Chapter 9: Emily’s Voice text
By the time depositions began, Emily could speak for an hour before fatigue closed her again.
She described her marriage without melodrama: early kindness, later pressure, the estate documents, the way Daniel’s concern had intensified when she refused to sign. She described the medication as something she accepted because she trusted the hands that offered it. Trust, she said, was the part that still made her feel foolish. Paige shook her head once, sharp, as if forbidding that word from settling.
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Rosa’s deposition lasted half a day. She answered questions about cleaning schedules, pill bottles, laptop bags, and the exact quality of the sound near the coffin. Defense counsel tried to paint her as dramatic, disgruntled, seeking attention. Rosa did not rise to the bait. She said she was a cleaner who heard a living woman inside a box built for the dead. Attention was a side effect, not the goal.
Public interest waned and spiked with each filing. Emily refused interviews. Paige issued a single statement asking for privacy and for people to stop treating a failed funeral as entertainment. The statement helped only a little. What helped more was time, therapy, and the slow return of ordinary tasks—tying shoes, writing a grocery list, standing in a shower without fear of the floor tilting.
