her book. Her fans flooded my small author page with angry comments. One of them wrote, "How dare you try to steal a grieving woman's success." Grieving woman. Dana's husband was alive and well and playing golf in Florida.
Then the second blow landed. I got a letter from my bank: someone had tried to open a credit card in my name, using my Social Security number, and the application listed my address — but a different phone number. Dana's phone number. I froze my credit immediately, filed a report with the police in Bar Harbor, and sat in the little police station giving a statement to an officer who kept calling me "ma'am" in a kind voice. He told me identity theft cases were hard to prove, but he took the report seriously. On my way out, a woman I did not recognize stopped me in the parking lot. She was maybe fifty, with graying hair and tired eyes, and she said, "Mrs. Ellison, my name is Lydia Marsh. I used to edit Dana's work. I need to talk to you. Not here. Somewhere private." She pressed a folded note into my hand with an address and a time, then walked away before I could answer. I unfolded the note in my car. It said: "She did this before. To someone else. Come alone."
