Taylor looked relieved, then almost embarrassed by the relief. In debate, she had learned that arguments were supposed to be tested through questions, and she understood that witnesses could be challenged. But she had started to fear that every choice she made on the plane would be turned into evidence against her. If she had cried, perhaps they would call her dramatic; because she did not cry, some accused her of calculating. If she had argued, they would call her aggressive; because she apologized, they described her as evasive. Sarah watched those thoughts cross her face and said, "You can't live backward until every stranger agrees you behaved perfectly. Nobody can."
James asked about the Army inquiry. His attorney in that matter had prepared a separate response with the videos, witness statements, and a description of his conduct. Sarah reminded him not to mix military questions with Taylor's civil case unnecessarily. James nodded. He had been in enough official meetings to know that pressure could make even careful people reach for impressive titles. He was determined not to let his uniform become a shortcut around evidence. On the flight, he had been a father. In court, he wanted to remain one.
Outside the conference room, Atlanta moved through a damp spring evening. Cars hissed over wet pavement, and the lights of downtown buildings appeared through low clouds. Taylor stood at the window and remembered the airport gate where she had boarded two months earlier. She had expected a trip to her grandmother's birthday and a quiet weekend reading her book. Now she was preparing to enter a courthouse with television vans parked outside. She sometimes wondered whether the event had changed her personality permanently. Other times she suspected the change lay less in who she was than in what she could no longer ignore.
The hearing began on May 8 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Judge Patricia Moore, a sixty-one-year-old jurist with a reputation for exact questions and little patience for performance, entered a courtroom crowded with attorneys, reporters, and members of the public. Taylor wore a navy dress and a simple cardigan. The necklace she had given Evelyn was around her grandmother's neck in the gallery, a tiny silver thread of family history visible whenever the light caught it. James wore a dark civilian suit at Sarah's recommendation. He had left his uniform in the hotel closet, where it could neither intimidate nor distract anyone.
Diane Harrison sat across the aisle with three lawyers. She had stopped giving interviews, at least temporarily, but the effects of her earlier statements remained in the courtroom. She looked tired beneath carefully applied makeup, and she kept turning the pages of a binder without reading them. The attorneys beside her had prepared objections and explanations. They had also seen the videos, and the certainty that marked her television appearances was no longer visible. When Taylor briefly met her eyes, Diane looked away first.