69 - Decisions

“Cassidy.  Your lawyer is here.”

Looking up at the prison guard from her spot on the lowest of three bunks, Cassidy told him, “I don’t have a lawyer.”

“You do now,” he informed her with disinterest as the cell door slid open.  “Now move it.”

She had officially been in jail for nine hours, having been booked into the Coweta County Jail at two this morning.  Since then, she’d been stripped, de-loused and issued plain white underwear to go beneath the ugly orange uniform that resembled hospital scrubs.  It was not the finest hour of her life.

Focusing on the positive, she acknowledged that it could have been worse, as she had only one cell-mate who had been arrested for passing bad checks.  Most of the cells held three or four women, many of whom were the meth addicts that habitually filled the Georgia prison system.  This was not a place she wanted to stay and, even though she didn’t have a lawyer, she would be happy to talk to one.

“You’ve got fifteen minutes,” the guard said, waiting for her to shuffle into the dull white visitation room that was barren except for two chairs and a small table with a briefcase on it. 

The moment she entered, a well-groomed man wearing khakis and a button-down shirt stood to greet her with a smile that was nearly as perfect and bright as Jon’s.  About her own age, he looked pleasant enough as he nodded his head in greeting.  “Ms. Cassidy.  I would shake hands, but…”

“I understand.”  Handcuffs hand never been factored into the establishment of modern social graces, and Cassidy didn’t try and make it work.  She simply made her way to the nearest chair and took a seat.  “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage by knowin’ my name, Mr. …”

“Sorry.”  Taking the other chair, he clicked open the briefcase and withdrew a black business card to slide across the table.  “I’m Scott DiVitollo.  We have a mutual friend that asked me to stop by and check in on you.”

The name explained the olive skin, dark hair and dark eyes.  The gold-embossed card explained Salvatore Scott DiVitollo, Eqsuire was a New Jersey lawyer.  She couldn’t say she was surprised, but it didn’t tell her which New Jersey friend they had in common. 

“Does our friend have blonde or gray hair, Mr. DiVitollo?” she asked, following his lead and deliberately omitting names.

“Gray.”

Even her quiet sigh echoed in the sterile room, but Cassidy nodded her acceptance.  Knowing what was coming down the pike, she didn’t want to accept any more of Jon’s help than was strictly necessary, but a night in jail had the ability to grossly alter one’s definition of necessary.  She wanted out of this place.

“I appreciate you takin’ the time to come all this way.”

“It gets me out of the office,” was his comforting reassurance.  “Now, I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that they have no physical evidence to connect you to either the fire or the stolen car.  Everything to this point is conjecture and circumstance.”

He had just confirmed that Billy Jack’s fishing expedition from last night was just that – a fishing expedition.  “I suspected as much.  What’s the bad news?”

“For obvious reasons, you are a flight risk and the judge is denying bail.  I’m afraid you’re stuck here for the duration.  My hope is that it is a very short duration, however, since our friend says you already have a head start on gathering information that will help our cause.”

If they ever found Beasley, she was going to kick him in the shins on sheer principle and then kick his dog for good measure.

“Our friend and one of his friends have been looking into it for a day or two.”

“Great.”  Scott withdrew a lined yellow notepad and pen from his briefcase, closing the lid so that he might use it as a writing surface.  “Tell me all about that.”

He might regret asking, because Cassidy gave him the whole, ridiculous story from the very beginning – leaving nothing out other than the gold.

“It sounds like I need to file for a restraining order against your uncle.”

“Good luck with that,” she told him tiredly.  “He’s childhood friends with the sheriff, which has historically given him carte blanche around here.”

Dark eyes went hard as obsidian and the lawyer jotted a few more notes, saying, “We’ll see about that.  Now, your sister said you still have the original will in your possession.  Is that correct?”

“Yes.”  Then realizing the full extent of what he’d just said, Cassidy cocked her head quizzically to one side.  “My sister?  You’ve talked to her?”

“I have, and I have to apologize.  They only allow one visitor a day here for some reason, which means she can’t see you today.  But she did send a message.”

Once again diving into the recesses of his briefcase, this time Scott took out a folded sheet of paper that looked as though it had been ripped from the yellow tablet on the table. 

“You’ve been awfully busy this morning,” Cassidy observed as she accepted the note.

He smiled sheepishly, admitting, “Our friend wants this matter resolved yesterday.”

“Mm.  Our friend can be overly demanding,” she drawled.  “And he isn’t the one who will be paying for your services, Mr. DiVitollo.  That will be me.”

“Call me Scott and we’ll discuss that later.”

Having unfolded Libby’s note, she was busy skimming the brief contents and didn’t bother to reply. 

Glory,

Hang in there.  I love you and someone

else sends his love, too.  I’ll see you SOON.

xoxo

The thought of that someone else forced her eyes closed for the briefest moment. 

