‘The silver lining’

An attorney by trade, Chamblee said she takes some comfort in believing the delay could derail a future appeal.

“I know it’s awful to have to wait, but if he appealed this decision and won, we’d all be going through this again,” said Chamblee. “If this shuts off an avenue for an appeal for the defendant, then we need to do that. I’m willing to pay the price of waiting.”

Chamblee said the delay will help her focus on the launch of her late husband’s book.

“I’m going to look at that as the silver lining of this big dark awful cloud,” she said.

McNamara worked for 13 years on the book, “The Capital of Basketball: A History of DC Area High School Hoops” and Chamblee made sure it was published posthumously. As she sat in court Monday, McNamara’s title was trending on Amazon. It was the No. 1 selling basketball book that day.

Hiaasen said she doesn’t plan to attend the trial of her husband’s killer, not unless her daughter Hannah, who plans to be there, asks for her support.

“I know that, to hope to achieve a healthy, happy life, I have to focus on my everyday: My family, my job, things I care about,” she said.

And that’s just where she was this week, teaching English to juniors at Dulaney High in Timonium. She appreciates that her job is consuming and she can focus on her students during the school day. Yet still, this week she found herself checking her email: “What do we know?”

She must keep up with the basics, for the sake of logistics — so she can let Hannah know when to come back from New York, where she works. But she read the news reports too, to digest what happened.

“We work, all of us, so hard to find a new normal and this of course yanks us right back,” she said, although she is keeping things in perspective.

“There are worse things in life,” she said. “The worst happened on June 28, 2018.”