Maybe that was good. If Miller was principled enough to question inconsistencies, maybe she’d eventually see through Valerie’s performance. Maybe she’d notice the patterns that didn’t add up.
Or maybe not.
Compassionate people often believed victims, even false ones. That’s what made them compassionate.
Astoria dismissed the thought. It didn’t matter what Rachel Hartwell or Miller Scott believed. What mattered was the evidence, and she had plenty of that.
She turned off her desk lamp and walked through the dark office to the elevator. The building was silent around her, the hum of climate control the only sound. She caught her reflection in the elevator doors as they opened: a woman in a wrinkled blouse, dark circles under her eyes, and a tote clutched like a shield.
She looked away.
The parking garage was nearly empty, her footsteps echoing off the concrete. Her car sat alone in its reserved spot, waiting to carry her back to a house that would be just as empty.
The drive home took twenty minutes through rain-slicked streets. She didn’t turn on the music or news, just let the silence fill the car. Traffic lights cycled through their colors for nobody except her. The city felt hollowed out at this hour, everyone else tucked safely into homes where people waited for them.
The Cliffside neighborhood was dark when she pulled into her driveway. She’d left no lights on that morning, but the house loomed large against the sky, all sharp angles and glass.
Inside, she moved through the shadows without turning on the lights or lamps; she knew the path by heart. In the bedroom, the ocean was audible through the windows, waves breaking against the rocks below in their endless rhythm.
She changed into pajamas and slid between cold sheets. The ceiling stared back at her, blank and unhelpful.
Sleep didn’t come.
She thought about the week ahead. She’d have more documents to review and depositions to attend, the slow machinery of litigation grinding forward.
She wished, not for the first time, that someone understood what she’d survived without her having to prove it in court. Thatsomeone could look at the evidence and see not just documents but the woman who’d lived through every manipulation, every subtle cruelty, every smile that hid a knife.
But wishing didn’t win cases, evidence did. Tomorrow, she would keep fighting.
Astoria closed her eyes and listened to the waves until exhaustion finally pulled her under.
7
Chapter 7: Miller
The conference room smelled like institutional carpet clear and stale coffee, the particular combination that seemed to permeate every courthouse in Phoenix Ridge. Miller arrived early—she always did for hearings—and spread the case files across the laminate table in the order Rachel would need them: discovery motions on the left, deposition schedules in the center, and the document production dispute that had been grinding on for weeks tucked into the folder closest to Rachel’s seat.
Rachel glanced up from her own notes. “You’ve been here since when?”
“Eight-fifteen.” Miller aligned the edge of a folder with the table’s corner. “I wanted to review the timeline arguments one more time.”
“The timeline arguments you drafted.”
“Which is why I wanted to review them.” Miller sat back, reaching for her bitter coffee from the courthouse cafe. “Gerald's going to push back hard on the expedited discovery. He'll argue we're fishing.”
“Wearefishing.” Rachel’s tone was mild. “That’s what discovery is. The question is whether the judge agrees our fishing expedition is justified.”
Through the small window in the door, Miller could see the corridor filling with the morning’s traffic of attorneys with dark suits and civilians milling around. Somewhere down the hall, a door closed with a heavy thunk.
She checked her watch. Valerie was due to arrive in fifteen minutes. It’d been a month since the mediation—twenty-nine days, not that Miller had been counting. She’d seen Astoria only once since then, a brief courthouse encounter where they’d talked in the hallway.
Today would be different. They’d be spending hours in the same courtroom, both teams arguing their positions, Judge Dorothea Whitcombe presiding over this procedure that would grind this divorce toward its eventual conclusion. Miller would be ten feet away from Astoria Shepry for most of the morning.
She reached for her coffee and took a long sip. It was bitter and lukewarm, exactly what she deserved for letting her mind wander.
The door swung open, and Valerie swept in on a wave of expensive perfume, something floral and memorable, the kind of scent that announced a person before they fully entered a room.
“Good morning.” Valerie’s smile was perfectly calibrated: warm but serious, a woman preparing for battle but maintaining grace under pressure. She wore a dove-gray suit that softened her features and pearl studs in her ears. “I hope I’m not late.”