I love you, too, baby doll.  If only things could be different…

After staring at the underside of the upper bunk for hours while she pondered what to do about Dorothea’s threat, Cassidy knew she had to walk away from him.  There was no other alternative.  Leaving was the only way to keep his dream alive, yet she hadn’t been lucky enough to figure out when or how to make that happen. 

Libby’s note, however, brought with it a flash of cowardly brilliance.    

Knowing Jon as she did, he wasn’t going to meekly accept a “Dear Jon” letter and go slinking off into the sunset with his tail tucked between his legs.  Cassidy knew that, but if she could gradually ease him into the idea maybe the live confrontation wouldn’t be so difficult when it came.

Lord, I know it’s not ideal or even particularly kind, but I’m workin’ with what I’ve got.

“Scott, may I ask you to deliver a similar message to our friend?  An extremely confidential message, for his eyes only?”

Apparently, Scott had been asked to do far stranger things, because the lawyer didn’t even flinch before passing over the lined yellow tablet and assuring her it would be no problem whatsoever.

Taking a deep breath, Cassidy figured out how to hold the pen with cuffed wrists and slowly wrote the single-hardest letter of her life.

Jon,

Being arrested was far more traumatic than I anticipated, even though I’d been half-expecting it for weeks.  It shook me up enough to realize that what we have can’t go on. 

This skulking around like criminals isn’t fair to anyone involved, and I’ve had enough of it to last a lifetime.  I should be able to openly love my life and the man in it and, since you’ve made your stance on the matter clear, there’s nowhere else for this to go. 

Seek your sanity in the Titans.  They’ll make you happy.

I’ll always remember you with love,

Dixie

“Are you okay?”

Cassidy started at the gentle inquiry and looked up to find Scott watching her with furrows of concern in his forehead.  She didn’t understand why until the she saw the small, damp circles marring the surface her note.  Then she deliberately shook her head, dropping the pen and lifting bound hands to wipe away the unbidden tears. 

“I’ll be fine.”

###

“I’m going where?”  Jon must have misheard his wife. 

“To see a therapist,” she repeated from doorway between of the home studio control room. 

In his defense, it had been a late night. 

David had rolled in about nine o’clock, primed and ready for the back story on Cassidy’s arrest, which Jon had given him – more or less.  It didn’t feel right to reveal the exact nature of the “family treasure”, so he had used only that generic term when providing the inside scoop. 

Sympathetic to her situation, Dave immediately agreed that the uncle was an asshole and assured Jon that he would light a fire – pun intended – under the Bar Association first thing in the morning.  They’d have an answer on Beasley or a belligerent Jersey boy on their doorstop, he promised when leaving the studio around midnight.

With his mind too overactive to consider going to bed, Jon had picked up his guitar and screwed around with it while mulling over his personal situation with Cassidy.  He could buy her a little place in Red Bank, but that probably wasn’t the best choice.  Maybe Middletown, or even in the city.  Close, yet not too close would probably be the best scenario.

Somehow, while not finding a concrete answer to that question, he had finished nailing down most of the songs for the album, which he was calling Burning Bridges.  As Cassidy had suggested, he was going to pull out three or four old songs that hadn’t been released – one of which Richie shared songwriting credits.  Jon figured it was a public show of good will and could prove to be cathartic.  Whatever. 

It left only the rising Phoenix song as the only one unfinished on his mental track list. 

He would really like to have one more new one so that the new material outweighed the old, but finding subject matter that felt right was proving to be problematic.  While he vainly sought to dredge blood from his soul at five in the morning, he ended up falling asleep on the studio couch.

Dorothea’s nudging hand had just woken him to deliver the news about a one o’clock therapist appointment and, twisting his wrist around, he found that it was eleven.

“And why is it you think I’m going to see a therapist?” he asked, genuinely confused because the couch slept like shit and there was no coffee swimming through his veins.  Coffee went a long way toward sharpening his mental acuity.

“Because,” she explained patiently.  “You agreed to marriage counseling in lieu of losing half your net worth and that damn football team in a divorce settlement.”

He recalled that quite plainly.  Hated it, but recalled it. 

“Marriage counseling implies ‘we’,” he reasoned.  “Not ‘me’, and how the hell did you get this arranged so fast?”

“They had an opening,” she said simply.  “And it will be ‘we’ eventually.  The therapist would like a couple of individual sessions with each of us first.”

“Why?” 

Seriously.  Who did individual marriage counseling?  Didn’t that defy the logic behind it?  Working through your communication issues and all that shit?  Although…  It might be easier to gracefully endure this deal if he wasn’t having to defend himself from Dorothea’s accusations the whole time.

Pushing a frustrated hand through free-flowing hair and forcing it into disarray, she rolled her eyes at him.  “I don’t know, Jon.  It’s just what they do.  Something about identifying with us as individuals before they treat us as a couple.”

Great.  What a fun way to spend Monday.  Waiting for word from the lawyer in Georgia, waiting for word on Beasley, worrying about how Cassidy was faring in jail and having his brain picked like a walnut.  If only every Monday could be so idyllic.

Next Post: Tuesday, August 8