42 - Family Heirlooms

Birds chirped and squawked at one another in the trees overhead as Cassidy’s high heels tapped against the flagstones and Jon’s sneakers silently followed along.  His mind was churning with possible outcomes to this show of trust as she stepped onto the front stoop.  Once they passed through the doorway and she continued to stride resolutely forward, he could only suppose that this was going to be a repeat of her last show of trust and take place in bed. 

That notion fell by the wayside when they halted at the edge of the mattress.

She let her fingers slide from his to kneel in front of the space-saving pedestal drawers tucked underneath the bed.  There were three on each side and Cassidy stretched to the one on the far left, at the bed’s head, and tugged on its recessed handle.

“Sit down if ya want,” she invited, dipping inside the open drawer and snaking her hand toward the back to withdraw a dark brown wallet.  It wasn’t the traditional man’s wallet, nor was it the gargantuan variety that both his wife and daughter carried.  The well-used wallet Cassidy held wasn’t bigger than his hand and had a zipper all the way around it. 

Jon silently accepted her invitation to sit by dropping his backside on the end of the bed and pulling a bent leg up in front of him.  It was yet another admirable show of adulting to hold his curiosity in check while semi-patiently waiting to see where this was going.

“Lettin’ you ‘take care of me’, as you so eloquently put it, doesn’t have squat to do with trust and that’s all I’m gonna say on the subject for now.  Instead, I’m gonna prove how much I do trust you and hope to God I’m not a fool for doin’ so.”

His eyes were riveted on Cassidy as she daintily planted her bottom on the still-rumpled sheets, then shucked her shoes and swiveled to sit cross-legged in front of the pillows.

“I’m a pretty trustworthy guy.”

“But are you a forgivin’ one?” she inquired while staring at the wallet and flicking the zipper tab with her thumb.  “Because this is gonna require a little bit of that, too.”

What did that mean?  Had she outed their relationship after his explicit demands to keep it quiet?  That would be damn hard for him to forgive.

“I… can be.”

Her chin bobbed briefly before she brazenly lifted it and met his eyes.  Whatever reservations she may have had, Cassidy was now barreling resolutely forward. 

“First of all, you’ll need to forgive me for potentially bein’ a drama queen, but I need to impress upon you the magnitude of what I’m doin’ here.  This is a huge deal for me, no matter what you end up thinkin’ of it.”

Okay.  That kind of forgiveness is easy.  Not necessary, but easy. 

“I can look at you and see it’s a big deal, Dixie.” 

Anyone could see it.  Intense blue eyes teemed with the grit and determination to go forward with her revelation, but there was a ghost of trepidation lurking in the background.  He would guess it was fear of regretting the trust she was about to place.

“Do you have any family heirlooms?”

The question struck him as odd, but he nodded.  “A few.  The first one that comes to mind is a pocket watch that belonged to my great-grandfather.  I think it’s what started my obsession with watches.”

“Is it worth a lot of money?”

He had the watch appraised a few years ago for insurance purposes.  The eighteen-karat gold watch was from the late 1800s, and the appraiser had valued it at twenty-five thousand.  While it didn’t seem like a fortune to Jon, “a lot” was a vague term and subject to individual interpretation. 

“For a watch, I guess.  Twenty-five grand.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a lot to me,” she lightly laughed, proving his thought about vague terms.  “If you were offered fifty thousand – twice the value – would you sell it?”

Great-Granddad’s watch had always held a special fascination for Jon.  When he was very little, he would watch his father take it out of the velvet bag and lovingly polish the gold to keep it shiny.  The etched scrollwork on the outside of the case was meticulously cleaned with a toothbrush and a soft cloth until it gleamed like new, catching the light in a way that would captivate a little boy. 

He’d been so fucking proud when, at the age of twelve, he was allowed to do the polishing himself.  As he rubbed over it with the cloth, Jon would weave images in his head about Great-Grandad and the care he had put into the very same watch Jon held in his hands.  It had made him feel strongly connected to a man he’d never met but who was responsible for his very existence. 

His father had passed the watch on to him when Slippery When Wet went platinum and it was in the safe at the New Jersey house right now.  It had been a long time since he'd polished it, though.

“No.  Money can’t touch the sentimental value it has to me.”

