Chapter 474

“Relationships are about so much more than sex?” Sabrina said around her mouthful of cake. “I was almost offended.”

You snorted, and Gemma rolled her eyes as she smirked.

You’d handed off your keys to Gemma once you were a block away from your place, sending them on ahead since you knew you’d need to grab a few things from the nearby grocery store to host all four of you. You’d hesitated a moment before picking up the little cake but decided to go for it so you could celebrate Gemma’s awesome job with the Opening Statement, and Eric handily managing the two big cross-examinations so far.

The girls and Eric had been appreciative of the cake, and the other snacks you brought back. Mosche hadn’t been home when they got there so there thankfully hadn’t been any weird discoveries, and the four of you had settled in quickly and reviewed how the day had gone. You were all happy with the progress, and both girls heaped some extra praise onto Eric for his cross-examinations, and you’d caught some of that praise as well even though yours had been a lot easier to handle.

Then had come the critiques, and they were light. There wasn’t any adjusting you could do to the opening, though you discussed whether the ‘even steven’ approach was working with Judge Mathews or not, and if you should keep it up. Eric thought the old guy was looking for a bit more splash in the events, especially since he’d been an actual judge and heavily involved in mock trials. The other three of you cautioned Eric that the Judge seemed to be attentive throughout the day without getting bored so it was a bigger risk to pivot tactics without a firm reason.

The last part of the afternoon was the longest - review, and guessing what the opposition would do next. Now that you had a feel for who you were dealing with - namely Tucker, Samantha and Thomas - you could try and refine your strategies for the different witnesses still to come from their witness lists. Eric knew you’d had lunch with Amanda, so you gave your read on her as a person; smart, funny and totally out-of-sync with the rest of her team. She didn’t seem to care very much about the Mock Trial less because it wasn’t something she wanted to be doing and more because of who she was doing it with. And Maeve was another animal altogether, having not participated at all.

Tucker was overconfident. Samantha was a ball of anxiety underneath a front of aggressive fierceness. Thomas was ... well, he came across as the nerd with a chip on his shoulder. The guy who didn’t have many friends in high school and claimed it was by his own choice, but it was really because he was hard as hell to get along with due to his particular blend of ego and entitlement. And they all seemed to lack a skill for nuance.

The four of you had already put in so much time and effort on the case, building on each other’s work, that there really wasn’t that much in terms of changes to be made. You were able to downgrade several of your witness files in priority since the opposition hadn’t put them on their witness list. Unlike television legal dramas there weren’t going to be any ‘sudden discoveries’ that would give them the ability to add them to the lists last minute. The fictional timeline of the case had the trial occurring over three years after the date of the accident, which was an unfortunately realistic, or even short, time compared to real Insurance Claim cases in the courts.

The real work was in figuring out where they might go next. They’d started with Fred Garland, swapped to character witnesses, and then pivoted to the Mechanic. It didn’t make any sense if they had an actual strategy or were trying to create a narrative.