Breaking Ties: An Ensemble Story (Read 249,004 times)

[André DiMera]

That was great advice Dr. Blanton gave J.J.! Glad he encouraged him not to give up on this story!

I hope Horowitz actually got through to Ciara, but I have a suspicion she’s just faking.

Glad Abby and Jen are both open to seeing Dr. Asher on a regular basis.

Wonder who Abe wants to meet with?

Great chapter, heroicmuse!

[tghca]

Dr Blanton is an idiot, like why would you encourage JJ not to give up on the story? If JJ publishes the story in the paper or he broadcasts it on the air and the mystery woman reads the paper or she watches the news and sees this on air, she will make good on her threat. She will make sure JJ loses everything, his reputation, his girlfriend Paige because she could get sent back to prison and his cousin Hannah stays in prison. Yeah good job Dr. Blanton, very good job CUE MY SARCASM.

Ciara is on a dark path but here is hoping Horowitz is able to steer Ciara back on the right path.

[krw627]

Loved Dr. Blanton's advice. If someone threatening a journalist is all it took to get someone to back off of a story, there would be so much that the people wouldn't know about. Where would the freedom of the press be then?

[tghca]

But at the same time JJ has no idea how serious this woman is or if she may be a threat because if she's as threatening and as dangerous as I think she is, then JJ may be making a big mistake.

[Kpatch]

It seems like Horowitz actually did get through to Ciara. Good!

I think Abe's meeting up with Valerie.

[heroicmuse]

Week 231 - 5
Paige flipped through channels on the TV, impatient for JJ to come home. She stopped on WXIR and watched a little bit of Nicole’s show.

The recording of what the store manager had told JJ was being played over a still shot of the S-Mart exterior.

PETERSON: It happens every once in a while, little punks from East Salem making their way to stores in this part of town to steal whatever they can get away with or worse. Some of them are just troublemakers and the rest of them’s in gangs or trying to get in them.

JJ: Back up a sec. How’d you know these two girls were from East Salem?

PETERSON: When two black girls come in here wearing gang colors and talking loud enough you can hear them a block away, that gives them away as being from East Salem and I’m not having that in my store, not after the last time I got held up.

ALISON: What do you mean, these girls were wearing gang colors?

PETERSON: The darker girl had a blue handkerchief covering her hair and both of them were wearing the same silver chains around their neck, with some kind of charm on the end that looked like a teardrop. I figured it was some sort of gang identifier. Plus, they came in here like they owned the place, they were real loud and obnoxious, for all I knew they were drunk already.

Paige blinked back tears, remembering how scared and confused Squeaky was when Angel tried to teach her how to fight on the punching bag. She had been so scared to death about Tiana, too. How could anyone think she was a gang member?

Nicole came back and said, “The girl with the blue handkerchief was Hannah Martin, the daughter of a respected heart surgeon at East Salem Med. Dr. Martin declined to be interviewed for this story, but in a previous report indicated that her daughter had been headed to a concert with a friend in celebration of their graduation from high school and had never been in trouble before. Yet Ms. Martin has been sitting in jail ever since the S-Mart manager’s decision to call police on her resulted in her being caught holding an open can of beer. Ms. Martin was not intoxicated at the time of her arrest and neither weapons nor unpaid for merchandise were found in her possession, so why is she still behind bars today?

“Here’s what Acting Police Commissioner Abraham Carver had to say: Quote, ‘Further investigation shows that two police officers missed the presence of a person who might have bought the beer when they arrived on the scene. We are conducting an internal investigation into how this happened as well as turning over all relevant security footage to the prisoner’s defense team.’  The police department refused to comment on which officers were involved in this incident or what disciplinary measures might be taken.

“WXIR News also attempted to speak to Hannah Martin about her arrest and incarceration, but Salem City Jail failed to make her available in time for this report. However, we will continue investigating and reporting on this matter and bring you the latest developments as the story about this clear miscarriage of justice unfolds.”

