71 - Freedom

“Í’ll be goddamned,” David muttered, slowly dropping his hands and the phone into his lap.  “The son of a bitch is dead.”

The morbid proclamation had Lexi turning to him, stricken, from her seat beside him on the couch, and  she reached out with a consoling hand.  “Oh, honey.  Who?”

“Beauregard Beasley.” 

Sympathy turned to confusion and ash blonde waves shook along with her head as she once again asked, “Who?”

“The guy who indirectly put Cassidy in jail.”  The phone that had just been put down was lifted again and his fingers danced over the screen with the same ease that he finessed the piano keys.  “I have to call Jon.”

Beauregard Beasley was dead, and not just dead.  Way dead, as in the old guy kicked the bucket back in 2010.  So, unless Dionne Warwick’s network of psychic friends had been to law school and were executing legal directions from the “other side”, the guy had nothing to do with Cassidy’s grandmother’s will.

“Yeah?” Jon answered the phone after one ring, his tone clipped and tense.  “I hope you have good news.”

“I’d say fan-fucking-tastic news, myself.” David stood from the sofa to walk aimlessly around the family room.  Since finding out the importance of locating this old geezer, he’d been wound pretty tight and the excess tension had to come out some way.  Orgasm was preferable but would have to wait until after he passed the baton of knowledge.  

In the meantime, he paced.

“Well, spit it the fuck out already!”

He was momentarily tempted to prolong the moment for selfish entertainment but, if he had been wound tight, Jon was likely a damn mummy.  Cassidy, after all, was the new center of his world. 

“Dude’s dead, man.  Like ‘worms crawl in, worms crawl out’ dead for the last five years.  Unless there was a séance involved, it’s not his signature on that will.”

“Thank you, Jesus,” Jon breathed on a sigh of relief. 

“You’re welcome, if slightly confused.  Jesus and I are both Jewish, but the one time I tried the carpentry thing I almost lost my entire finger, as you may recall.”

“Shut up you crazy fucker,” came the laughing command.  “And thank you, too.  Tell Lexi to blow you real good tonight and I’ll buy her somethin’ pretty.”

The line went dead and David stopped his pacing directly in front of the couch where Lexi sat.  Tossing the phone toward one end, he reached for his wife’s hands and pulled her to stand before him. 

“Jon’s bribing you to blow me,” he purred, dropping his head for a lazy kiss.  “Whaddaya say you put on that cute little French maid outfit and bend over the piano for me instead?  He’ll never know the difference….”

###

“That’s good news,” Scott heartily agreed.  “Her sister and I are going through boxes now, looking for the valid will.  As soon as we find it, I’ll present it to the judge and we’ll be one step closer to getting her free.”

One step closer wasn’t enough to pacify Jon as he stuffed a hand into his pocket and stood at the edge of one of the SoHo condo terraces, where he had come for some solitude after the therapist’s appointment.  He couldn’t go to the New Jersey house and pretend everything was normal.  Not yet.  Not with his mind alternating between a confrontation with Cassidy and acclimating himself to the idea of being without her. 

The final verdict on that was still out and would be until he could plant his ass on her doorstep and demand an explanation for that damn note of hers.  He couldn’t exactly sign the visitor’s log at the county jail and hash it out there, and he didn’t possess the patience to drag this shit out another three, four, five days.

“I cannot stress enough how much I want this done and over with,” he told the lawyer gravely.  “Making it happen in the next twenty-four hours would benefit you.  Greatly.”

“I understand.”

“Good.  Her sister is there, you said?”  Chances were slim that she knew anything about Cassidy’s current mindset behind bars, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.  “I’d like to talk to her.”

There was only a brief lapse of silence as the phone transferred hands and the masculine New England accent was replace with a more delicate Southern one.  “Hi, Jon.”

“Libby, have you seen her?” 

One of these days, he was going to interact with this woman more civilly and sociably.  He’d take the time to ask her how she was doing and find out more about her.  Hell, he didn’t even know what she did for a living and he should probably know that about his…  Cassidy’s sister. 

One of these days, but not today.  Today, she was his connection to Cassidy.

“No.  They said visitin’ regulations wouldn’t allow more than one person.  Her lawyer took priority.”

“Okay.”  That was understandable.  He was even glad that Scott took priority considering Cassidy’s release was in his hands.  “Have you talked to her at all since she was arrested?”

“Other than sendin’ a note with love from me and someone else, no.”

The last word Cassidy had from him was love and then she turned around and sends word that she ‘can’t do this anymore’.  If that wasn’t irony, then he didn’t know the true definition of the word.

“So you don’t know anything that’s happened between then and now?”

“Well…” Libby paused, and he assumed she was searching her mind for anything that might apply.  “She went to jail and met with this lawyer you sent, but I’ll assume that’s not what you’re referrin’ to.”

“No, it’s not.”  Blindly raking his eyes across the Manhattan skyline, he longed for a cigarette to calm his anxiety.  He didn’t get the cravings often but, once in a while…  “When you do see her, give her another message for me, would ya?  Tell her I’m just as stubborn as she is.”

###

It was over. 

She was free.

Exactly thirty-six hours after first entering the Coweta County Jail, Cassidy parted ways with the New Jersey man who had represented her, and she walked out in the same clothes in which she’d arrived – jeans, white t-shirt and ruby red shoes.

“I feel ya today, Dorothy,” she murmured to herself while trekking the long sidewalk toward the parking lot.  “There’s no place like home.”

“Glory!”

