Chapter 4 - The Deposition of Diane SterlingThree weeks later, the humidity had broken, replaced by that rare, diamond-hard coastal light that makes the live oaks of Savannah look like old iron against a pale blue sky.

The small conference room on the fifth floor of the Chatham County Courthouse smelled of municipal floor stripper, old law books, and the cold, peppermint-scented breath of Arthur Calloway, Esq.

Calloway was seventy-two, wore an expensive three-piece seersucker suit despite the November chill, and had spent forty years helping the sons of coastal shipping brokers avoid the consequences of their weekend speedboats. Across the laminate table sat Diane Sterling.

She had not worn her Michael Kors handbag.

She wore a dark navy wool suit that looked as though it had been pressed with an iron that was too hot; the lapels had a faint, greasy shine under the fluorescent tubes. Her silver-highlighted hair was neat, but her hands, resting on the yellow legal pad Calloway had laid before her, were bare of all jewelry except for her thin platinum wedding band. Her diamond studs, her four-carat cocktail ring, and the gold hummingbird necklace she had inherited from her mother were currently held in an escrow vault across the square, pledged as collateral for Blake’s bail bondsman.

I sat on the other side of the table in a motorized wheelchair the hospital had provided for my outpatient hearings.

I was wearing a simple, dark green wool dress that reached my calves, my hair pulled back into a neat, clean braid that fell over my left shoulder. Across my knees lay a thick cashmere blanket that Dr. Vance had brought to my transitional apartment in the historic district.

Beside me sat Assistant District Attorney Marcus Holloway—the younger brother of the investigator who had handled the initial crime-scene extraction—and Captain Ronald Hayes, who sat in the corner with his campaign hat resting on the small table behind him, his notebook open on his knee.

"We are on the record," the court reporter droned from the corner, her fingers hovering over the keys of the stenograph machine. "Deposition of Diane Vance Sterling, in the matter of State of Georgia v. Blake Sterling, Case Number 24-CR-09881."

Calloway cleared his throat—a wet, aristocratic rattle.

"Before we proceed, Mr. Holloway, the defense wishes to enter an objection to the presence of the complaining witness in this room. Mrs. Sterling’s physical presentation is clearly designed to prejudice the witness—"

"Overruled by operation of statute, Arthur," Holloway said without looking up from his file. "Under the Crime Victims' Bill of Rights, Clara Sterling has the statutory right to attend every deposition in this proceeding. Now sworn-in your client, or I will ask the magistrate to hold her in contempt before the lunch recess."

Calloway’s mouth tightened. He nodded to Diane.

Holloway leaned forward, his elbows resting on the file folders labeled TRANSCRIPTS — VIVINT LOGS 14:00 TO 15:30.

"Mrs. Sterling," Holloway said, his voice flat, low, and surgical. "On the afternoon of October fourteenth, at approximately fourteen-hundred hours, where were you?"

"I was at my son’s residence," Diane said. Her voice was thin, reedy, stripped of that effortless, booming authority that had ruled the garden club for three decades. "At 814 Live Oak Drive."

"Who was present?"

"My son, Blake. My daughter, Chloe. And... and Clara."

"What was Clara’s physical condition when you arrived at the house?"

Diane looked down at her bare fingers. Her knuckles were white, the skin dry and crepe-like around the joints.

"She was... she was sitting by the kitchen," Diane whispered.

"Was she sitting, Mrs. Sterling?" Holloway asked, sliding an eight-by-ten glossy color photograph across the table until it rested against her manicured thumbs.

The photograph showed the kitchen counter from the wide-angle camera.

In the frame, my body was doubled over the quartzite island at an angle of forty-five degrees, my left hand clutching the edge of the sink, my face contorted in a silent scream of agony, my knuckles white through the stretched skin.

Diane’s eyes flicked to the paper, then darted away toward the water carafe.

"She appeared uncomfortable," Diane said.

"Uncomfortable," Holloway repeated. He reached for a second photograph. "This is time-stamped fourteen-eleven. Ten minutes later. In this frame, Clara is on her knees on the floorboards, holding her abdomen, while your son Blake is reaching for his car keys on the entryway hook. Did you see her fall to her knees, Mrs. Sterling?"