JJ’s key turned in the lock as the news went to commercial. Paige ran up to him as he came in.

“You saw the show?” he asked as she hugged him.

Paige nodded. “I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.”

JJ shrugged. “I just interviewed the asshole, Nicole put the whole thing together.”

“Stop selling yourself so short,” Paige said. “You always do that, why can’t you let yourself take credit for what you do?”

“I just don’t think I do that much,” JJ said. “I give myself plenty of credit when it’s due, okay, but just interviewing some asshole… Alison had to keep getting in between me and the dude, if anyone deserves credit for this interview it’s her.” He bit his lip. “Listen, I need to talk to you about something, but maybe I should hold off on it so we can have that date I promised you.”

“Good idea,” Paige said. “Except… now I’m going to be worried all night about what it is.”

“It’s nothing bad.” JJ patted Paige’s hand. “It’s just, I wanna go full speed ahead after this story and we gotta talk about how to protect ourselves just in case that woman who tried to blackmail me’s not full of crap.”

“I told you how we’re going to do that. I’m going to call my dad and he and my grandpa can help, and maybe you can call your Uncle Steve too.” Paige pushed her hair behind her ear. “But later. Right now nothing’s happened yet and I want tonight to be about you and me.”

“I like the sound of that,” JJ said. “What’d you have in mind?”

Paige put her arm around him. “How about we order something in and then while we’re waiting for it to come, I help you relax?”

“Sounds great,” JJ said. He let Paige lead him over to the couch. His phone buzzed but he said, “Let me just put this on silent so I can focus totally on you.”

He did, and put his phone on the table so he wouldn’t be tempted to look at it. He and Paige cuddled and kissed, unaware of the message waiting for him.


“Thanks for meeting me,” Abe said, sliding into a booth across from Valerie. They were in a small diner in East Salem.

“I’m always glad to hear from you, you know that.” Valerie smiled. Then she sighed and said, “But I suppose this isn’t entirely a social call.”

“I’m afraid not,” Abe said. “I wanted you to hear this from me first, not from the 6 o’clock news.”

“Hear what?”

“It’s about your daughter. Hannah.”

Valerie froze, her fork halfway to her mouth. “What about her? Has she been attacked up at that jail?”

“No, nothing like that.” Abe sighed. “It’s come to light that her arrest may not have been entirely fair. The officers who arrested her were responding to a frivolous call and - “

“A frivolous… what do you mean?”

“I mean,” Abe said slowly, “that the store manager called 911 based on nothing more than prejudice and then to add insult to injury, my officers proceeded to arrest Hannah without taking the time to fully understand the situation.”

“Don’t beat around the bush,” Valerie said. “Are you saying that my daughter is in jail because of the same type of narrow-minded attitudes that came between me and her father 30 years ago?”

Abe held out his hands. “I can’t say that for certain. I have internal investigators talking to the officers in question. But what I can say is that there certainly was prejudice involved in the decision to call the police in the first place.”

“I see.” Valerie’s voice was quiet. She stared down at her plate of fish. “Just to be clear, prejudice or no prejudice, was there any legitimate basis... did my daughter actually break the law?"

“Technically, she did,” Abe said, “but my officers had discretion. They could have issued her a ticket rather than arresting her. They didn’t.”

Valerie's face trembled. "In court the next morning the DA said she resisted arrest and that she was mouthing off to the officers. They wanted to deny her bail because of it. How true was any of that?"

Abe shook his head. "I wasn't there, but from what I've seen on the body cam footage, the officer overreacted to a young girl trying to explain her way out of trouble."

Valerie's eyes narrowed. "I told her that if she was ever stopped by the police for any reason, ever pulled over, ever stopped walking, that she needed to be polite and cooperative. Not tell them anything, but not give them any reason to think she was dangerous either. Why couldn't she listen?"

