When Everett got up the next day, he put his camera in his shoulder bag. He couldn't take it out in court, but he could take pictures of all the activity outside, and of the people who came and went. He got a shot of Sarah as she solemnly walked into the courthouse next to her husband. She was wearing a dark gray suit and looked pale. Seth looked considerably worse, which was hardly surprising. Sarah didn't see Everett. But later that morning Everett saw Maggie arrive. She took a seat in the courtroom to watch the proceedings from a discreet seat in the back. She wanted to be there for Sarah, if it helped her at all.
Afterward she came out and chatted with Everett for a few minutes. He was busy, and Maggie had to meet with a social worker to get a homeless man she knew into a shelter. She and Everett both had busy lives, and enjoyed what they did. She had dinner with him again that night, after he finished work at the trial. They were working on jury selection, and they both thought the trial could take a long time. The judge was warning jurors it could last a month, with detailed financial material to examine, and extensive reading to do on the matter at hand. Everett told her that night that Seth had looked grim all afternoon, and he and Sarah had hardly spoken to each other, but she was there, staunchly at his side.
It took two weeks for jury selection, which seemed agonizingly slow to Seth and Sarah, but finally they were set. They had twelve jurors and two alternates. Eight women and six men. And then finally the trial began. The prosecutor and defense attorney made their opening arguments. The prosecutor's description of Seth's immoral and illegal behavior made Sarah wince as she listened. Seth sat stonefaced, while the jury watched. He had the benefit of tranquilizers. She didn't. She couldn't imagine the defense team overcoming those arguments, as day after day, the prosecution presented evidence, witnesses, experts, all of it condemning Seth.
By the third week of the trial, Seth looked exhausted, and Sarah felt like she could hardly crawl when she went home to her children at night. She had taken time off from work to be with him, and Karen Johnson at the hospital told her not to worry about it. She was desperately sorry for Sarah, as was Maggie. She called Sarah every night to see how she was. Sarah was holding up despite the incredible pressure of the trial.
Everett dined with Maggie often during the agonizing weeks of the trial. It was April when he finally mentioned their situation again. Maggie said she didn't want to talk about it, she was still praying, so they discussed the trial instead, which was always depressing, but obsessed them both. It was all they talked about when they saw each other. The prosecution was burying Seth daily, and Everett said he had been suicidal to go to trial. The defense was doing their best, but the federal prosecutor's case was so damning that there was little they could do to balance the avalanche of evidence against him. As the weeks wore on, whenever she came to court to support her, Maggie could see Sarah getting thinner and paler by the hour. There was no way out but through it, but it was truly a trial by fire for them and their marriage. Seth's credibility and reputation were being utterly destroyed. It was upsetting for everyone who cared about them, particularly for Sarah's sake, to see where this was going. It became clearer to everyone that Seth should have plea-bargained for a lesser charge or sentence, rather than go to trial. It didn't seem possible that he could be acquitted given the accusations against him, and the testimony and evidence to support it. Sarah was innocent in all this, she had been duped just as his investors had been, but in the end, she was paying just as high a price, perhaps more. Maggie was devastated for her.
Sarah's parents came out for the first week of the trial, but her father had a heart condition. Her mother didn't want him wearing himself out, or sitting through the stress of the proceedings, so they went home as the case was still building against Seth, and they still had weeks ahead of them before it would be over.
The defense put an enormous amount of energy into defending Seth. Henry Jacobs was masterful in his demeanor, and solid in his talent as a lawyer. The problem was that Seth had given them little to work with, and their case was mostly smoke and mirrors, and it showed. The defense was about to rest the next day, as Everett and Maggie had dinner in the coffee shop across the street from her apartment, where they met often at the end of their days. Everett was writing daily items about the trial for Scoop. And Maggie was pursuing her normal activities, while spending any spare time she had at the trial. It gave her a chance to stay abreast of the proceedings, catch a few minutes with Everett during recesses and breaks, and to hug Sarah whenever possible to buoy her spirits as the nightmare went on.
“What's going to happen to her when he goes?” Everett asked Maggie. He was worried about Sarah too. She was beginning to look so broken and frail, but she hadn't missed a day beside her husband. And outwardly, she was always gracious and poised. She tried to exude a confidence and faith in him that Maggie knew only too well she didn't feel. She talked to her on the phone sometimes late at night. And more often than not, Sarah just sat at the other end and sobbed, completely distraught from the unrelenting stress. “I don't think there's a hope in hell that he'll get off.” After what he had heard in the past weeks, there was no doubt in Everett's mind. And he couldn't imagine the jury seeing it differently than he did.
“I don't know. She'll have to manage somehow. She has no choice. Her parents are there for her, but they live far away. They can only help her so much. She's pretty much on her own. I don't think they have a lot of close friends, and most of them have abandoned them in this mess. I think Sarah is too proud and too embarrassed by all this to reach out for help. She's very strong, but if he goes to prison, she'll be alone. I don't know that the marriage will survive it if he goes. That's a decision she'll have to make.”
“I give her credit for hanging in this long. I think I'd have dumped the bastard the day he got indicted. He deserves it. He took her life down with him. No one has the right to do that to another human being, out of sheer greed and dishonesty. If you ask me, the guy's a shit.”
“She loves him,” Maggie said simply, “and she's trying to be fair.”
“She's been more than fair. This guy totally screwed up her life, and sacrificed her and their kids’ future for his own benefit, and she's still sitting there, hanging in. It's a lot more than he deserves. Do you think she'll stick by him, Maggie, if he takes a fall?” He had never seen loyalty like Sarah's before, and knew he wouldn't have been capable of it himself. He admired her immensely, and felt desperately sorry for her. He was sure the whole courtroom did.
“I don't know,” Maggie said honestly. “I don't think Sarah knows either. She wants to do the right thing. But she's thirty-six years old. She has a right to a better life than this, if he goes to prison. If they divorce, she could start over again. If they don't, she's going to spend a lot of years visiting him in prison, and waiting for him, while life passes her by. I don't want to advise her, I can't. But I have mixed feelings about it myself. I told her that. Whatever happens, she needs to forgive, but that doesn't mean she has to give up her life for him forever, because he made a mistake.”
“This is a lot to forgive,” he said somberly, and Maggie nodded in agreement.
“Yes, it is. I'm not sure I could do it. Probably not,” she said honestly. “I'd like to think I'd be a bigger person than that, but I'm not sure I am. But only Sarah can decide what she wants. And I'm not sure she knows. She doesn't have a lot of options. She could even stay with him and never forgive him or forgive him and let him go. Grace expresses itself in strange ways sometimes. I just hope she finds the right answer for her.”