Michael and Wes Talmadge, with the two younger lawyers, remained behind in the courtroom. Taylor walked over and stood next to them as they spoke in lowered, hushed voices.
“-just a waiting game now,” she heard Talmadge say.
Michael turned to Taylor, his eyes meeting hers, and cracked a slight smile. She found herself suddenly feeling sorry for him, despite everything, despite the scenes her imagination had created over the past weeks, the scenes that were even more horrible than the actual crime-scene photographs. If he had done the things they said he had done, and she was almost certain that he had, then hidden beneath the surface of this intelligent, driven, gifted, and even beautiful man was a monster.
And yet he seemed at that moment supremely human.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
She had to think a moment on that. “I’m not sure. But we probably need to try and eat.”
Michael turned, faced Talmadge. “What are our options?”
“The court clerk has my mobile number, so as soon as the jury is ready, she’ll call. We ought to try and go someplace quiet, someplace where we can be left alone.”
“Do you want to get a bite together?” Michael asked. “I mean, after this morning I’d understand-”
“We should stay close by each other,” Talmadge interrupted. Then he smiled, reached out and touched Michael’s arm. “And don’t worry about this morning. People say and do things in the heat and stress of a trial they sometimes don’t mean.”
“I appreciate that, Wes,” he said. “I really do.”
Carey walked down the hall toward them. “I’ve got the car out front in a loading zone. If we hurry, we can get out of here without drawing too much attention.”
Outside, they waded their way through the herd of media, dodging microphones and questions, and hurried away in the car. Carey drove like an expert, weaving in and out of traffic, skating across two lanes of oncoming traffic and disappearing down a side street. They drove a few blocks into North Nashville into an area called Germantown, an older section of the city that had become trendy and fashionable over the past decade. Nestled in an old building across from a Catholic church was a small restaurant, dark and intimate inside, with exposed brick walls and an open fireplace in the middle of the room. Talmadge had arranged a table at the back of the restaurant, tucked away in a corner where they could eat unnoticed.
Taylor ordered a glass of wine and a bowl of French onion soup. The men all ordered drinks and steaks, as if celebrat-ing the victory they had yet to win. Or perhaps it was the liberating sense of it all being over, out of their hands. Taylor didn’t know, but she found her own spirits buoyed by the conversation and the wine. She ate the soup, marveling at the fact that her sense of taste had come back.
Only rarely did anyone make reference to the trial. “How long will the jury take?” Michael asked at one point.
“It’s impossible to tell,” Talmadge said.
“The usual expectation,” Mark Hoffman said, jumping into the conversation probably as a result of his second bourbon on the rocks, “is that if they come back quick in a criminal trial, that’s often bad news for the defendant. If deliberations take a long time, that means it’s up in the air, anybody’s game.”
Talmadge looked down at his watch. “They’ve already been in over an hour. That probably means they’ve had time to eat lunch and take a preliminary poll. If we don’t hear anything in the next half hour, then we know they weren’t unanimous.”
Taylor, on the back side of the table, next to Michael, her back to the exposed brick, picked up her wineglass, finished the last of the Merlot, and signaled for another. Taylor almost never drank during the day, but this was one day when it simply felt right.
Two hours later, they were all full and buzzing slightly from the alcohol. There had been no word from the court.
Carey, who had indulged in nothing stronger than iced tea, drove them back to the courthouse, dropped them off, then headed for the parking garage.
Inside the courthouse, their footsteps echoing off the floor, their voices muted by the cavernous hallways, the group went back up to the third-floor courtroom. Inside the courtroom, a lone court officer was sitting at a table reading a newspaper. Talmadge looked at him, questioning. The officer shook his head and turned back to the paper.
“Holding pattern,” he said to Michael and Taylor. “No word yet.”
Taylor sat down on the hard wooden bench, the place where she’d spent more time than she ever imagined or intended the past few weeks.
“I’m so tired,” she said absentmindedly.
“Me too,” Michael offered. He sat down next to her.
“When this is all over,” he said, “when this is behind us, let’s go back to Bonaire. Back to where we started. We can make a fresh start.”
Taylor looked at him. “Does life give you that kind of do-over? Ever?”
“It can if we make it,” he said. He reached over and brushed his fingertips across her cheek. “I want you very much. As much as I always have. And I’ve missed you.”
She instinctively drew back. “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t.”
He nodded, then turned away from her. A few seconds later, he stood up and walked back over to Talmadge and the other lawyers, who were huddled around the defense table.
Taylor felt as if she were dragging time behind her like a ball and chain. She looked at her watch-two twenty-five.
An hour later, she looked at it again and only ten minutes had passed. The soup and the wine in her belly washed around like waves pounding sand in a hurricane. She thought for a moment that she might be sick, but then took a few deep breaths and steadied herself. She realized her hips and legs were going numb; she couldn’t sit on this damn wooden bench any longer.
She walked out of the courtroom, pacing up and down the hallway, stopping and looking out the tall windows at the traffic and the milling crowds below. The news vans were parked bumper-to-bumper, all awaiting the verdict.
Michael and Talmadge walked out into the hallway and stood next to her. “How long will this go on today?” she asked.
Talmadge shrugged. “Forsythe’s a slave driver,” he said.
“He’ll make them go at it until dinnertime, anyway. My guess is he’ll keep ‘em here until they’re too tired to work anymore, then he’ll send them back to the hotel.”
Suddenly, a group of people hurried past them. Reporters, hangers-on, spectators. Talmadge, Michael, and Taylor turned.
“What’s going on?” Michael asked.
Talmadge shook his head. “I don’t know-”
Then his cell phone went off. Talmadge jerked it open.
“Yeah? When? Yeah, okay. We’re on our way.”
He snapped the cell phone shut. “Let’s go.”
“They’re done? The jury’s back?” Taylor felt her gut tighten.
Talmadge nodded. “Yeah.”
Michael suddenly looked flushed, his face tense, his breathing rapid.
“You okay?” Taylor asked.
“Look,” Michael said, “I’ve got to go to the bathroom.
No matter what happens in there, I don’t want to embarrass myself.”
“Okay,” Talmadge offered. “I’ll go with you.”
“No,” Michael said. “This’ll only take a minute. You go with Taylor.”
“Are you all right?” Taylor asked again.
“I’ll be fine. Just give me a minute.”
Talmadge turned and started down the hallway. “Don’t dawdle,” he said over his shoulder. “We don’t want to do anything to piss Forsythe off.”
Taylor hurried to follow him. At the courthouse doors, Taylor pulled up behind him as they stood in the