"Because she's young." Abe's voice was soft. "And she thought that since she wasn't intending on breaking the law if she just explained that the beer wasn't hers and she was just holding it temporarily - "

“What does that matter? She was caught with an open beer on the street. Beer when she was barely 18! Does the law say there’s an exception to the laws about underage possession and open containers if the beer happens to be your friend’s?”

"Of course not. But what happened to her isn't justice either. A year in jail over an open container she hadn't drank out of? I can guarantee you had I been in charge of the department the night she'd been brought in, it would not have come to that. I would have made sure she gave us the information we needed to arrest her friend for using a fraudulent ID and then I would have sent her home without even calling the DA."

"That's nice of you," Valerie said. "But it didn't happen that way and that's not all on your department or even on the stupid man who called the police in the first place just because of the color of her skin.  When Hannah comes out of jail, she’ll find that some people will judge her twice as harshly as she deserves for what she did and I hate to think that this stupid mistake could completely ruin her life. But the fact remains that if she’d used common sense and not stuck around when that friend of hers used a fake ID to buy beer and not agreed to hold it, she wouldn’t be in this situation. And she is going to have to live with that and not hide behind the prejudiced behavior of others as if one cancels the other out.”

"She does need to take responsibility for her part in this," Abe agreed. "I am holding my officers accountable for theirs and there is no reason that in a few weeks when she's home that you shouldn't do the same for her."

"A few weeks? What?"

Abe smiled slightly. "That's the other reason I called you. Hannah's lawyer just filed a motion for her sentence to be converted to probation and if that's successful, she'll be released in a matter of days."

Valerie’s eyes widened with surprise and her face trembled.



“Thanks for having dinner with me,” Roman told Chelsea and Max. “I know my beef stew can’t hold a candle to Ma’s but at least you’re being good sports about it.”

“No, it’s good,” Max said. “So, you said there was something important you wanted to talk to us about?”

“There is,” Roman said. He rubbed his hands together. “As you know, the Pub was Ma’s pride and joy and I’ve got no doubt she’d have wanted it to stay in the family. Fact, her will says she wants us to run it. Now, me and Kayla and Kim are all willing to help out on a part time basis, but we got jobs of our own that we’re not ready to give up. But I was thinking, maybe it’d be ideal for you and Chelsea.”

“Us?” Max said. “Why?”

“Yeah,” Chelsea added. “I mean, it’s a generous offer and I’m sure Grandma would be thrilled if she were here, but we have a life in London.”

“Maybe it’s time for you to give that all up,” Roman said. “After all, you’re having a baby, don’t you want - “

“You told him? Who else did you tell?” Chelsea slammed her fork down. “Damn it, Max, what part of I want to keep this to ourselves until we’re past the danger point don’t you understand?”

“It wasn’t me,” Max protested. “It must have been Frankie, he was the only one I told.”

“What must have been me?” Frankie asked, coming in. He looked back and forth at the three of them. Roman looked confused and Chelsea and Max looked like they were ready to kill each other.

[André DiMera]

Glad J.J. and Paige are finally having that date night. Wonder who the phone call was from. The news report was awesome!

Interested to see Valerie’s reaction to this.

So, Roman doesn’t want to give up how job, which he may have to anyway, but basically is telling Max and Chelsea to give up their entire lives to move halfway across the world, interesting. Not that it wouldn’t be cool to have Max and Chelsea back more permanently. And it looks like Roman just started a fight.

Can we please have previews, heroicmuse?