“Bingo.”  The trepidation was gone, and her smile filled those eyes with their typical happy sunshine.  “That’s exactly how I feel about the gold that Pappy Sam left.” 

He had gotten the general idea the other day, but this little exercise had definitely driven the point home for him.

“Okay.  I can relate to that.  Pretty sure I was an asshole at the time by not saying anything, but I do realize and appreciate how you put yourself out there by sharing your family secret with an outsider.”

“Thank ya,” she granted with a demure smile.  “Durin’ that conversation, I believe I mentioned that there were three more boxes of gold buried around the cabin.”

“Yeah.”

She pointed toward the annex that housed the bathroom and kitchenette.   “There’s a pile of dead leaves that runs the width of that buildin’.  The chests – all about twice the size of the one you saw – are buried back there, side by side and you are now only the second person to know that.  You and I are the only people in the entire world who know where the lost Confederate gold lies.”

The earnestness of her gaze drove home the importance of that statement, and Jon got it. 

While the whereabouts of her treasure was of no personal importance to him, historians and hoodlums alike would be ecstatic to get their hands on it.  Her sharing of that information was substantial.  It wasn’t quite the same as letting him set up house for her, which was more the vein he’d been thinking in, but the display of confidence was appreciated.

“That’s definitely a show of trust and I promise the information won’t go any further.”

“Thank you, but that’s not really where I was headed with this.”  Her disheveled hair shook along with her head as deft fingers unzipped the wallet.  “You might recall a couple things from our conversations, such as me saying that I lost my driver’s license.”

“Yeah.”

It had been the reason she furnished for not being able to fly to New Jersey and had frustrated the hell out of him at the time.  Now, in retrospect, it was probably better than she hadn’t gone.  His development of… feelings would make memories of her presence in New Jersey – in his guesthouse and studio – unnerving.

“You also might recall sayin’ it odd that my sister’s name is so unique while mine isn’t.”

“Yeah?”  Liberty Belle was one of those bizarre things that stuck with a guy.  He couldn’t fathom tagging a child with that ridiculous moniker.  Jesse James for his oldest son had been pushing it, as far as he was concerned.

She allowed the sides of the wallet to part and Jon could see several cards that were typical of a woman’s wallet – mostly credit and/or debit cards.  Selecting one that didn’t bear the name or logo of a bank, she pushed her thumb against the plastic until it slid free. 

“Here’s my next forgiveness request,” she broached, passing the rectangular object to him.  This time, her face bore the signs of true remorse.  “Please forgive me for not bein’ honest with you.  I’m very deeply sorry, but it had nothing to do with you personally, and those are the only two occasions on which it has happened.  You have my word.”

Jon didn’t look at the card initially, being more interested in what she’d said than what was in his hand. 

“You lied to me?”

She didn’t shirk his accusing eyes but held them firm and steady while nodding her head.  “About the driver’s license and my name, yes.”

He let his eyes fall to the referenced driver’s license in his hand and initially stared at it without comprehension.  Jon barely knew the details about his own New Jersey license, so deciphering the nuances of this one didn’t come instinctively.

It was Georgia issued.  That was easy enough to pick out, and the photo was a typical godawful driver’s license picture defined by horrific lighting.  Those things made everyone look bad, so he had to study it for whatever clue it was supposed to offer.  The woman was blonde and a little plain with no makeup, but pretty.  To the right of that, he also found that the owner’s birthdate was August 15, 1973. 

August fifteenth was Cassidy’s birthday.

Jon’s eyes darted back to the picture, then to the woman who patiently waited for him to connect the dots, and then back to the license.  He scoured the little card for the name emblazoned on it.

“Glory Star Cassidy,” he read aloud.

“Yessir,” was her quietly bold affirmation.  “Named after the flags of the United States and the Confederacy – Old Glory and the Stars and Bars.  It’s more unusual than Liberty Belle, in my opinion.”

Jon took in her squared shoulders and defiantly squared jaw before glancing back at the government-issued identification.  His intense reluctance to piece the puzzle together had him mundanely observing, “You look better as a redhead.”

“It’s a pain in the ass, but thank ya.  I like it.”

She accepted the license from his extended fingertips and returned it to the designated spot in her wallet.  Meanwhile, he had no choice but to allow this information into his conscious thoughts.

“Glory.”

