Being sued by the woman who stole my book felt like being punched by someone who had already robbed you. For two days, I could barely eat. Daniel, though, was almost cheerful about it. "Nora," he said, "this is the best thing that could have happened. Do you know why? Because now Dana has to testify under oath. In a defamation case, she has to prove her book is hers. She has to sit in a deposition room and answer questions, on the record, with a court reporter typing every word. Thieves hate that room."
He was right, but it did not make the fear go away. Dana's lawyers were slick, expensive, and aggressive. They sent Daniel a letter demanding all of my drafts, all of my emails, all of my notes — everything. They wanted to go fishing through my whole writing life, looking for anything they could twist. Daniel told me to comply fully, to hide nothing, because we had nothing to hide. "The truth," he said, "is the only thing that gets stronger the more you look at it."
While the lawyers fought on paper, Frank kept digging into the money. He found something that changed the stakes completely: Marcus Bell had not reported most of the Tidewater Ink income on his taxes. Over a million dollars, flowing through shell companies, with almost none of it declared. Frank quietly passed that information to a contact at the IRS, and to the Maine Attorney General's office, which had a fraud unit that loved cases like this. Suddenly, this was not just a copyright dispute anymore. It was a tax case. A fraud case. A case that could put people in prison, not just make them pay damages.
At the same time, Sophie made a decision that took my breath away. She quit her diner job, drove to Maine, and moved into a little rented room above a bakery in Ellsworth, twenty minutes from me. "I want to be near the people who believe me," she told me, hugging me hard in my kitchen. We started meeting every week, two women who had been robbed by the same people, comparing notes, remembering details, building a timeline together. Sophie remembered things I had forgotten to ask: the exact date Dana had first asked to read her memoir, the coffee shop where they met, the email where Dana praised it as "the most honest thing I've ever read." Those details, written down and dated, became more evidence.
Then came the deposition. I sat in a conference room in Bangor, across a long table from Dana, for the first time since the day she closed her door in my face. Her lawyers asked me question after question: Had I ever shared my manuscript with anyone else? Had I ever discussed co-authoring? Did I have a grudge against Dana? I answered every one truthfully, calmly, even when my voice shook. Then Daniel got his turn. He asked Dana, very politely, to explain how a woman who had never met my mother could have written a paragraph about my mother humming while folding laundry. Dana stared at him. Her lawyer objected. Daniel asked again. Dana said, "I don't remember writing that paragraph." Daniel smiled. "That's interesting," he said, "because you told a reporter last month that every word of the book came straight from your heart." The court reporter's fingers flew. Dana's face went white, then red. Her lawyer called for a break. In the hallway, Claire squeezed my hand so hard it hurt. "Mom," she whispered, "she just lied under oath, and everyone in that room knows it."