Her little sister’s squeal of delight couldn’t help but bring a smile to Cassidy’s heavy heart, and she opened her arms so that the pale yellow blur that was Libby could fly into them and end the longest separation of their lives.  Feeling the slight frame nestled against her, Cassidy squeezed the stuffing out of the woman who was shorter than her only by the height difference in flip-flops and heels and joined in on the sniffling and snotting that earmarked a happy reunion. 

“Lord, it’s good to see you, Libby,” she whispered into the familiar strawberry blonde fall of hair that smelled of honeysuckle and roses.  “There were some days when I wondered if I ever would again.”

“Damn you, Glory!”  The younger woman eased out of the embrace, dashing away the tears that had tumbled out of lined eyes and wiping them on her jeans.  “Don’t be talkin’ like that and gettin’ me even more choked up than I already am.  And, girl, where did you get those shoes?”

It felt good to laugh, and she slipped an arm around Libby’s waist to walk in tandem toward the Ford Focus that was parked a few spots away.  “Jon got 'em for me.”

“Honey, that man is besotted with you,” Libby drawled as she circled around to the driver’s side, leaving Cassidy to slide in and toss her purse in the back seat.  “When he asked me to tell you he loved you, I thought I was gonna die.  And then yesterday, when he wanted to know if I’d seen or talked to you since the arrest…  He was more than a little anxious, I’m here to tell ya.  Is he everything the women all dream he is?”

Both car doors slammed shut and Libby fired up the engine while Cassidy put on her seat belt.  “He is and he isn’t.  He’s… more than anybody could imagine.  Such an enigma.  He’s smart as a tack.  His mind is always workin’ on somethin’, yet never what you think it is because he’s so complex.  He’s a little bit of a hard-ass, blunt to a fault, yet so tender.”

“I see he ain’t the only one besotted.” 

“Mm.  I reckon.”  Besotted didn’t begin to cover it, but Cassidy wasn’t in the mood to dissect their relationship with her sister.  “Take me out to Old Man Marcum’s to get my car, would ya?”

“Sure.  I should have just enough time to get out there and back before the boys get home from school.”

Twisting in her seat, Cassidy folded up a leg and leaned against the headrest that she could watch her sister drive.  She truly was a sight for sore eyes.

“How are the little hoodlums?  Have they grown a foot since I’ve been gone?”

“They aren’t any different than they were when you left,” Libby announced flatly.  “Don’t think you’re gonna distract me from how different you are by talkin’ ‘bout the boys.  You make a stunnin’ redhead, by the way.”

She instinctively lifted a hand to finger hair that needed to be washed about a dozen times before she would feel clean again.  “I kinda like it, but I guess I’ll go back to my natural color now.  This hair belongs to Cassidy Starr, and I’m back to bein’ plain ole Glory Cassidy.  Might as well look the part.”

“Bull puckey.”  The snort that accompanied the faux swear reeked of contempt.  “There never was anything plain about Glory Cassidy other than her perception of herself.  You were always meant for more than Moreland, Georgia and if this shit storm finally made you see it, I say Cassidy Starr and her copper hair oughta hang around.”

Cassidy Starr fell in love with Jon Bon Jovi.  Glory Cassidy could potentially dismiss that as a very nice dream.  It would be painful to live as Cassidy without Jon.

“I’m right where I belong,” she told Libby.  “I was born here and I’ll likely die here, just like MeMaw.”

“That’s not what she wanted… Cassidy.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

As they took the turn onto the highway and passed the Huddle House, Libby glanced at her with a frown.  “MeMaw thought you hung the moon and the stars, if you didn’t know.  The way you always decided what you wanted and went after it?  She was proud of your every accomplishment – we both were – even the way you ended up raisin’ Calliope with you no more than a kid yourself.  I was lucky to get through beauty school, but you could do anything and she always told me you were wastin’ your time here lookin’ after her.”

Cassidy was stunned.  Why hadn’t her grandmother ever told her this?  Why was she just hearing it and hearing it from Libby?

“When did she tell you that?”

“All the time.”  Libby’s slight shoulders lifted under the scoop neck of her top.  “But she knew you wouldn’t go as long as she was alive.  On her deathbed, I had to promise to ride you out of town on a rail once she’d gone cold in her grave.  That’s why I was real pleased to find out about your chance at a singin’ career.   It saves me from havin’ to be a bitch and kick your fanny to the Georgia state line.”

Oh, MeMaw.  You knew me so well, but I wish you’d told me this yourself.  And I wish there was still a chance for a singin’ career – or anything else, for that matter.

“I broke it off with Jon,” she blurted, turning away from her sister to look out the front windshield.  They were just approaching the road that would eventually wind down to Old Man Marcum’s barn.  “There won’t be a singin’ career or anything else to entice me out of Moreland now.”

“You did what?”  Libby guided the car abruptly to the side of the road and whirled on Cassidy.  “What in the hell did you do that for?  And why don’t he know it?  Because he sure didn’t act like it was over when I talked to him yesterday.”

Refusing to look at her sister, she remained focused on the bright yellow forsythia at the roadside that was always so plentiful at this time of year.  “He probably didn’t know yet.  I sent a hand-written message with the lawyer.”

“Well.”  Silken hair slithered over Libby’s shoulders as she draped her forearms over the steering wheel and shifted her focus to the empty road ahead.  “Here I was thinkin’ you were so smart, and you’re just a special kinda stupid.”

“Don’t be that way,” Cassidy sighed.  “You don’t know what all’s goin’ on.”

Her sister’s head slowly swiveled, landing blue eyes that were a little grayer than Cassidy's own upon her.  The wheels behind them slowly turned, processing that information and deciding what to do with it.  Eventually, and with a noncommittal grunt, she jerked the steering wheel and released the brake to put them back on the road.

“You got about two miles to get it told, so start talkin’.”

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