“My family knows me as Glory.  The people here in Pasquo know me as Cassidy.  Nobody knows me as both except for you,” she softly stated after zipping the wallet closed again.  “Welcome to the Superbowl of Trust.”

Jon closed his eyes and twisted his neck from side to side in an effort to ease some of the tension that had settled there.  Cassidy wasn’t Cassidy.  She was Glory and had just entrusted him with her gold and her identity. 

Her motherfucking identity.

Goddammit!  Exactly how fucked up can this whole thing get?  You used to be able to fuck somebody, blow ‘em a kiss and move on.  The single girl that incites more has to be the one who turns everything the fuck upside-down?

“Are you going to tell me why you’re using an alias or am I supposed to guess?”

“I’d like to tell you somethin’ else first, if I may?” 

That fucked up question was rhetorical.  Please don’t consider it an unspoken challenge.

“Sure, why not?”

Cassidy – Glory – leaned forward with utterly solemn resolution and imploring eyes searched his face as she spoke.   “My name might not be exactly what you thought it was, but I am the person you know.  Everything you’ve seen and been told – it’s all true.  I haven’t been dishonest with you about anything other than my name tag, and it’s incredibly important to me that you believe that.”

A life lived in contact with celebrities, public figures and Hollywood had given Jon the ability to discern the bullshit from reality a long time ago.  He’d seen a plethora of people pretending to be anything and everything in order to further their careers or improve their images.  Cassidy – Glory – had never given him that vibe.  She shot straight from the hip too often for him to believe she was anything other than what she claimed to be – an honest woman with an extra name. 

He was simply going to have to hope like hell that she had a compelling reason for this duplicity.

“Yeah,” he assured gruffly.  “I believe it.  It would be helpful to know what I’m supposed to call you, though.”

“Whatever you want, baby doll.”  She smiled and her relief was palpable.  “A lot of friends called me by my last name growin’ up so I answer to Cassidy as easily as anything.  Glory’s fine.  I’m gettin’ kinda partial to Dixie, too.”

“Fair enough.  I’ll stick with Dixie and Cassidy.  Now tell me what was catastrophic enough to warrant a change of identity.”

She leaned over the side of the bed with a little grunt of disgust and dropped the wallet back into the same drawer from which she’d taken it.  After shoving it far to the back, she closed the drawer and righted herself, facing him with hands folded in her lap. 

“Uncle Stanley is my daddy’s older brother and the firstborn son of my grandfather.  Based on the historical passing of the family legacy, Stanley is of the steadfast opinion that the gold buried in the backyard here belongs to him.  His firstborn son, my cousin Gerald Ray, obviously shares that opinion.  My grandmother, however, felt differently.”

Family.  You either loved them or hated them.  Thinking of his relationship with his brothers, he acknowledged that sometimes it was both – at the same time.

“You’re hiding from them so they don’t take your family legacy and… what?”

“Sell it to the highest bidder,” she sighed.  “MeMaw loved her son, but she didn't think he had the integrity to ensure the future of the Cassidy birthright.  She also didn’t want to spend the last years of her life fightin’ him over it, so she nodded and smiled until the day she died, lettin' him think he was gonna get it.  In the meantime, she’s tellin’ me somebody has to preserve the family legacy and it’s gonna be me.”

“What about your sister?”

“Libby…” Cassidy shook her head sadly.  “I love her to pieces, but she’s always been on the immature side.  It would turn into a fiasco.”

“I’ll reserve final judgment until the end,” he dryly conceded.  “But this seems a hell of a lot like a fiasco already.”

“Yeah, well.  My grandmother was a difficult woman to refuse and I loved her with all my heart, so I’m tryin’ to do right by her.  Stanley and Gerald Ray were obviously as mad as wet hens when they found out, and a series of unfortunate events followed.  It led to me packin’ up a few belongings along with the gold and now I’m layin’ low until I can legally prove its mine.”

Something about the way she phrased that had the hair standing up on the back of his neck.  “Unfortunate events?” 

Jesus, don’t let her have killed somebody.  If she did, I’m going to make myself crazy deciding whether to defend her or not and completely fuck myself over in the process – both personally and professionally. She cannot have killed somebody.

“Incredibly unfortunate.”  Her pretty features gathered into a troubled frown and turbulent eyes reflected what he assumed were equally turbulent thoughts. 

Fuck.  She killed somebody.