Tom’s trial ended up being far more high profile than I had ever expected. For one thing, the video of Jaret beating him half to death had gone viral, so half the country had already seen it.
Plus, there was the fact that I was still a Senator’s stepdaughter. I couldn’t get away from that one.
Combine the two, and you had all kinds of media doing their best to get inside info, to get the biggest scoop on the story.
I mean, it wasn’t Martha Stewart’s trial big. But it wasn’t that far off from it, either.
The first few days went by relatively uneventfully. I went to court every day. Jaret always drove me, and always dropped me off at the back of the building, where I took the service entrance, away from reporters.
I had wanted Jaret to be with me, and he argued with the assistant district attorney who was trying the case, but the man was clear: because Jaret was testifying later on in the trial, he couldn’t be in the courtroom otherwise.
It wasn’t fair, but what could you do.
Instead, Jaret would text me constantly throughout the day, sending me little loving emojis.
While it wasn’t the same as him actually being here, they gave me strength. I knew I had Jaret, and I knew he would take care of me, even while the man who had ruined my life more than any other sat at the defense table.
The first time I saw him, it was a bit of a shock.
I walked into the courtroom that first day, and even though it was generally pandemonium – lawyers talking to each other at the front of the room, journalists sitting in virtually every seat they could, talking around Tom’s family who were all seated behind him in the front row, looking hushed: his mom, his brother and his sister all seemingly trying to avoid the attention – I looked straight past all of that and saw him.
They let him change into a suit. But he still looked like shit. A bandage was wrapped around his forehead. His arm was in a cast, and he was wheeled in in a wheelchair.
Still, his eyes had that same mean look behind them, the look that said “I will do whatever it takes to stop you if you get in my way.”
I’d seen that look far too often.
I shivered and took a seat in the very back row of the courtroom, as far away from that bastard as I could.
Just before the judge came in, I saw him look around. His eyes moved across the room before they settled on mine.
Good.
I wanted him to see that I was here. I was here, I was going to watch him go down for what he did to me, and for what he did to my unborn child.
There was a time when I would have looked away from him, when I wouldn’t have been able to stand looking into those black eyes for long.
But not today. Today, I was strong. Even without Jaret here, I knew he was with me in spirit. I stood tall, and I met Tom’s eyes. I didn’t change my expression, I just stared at him. Even when he gave me the creepiest, ugliest smile I’d ever seen.
It was too late. Tom couldn’t hurt me any more. Not more than he already had.
He was going down.
The judge banged his gavel down, and court began.
* * *
For those first few days, the prosecution started presenting evidence.
I sat in the pew like a statue while my doctor from the hospital explained exactly what injuries were caused by Tom’s attack on me.
I sat in the pew while the defense lawyer tried to argue to the judge in chambers that the fact I was pregnant was too prejudicial and shouldn’t be allowed in as evidence.
I sat in the pew while the judge overruled it.
I sat in the pew while the entire room saw the video of me being beaten, and me being rescued.
I sat in the pew while Lisa testified to Tom’s abusive past, as did the nurse at the hospital that I’d gone to after one particularly bad injury.
I sat in the pew while Jaret told the court what he saw when he went up the stairs and saw Tom kicking me.
Then it was the defense’s turn.
It was much harder to listen to a group of people dedicated to calling me a liar than anything else.
On the bright side, after Jaret had finished testifying, he was allowed to come to court with me. He held my hand while sitting next to me as I listened to one man who claimed that maybe the video of the assault against me and my baby was faked. Another, a men’s rights activist who argued that women made up assaults against their partners for various reasons.
But all those people calling me a liar was nothing compared to the day Tom finally testified.