[tghca]

I mean the news broadcast was definitely something

However, JJ if he wants to go ahead with the story then he will definitely risk losing everything. I mean not even Paige's father Eduardo, her grandfather Shane and JJ's uncle Steve will be able to help them. Why? Because they don't know who this woman is...yeah sure JJ may have seen her face to face but he doesn't know her name...he knows nothing about her so it makes it difficult to track this woman down and not to mention if they get the ISA involved they wouldn't have that much to go on anyway. I mean the woman clearly did her homework on JJ so she was at least smart enough not to be recorded and yeah sure they know that she is connected to Judge Thorpe but even from there it is a stretch to find out just who this woman is or how well connected she is not just to the Judge but to the Warden as well. I mean she's connected to some pretty powerful people in this town. So if she wanted to make JJ's life a living hell, she literally could just for the hell of it. She will make good on her threat and when someone is blackmailing you, you sure as hell do not try to call them out on their bluff because if you do that it's more or less suicide to do that.

Valerie and her daughter Hannah probably do not have the best of relationships anyway when it comes to having a mother/daughter relationship with one another. So I bet Valerie probably believes the worst in this situation when it comes to her own daughter even though her daughter is clearly innocent.

Why should Chelsea and Max give up their lives in London to move back here to Salem anyway to run this Pub? I mean aren't there other people in the family who can run it? I mean what is Theresa doing these days? Surely she can run the Pub or how about Frankie? Or how about Shawn-Douglas? Or how about Will? Or how about Sami? I am sure there are other family who can. Plus what about Roman? I mean surely he can run the Pub...hell he already does on the real show so why not have him do that here?

[heroicmuse]

May 10, 2019 8:04:41 GMT -5 tghca said:

 Plus what about Roman? I mean surely he can run the Pub...hell he already does on the real show so why not have him do that here?

Roman told Marlena that he didn't think running the Pub would be fulfilling and he doesn't want to be anything but a cop, and that he was looking forward to Chelsea having this baby because it would take his mind off how empty his life would be if he's forced to retire and hoped they would take over the Pub so that he could enjoy time with his grandchild.

[tghca]

Plus with Roman running the Pub he would have time on his hands and Roman can also spend more time with his family namely his children well those who are in town that being Sami and Eric and his grandchildren Will, Johnny, Allie, Sydney and his great-granddaughter Ari...plus gives him more time to spend with his brothers Max and Frankie and his sisters Kayla and Kimberly as well as his niece or nephew that being Max's unborn child

[Kpatch]

Paige seems a little more like herself.

I can't remember if it really was Frankie who let the cat out of the bag.

[heroicmuse]

Thank you André DiMera , Kpatch , krw627 , and tghca for your comments this week. I appreciate your support and level of engagement with this story. So gratifying to see people so interested in what I'm writing!

Next week brings some developments that I had a lot of fun writing and that I hope you enjoy. Here's a sneak peek.

Next Week on Breaking Ties...




An emotional Valerie admits to Abe that she feels guilty about having denied her daughter the help she needed to get out of jail earlier after she hears Abe’s news. She explains herself to Abe and asks him if he thinks Hannah will ever forgive her. The two talk about the reasons Valerie made the choices she did after Hannah’s arrest and Valerie laments the fact that Abe wasn’t in her life at the time it happened, as she feels David didn’t fully understand the situation since he was so far away. Could Valerie be reconsidering her decision to stay married to David now that she sees how supportive Abe is?

Later, Valerie comes to see Aiden about her daughter’s case. Aiden reassures her that his firm is doing everything possible to get Hannah out of jail and explains what Hannah’s probation conditions are likely to be. Valerie is upset to hear that Hannah may be barred from leaving the state, even to see David, and later calls her long-distance husband to try to convince him to come home. They begin to argue about Valerie’s past decisions, but Valerie refuses to let the conversation be derailed and is firm about one thing: David needs to come to Salem so he can spend time with his daughter. Will the threat of not being able to see Hannah be enough to get David to swallow his pride?

Meanwhile, JJ and Paige enjoy some time alone together but JJ is upset when Paige says she doesn’t think she’ll be able to go to New York with him over the summer because of her court mandate. Their conversation about this is cut short when Hope comes to the door. A nervous Paige worries that Hope wants to find a reason to re-arrest her, but Hope is not there for that -- she is there because she has a favor to ask in her quest to help Ciara.