"I... I don't recall the exact sequence of movements."

"Did you hear her say, 'Diane, I’m in high-risk labor'?"

"She was always very dramatic about her appointments," Diane said, a sudden, desperate flare of her old arrogance breaking through her composure. "She had been to the emergency room twice in August for Braxton-Hicks contractions! The doctors told her she was overreacting! Blake had an important client dinner scheduled for that evening, and Chloe needed an appropriate accessory—"

"Did you tell your son to take you to the mall instead of the hospital?" Holloway barked, his voice cutting through her excuse like an axe through wet pine.

Calloway raised his hand. "Objection. Leading—"

"The recording speaks for itself, Arthur!" Holloway roared, slamming his open palm against the table with a violence that made the court reporter jump. "I am asking the witness if she confirms her own voice on the state's exhibit four!"

He hit the space bar on his laptop.

The room was filled once more with Diane’s voice—shrill, imperious, dripping with contempt:

“Take me and your sister to the mall instead. The sale ends at five, and I absolutely must have that leather handbag. First-time mothers always overreact to get attention.”

Diane closed her eyes.

A single tear—thick, greasy with the heavy drugstore powder she was using now that her aesthetician had canceled her standing Tuesday appointment—rolled down the groove beside her nose and hung from the corner of her jaw.

"Is that your voice, Mrs. Sterling?" Holloway asked, his tone dropping back into that lethal, quiet precision.

"Yes," she whispered.

"And when your son Blake turned the deadbolt from the outside," Holloway continued, "did you know that Clara had no other key to that house on her person?"

"I... I didn't think about the key."

"Did you hear her scream as you walked down the flagstones toward the Mercedes?"

Diane didn't answer.

The silence in the small room lasted five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds.

Through the window, the faint chime of the bells from the cathedral on Abercorn Street marked the quarter-hour.

"Mrs. Sterling," Holloway said, his voice dropping so low that the court reporter had to lean forward over her keys. "The grand jury meets on Thursday morning. The state is presenting an indictment for conspiracy to commit aggravated reckless conduct and reckless endangerment against you and your daughter Chloe. The mandatory minimum sentence under the consolidated statute is three years at the state women's facility in Hardwick."

Diane looked up. Her face had lost the last vestige of color; it was the color of skim milk, the skin beneath her eyes loose, bruised-looking, and old.

"Hardwick?" she choked out. "That’s... that’s a state prison. My husband was a knight of the Golden Fleece! My family—"

"Your family left a dying woman on a floor to buy a purse, Diane," I said, speaking for the first time since entering the room.

My voice was not loud. It was clear, deep, and steady as the mountain river where my grandfather had cut timber sixty years ago.

Diane turned her head toward my wheelchair. Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

"You took my mother's silver teapot from the china cabinet three weeks before the delivery," I said, looking her directly in her bloodshot, terrified eyes. "You told Blake that a girl from the mountains didn't understand how to care for old coin silver. You told the neighbors that my father was an uneducated sailor who died in a ditch."

"Clara..." she stammered, her fingers reaching out an inch across the yellow pad, then pulling back as if the table were hot iron. "Clara, please... Blake made a terrible mistake. He was under immense pressure at the firm... the shipping contracts—"

"Blake didn't make a mistake, Diane," I said. "A mistake is dropping a glass on the slate. Blake made a calculation. He calculated that my life, and the lives of his two sons, were worth less than thirty minutes of your convenience."

I pushed the joystick on my wheelchair, pivoting the heavy frame toward the door.

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"Tell the district attorney that I will not sign the mitigating victim statement, Mr. Holloway," I said without looking back at Calloway or his client. "Let the grand jury hear the full sixteen minutes. From the first contraction to the moment Captain Hayes kicked the oak off the frame."

The heavy mahogany door clicked shut behind me, leaving Diane Sterling sitting alone in the fluorescent light, surrounded by her yellow legal pads and three years of state prison staring back from the magistrate's file.