The Signature

Our lawyer took the signed form apart in exactly the way I'd hoped someone eventually would.

A handwriting expert confirmed what the facility's own admission records already suggested — the signature had been obtained nine days after Hannah's discharge from a medically induced coma, while she was still on medication that her own treating physician, once subpoenaed, testified could impair judgment and memory formation. Roy's testimony, once his own deal was finalized, confirmed the rest: Denise had specifically waited for that window, the way she'd waited for it with two women before Hannah.

"It's not a defense," our lawyer told Denise's team flatly, in a pretrial conference I wasn't allowed into but heard every detail of that night. "It's evidence of premeditation. You just handed us the timeline."

Denise's lawyer dropped the argument within a week.

What replaced it, in the weeks leading up to trial, was something almost worse — a slow trickle of local news coverage, half-accurate, treating the case like entertainment. A woman who faked a wife's death. A little girl who kept a secret for years. Someone at Nora's school showed her a headline on a phone during recess, and she came home asking me if her mom was going to be "famous for the wrong thing."

"No," I told her, and meant it as hard as I've ever meant anything. "Your mom is going to be the reason a very dangerous person doesn't get to do this to any other family again. That's not the wrong thing to be known for. That's the opposite."

Nora thought about that for a long moment, then asked if she'd have to talk about the belt Denise used to threaten her with, in the courtroom, in front of everyone.

I told her the truth — that she might, but not to a room full of strangers. To one lawyer, in a small quiet office, with Hannah and me right outside the door.