JJ and Paige agree to help, and then JJ shows Hope the message he just got on his phone: another threat from the blackmailer. Hope invites JJ to come with her to the station so that she can take his statement and trace the text message, but Paige insists on him having a lawyer present even though he’s talking to the cops as a witness, not a suspect.

At the station, Justin is dispatched for this task since Aiden and Berger are not available, and JJ is not happy with what his uncle has to say about the situation he’s in. JJ sends Justin away and Paige goes to go talk to Ciara while Hope questions JJ. JJ can’t give many details about the blackmailer’s appearance, but later a sketch artist is able to get enough details from him to create a sketch of the suspect, and Hope soon has news: a possible identity for the blackmailer. The suspect doesn’t appear to have a connection to Thorpe, but she does have a connection to someone else who could spell trouble for JJ and Paige if the blackmailer is not neutralized.

Elsewhere in Salem, Jennifer makes an effort to be less controlling but is frustrated by Abigail’s response and Roman tries to smooth things over with Chelsea and Max. And in Nashville, Victor and Maggie see right through a drunk Sarah’s attempt to cover up what she’s been doing. Maggie is torn between heartbreak, disappointment, and anger, while Victor makes a suggestion that shocks Sarah. Later, a still-drunk and angry Sarah decides she has to go give Melissa a piece of her mind while Melissa is out with Victor and Maggie -- will this end in tragedy?

[André DiMera]

Glad Valerie’s talking to Abe and Aiden, and David! He really needs to come home!

So glad that J.J. tells Hope about the lady who’s trying to blackmail him. Wonder who it is.

It’s good that Jennifer’s trying, at least. I hope Roman can smooth things over. I can’t see this ending well for Sarah. Wonder what Victor’s suggestion is.

Thanks for the previews, heroicmuse!

[tghca]

I can't see things ending well for Sarah...Sarah gets drunk and gets into a car and hits someone with her car or she gets drunk and gets into a really bad car wreck

Paige reaching out to Ciara is unexpected...but then again Paige is dating Ciara's cousin JJ so it makes sense why Hope would have Paige reach out to Ciara but JJ and Ciara I don't think I recall them being close as cousins

[heroicmuse]

Week 232 - 1

Sarah wanted to go to her room, but she was too drunk to make it there. “Guess I’ll have to settle for a nap on the couch,” she mumbled.

She sank down on the couch and closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep.

The door opened. “Sarah?” Maggie called. Sarah pretended not to hear.

“She’s either asleep or dead,” Victor said, gesturing towards the couch.

“Oh.” Melissa played with her keys, annoying Sarah. She was sure her sister thought she was a loser. “Yeah, I asked her to clean up while I was at the airport. She must have worn herself out.”

“I see.” Maggie frowned. “Well, I didn’t come all this way to watch her sleep so she’s just going to have to get up.” She went over to the couch and shook Sarah’s shoulder. “Sarah. It’s Mom, wake up.”

Sarah blinked, pretending she had just woken up. “Get off me,” she mumbled, her voice slurred.

Maggie and Victor looked at each other. Maggie said, “Oh my, she really is out of it, isn’t she?”

“You know how she is when she first wakes up,” Melissa said.

“I do,” Maggie said. She made herself smile. “Well, we’re going to need this couch so we’re just going to have to brave her wrath.” She shook Sarah again. “Sarah. Wake up.”

“I said get off me!” Sarah snapped. She sat up. “You think I’m happy to see you when you brought that idiot here that you married for his money?”

“That idiot,” Victor said, “has eyes and ears. And It’s obvious to me what’s happening here.”

“To me too,” Maggie said. She turned towards Melissa. “How long has this been going on for?”

Melissa froze. “What are you talking about?”

