Chapter 3 - The Deposition
The divorce proceedings began like a slow, agonizing war of attrition.
I hired a fierce family law attorney named Evelyn Vance. She took one look at my file, at the photos, and at Mark’s financial records, and told me to prepare for a mudslinging contest. "Men like your husband do not lose gracefully," she warned me. "He will try to paint you as unstable. He will use your mental health against you. He will lie."
She was right.
Mark hired an aggressive corporate bulldog of a lawyer. In his initial filings, Mark claimed that I was the aggressor. He claimed I had a history of "hysteria and emotional volatility," and requested primary custody of Maya, arguing that Thomas’s house was not a suitable environment for a child.
Reading those documents made me physically sick. He was weaponizing the very anxiety and depression his abuse had caused.
The deposition took place in a sterile, glass-walled conference room in downtown Grand Rapids. It was the first time I had been in the same room as Mark in two months. He wore a sharp, tailored navy suit. He looked well-rested, confident, and dangerously charming. He didn't look like a man who hit his wife; he looked like a CEO closing a merger.
His lawyer grilled me for three hours. "Isn't it true you were on antidepressants in 2022?" "Isn't it true you initiated the argument on the night of the alleged incident?" "Are you sure you didn't strike yourself accidentally during a manic episode?"
I kept my hands folded tightly under the table, digging my fingernails into my palms to keep from crying. I looked at Evelyn, who nodded encouragingly.
"I was on antidepressants because my husband systematically isolated me from my friends and family," I answered clearly, looking directly into the camera recording the deposition. "I did not initiate the argument. He struck me because I forgot to pay the water bill. And no, I did not give myself a concussion and a bruised jaw."
When it was Mark’s turn to be deposed, Evelyn was relentless. She didn't attack his character; she attacked his timeline. She pulled out the text messages he had sent the morning I left—the ones where he admitted to "making a mistake" and begging for forgiveness.
"Mr. Davis," Evelyn said, sliding a printout across the table. "If your wife injured herself in a manic episode, as you claim, why did you text her at 7:15 a.m. saying, and I quote, 'I am so sorry I laid my hands on you, it will never happen again'?"
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Mark stared at the paper. The muscles in his jaw ticked. His charismatic facade cracked, just for a millisecond, revealing the volatile, vicious man beneath. "She provoked me," he muttered, completely contradicting his earlier defense.
Evelyn smiled thinly. "No further questions."
