Chapter 11: Thursday
The attorney's name was Margaret Solano.
Her office was on the fourth floor of a building downtown, with large windows and a conference table that could seat twelve.
She had short silver hair and reading glasses on a chain and the kind of focused attention that made you feel, from the first moment, that she had already read everything and was simply waiting to hear it from you directly.
Diane Voss was already there when Carol and I arrived.
She was younger than I had expected — perhaps thirty-five, with careful eyes and the particular stillness of someone who has spent a long time being watchful.
Her own attorney sat beside her, a younger man with a yellow legal pad already half-filled with notes.
We looked at each other across the table.
"Thank you for coming," Diane said.
"Thank you for texting me," I said.
She almost smiled.
"I almost didn't.
I had the message drafted for two hours before I sent it."
"What made you send it?"
She looked at her hands.
"I kept thinking — if someone had texted me, that first night.
If I had known I wasn't the only one." She looked up.
"I didn't want you to not know."
Margaret Solano opened her folder.
"Let's talk about what we have," she said.
What they had was substantial.
Diane's documents — the copies she had kept, hidden from the NDA she had signed — showed a pattern of payments, legal maneuvering, and deliberate suppression going back further than fourteen months.
There was a third name in her records.
A woman who had worked briefly for the Mercer family company and left suddenly, two years before Diane.
Her settlement had been smaller.
Her NDA had been tighter.
Her name was Ellen Park.
Margaret's colleague was already attempting to locate her.
The meeting lasted three hours.
When it was over, Diane and I stood in the hallway while our attorneys spoke inside.
"Are you scared?" I asked her.
"Yes," she said.
"Are you?"
"A little." I thought about it.
"Less than I was."
"Russell called my attorney this morning," she said.
"Offering to renegotiate the NDA terms.
More money.
Broader protections."
"What did your attorney say?"
"She told him the NDA was void the moment Graham committed a subsequent act covered by its terms." Diane paused.
"Apparently that's a standard clause.
Russell knows that.
He was hoping I didn't."
"He underestimated you."
"He underestimated both of us." She looked at me directly.
"They always do.
It's the thing that undoes them in the end."
Margaret Solano appeared in the doorway.
"The DA's office called while we were meeting," she said.
"They've reviewed the evidence package Detective Okafor submitted." She looked at me, then at Diane.
"Graham Mercer was formally charged this morning.
Domestic @buse, aggravated — two counts.
One for each of you.
Russell Mercer has been referred to the state bar for investigation regarding the NDA arrangements."
Diane put one hand on the wall.
I stood very still.
"Judith Mercer?" I asked.
"The DA is reviewing the assault charge related to the stairs separately.
Given her age, they may pursue it differently.
But it is being pursued."
She said it matter-of-factly, the way people say things that are both enormous and simply true.
"What happens now?" Diane asked.
"Now," Margaret said, "we prepare.
And we let the process work." She looked at both of us.
"You've done the hard part.
May you like
You told the truth.
Everything else follows from that."
