My big trial settled, freeing me from the burden of nervous anticipation that has gripped me all week; freeing me from spending every evening and all weekend prepping for it; freeing me from several days of trial and horrific testimony and sad, horrible pictures and the anger, sadness and desperation of all who were involved in this horrible incident. Including my poor client, a boy whose disastrous upbringing led him to a night where a moment's bad decision led to a tragedy that he never intended, never expected, and didn't even cause himself, but due to the strange laws of accomplice liability, will be held responsible for over the next few years and, in some ways, for the rest of his life.
While I am relieved that this is resolved, I am not completely happy because I will always wonder, a little bit, whether this was the right decision, whether we should perhaps have held firm and fought it out till the end. I know the choice we made was not the wrong decision; I just hope it was also the right decision.
And so it's a little bit hard to be completely ebullient over my free weekend, even though that's really what I had in mind when I first started writing. It's good, though. Not only will I have my weekend back (and my weeknights at the Y), I can also use the freed up time next week to catch up on the cases and tasks I pushed to the side this week in my frenzy of witness interviews, evidence viewing, and research.
I can go for a long run on Sunday without worrying whether it would wear me out too much to work; I can soak up the predicted 80-degree sunshine, and perhaps I can do some more work on my garden without waiting until the 4th of July weekend, which had been my original plan.
Before I knew how things would turn out today, I went for an unscheduled early morning run. Thursday is usually a Y morning, but when I turned up there before 6:00, the Y was closed due to a fire in the next block the night before, which had led to some smoke infiltration in neighboring buildings, including the Y.
So there I was at 6 a.m. with, as I saw it, three options. I could go home and go back to bed for a while before getting ready for work (tempting). I could go home and get dressed and go to work an hour early for a change (not too appealing, after working till 10 p.m. the night before). Or I could go home, put on my running shoes, and go for a run.
Which is what I did. The beauty of the plan was that I was still starting out fifteen minutes earlier than usual, which meant I could take a leisurely (6.3 mile) run and still have time to stop at Starbucks on the way home.
And this evening I was back at the Y for a stint on the cross-trainer and my favorite yoga class. Just like any other Thursday. Everything's back to normal; and yet, everything's changed.
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