“Your sister being a drunk, what else?” Victor said. He put his arm around Maggie. “I’m sorry, my dear. But you know me, I don’t believe in that being sensitive to other people’s feelings nonsense. I call things what they are and in this case… your daughter is so full of booze she can’t stand up and if I were a betting man I’d bet half the Kiriakis fortune this is far from the first time.”

Maggie nodded slightly, her face trembling. “So?” she said, wheeling around to face Melissa. “Is Victor right? Have the two of you been avoiding me because you didn’t want me to know Sarah is an alcoholic?”


“This is nice,” Paige said, leaning against JJ. They had decided to order in from the diner and eat in the living room; their empty to-go boxes were on the coffee table waiting to be cleaned up. “It almost feels… normal.”

“Us, normal?” JJ smiled slightly. He kissed the top of Paige’s head. “Nah.”

Paige giggled. “Okay, not normal, since you’re allergic to the word. But it is more like it. This is what I pictured when I was younger and I thought about growing up. Having a respectable job and coming home at night to someone who I’m totally in love with. One out of two’s not bad. And maybe soon Kayla will hire me after all.”

“I hope so,” JJ said. He played with Paige’s hair. “I don’t feel like getting up, but it’s my turn to clean up so…”

“I’ll help you,” Paige said. “But I charge. For you, one kiss.”

“Gladly.” JJ kissed her. “So, um,” he said when they finally pulled apart. “I don’t want to pressure you but do you wanna…”

Paige hesitated. “Tell you what,” she said. “Let’s clean up and then I’ll get my candles out and put on soft music… I know it sounds silly, but I want our first time since I got out of jail to be really special.”

“I want that too.” JJ took her hand. “We never got to take that road trip we were gonna take way back when. We were gonna go down to Florida and stop at some five star hotel along the way, only we ended up having our first time in a cheap motel while we were hiding from the Brotherhood. So I wanna make up for it. I’m gonna enter the contest and as soon as I do, let’s plan a road trip to New York cause whether or not I make it to the awards banquet, I wanna go up there with you.”

“I’d like that,” Paige said. “But I don’t think we can. I have court-ordered therapy, remember? I don’t think I’ll be allowed to skip so that we can go away.”

JJ frowned. “People go on vacations. They can’t make you - “

“They can.” Paige’s voice was flat. “It’s like when you were out on bail, you couldn’t leave town either.”

“Can you at least ask? Please?”

“I will. But don’t be disappointed if the answer’s no, okay? It’s only a year, if we can’t do it this summer we definitely can next summer. If no one gets arrested this time.”

“All that’s in the past,” JJ said. “I can’t tell you how I know, Abe swore me to secrecy, but there’s gonna be some changes in the Salem PD and we’re not gonna get messed with anymore.” He picked up his to-go box. His phone was next to it and he remembered that he’d put it on silent after the last time it rang. He picked up the phone and saw he had a new message.

His face hardened as he read it.

“What’s wrong?” Paige said.

“Nothing. Just - “

But before JJ could show Paige the message, there was a knock on the door. He went to see who it was. “It’s Hope,” he whispered to Paige.

Paige stiffened. “She’s not here as a cop, is she?”

“I dunno. But I guess we’d better find out.” JJ opened the door. “Hope. Hey. What can we do for you?”



Marlena had come to Belle and Shawn’s hotel room.

“We don’t want to reward Claire for bad behavior,” Belle said, “but at the same time, she has a point. Our family is here. Both sets of grandparents and all the aunts, uncles and cousins she could ever want. We have friends in Hawaii, but it’s not the same. She’s isolated there and honestly, so are we. It might be better for all of us if we moved to Salem permanently.”

Marlena smiled widely. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t delighted by the idea of you being in town. Sami’s also decided to stay, at least until after the wedding, and I’d love nothing more than to have both my girls here. But what about your law classes? Will they transfer over to Salem U?”

“That’s the thing. I really do need to get back. I have two weeks left in the semester, obviously I can’t transfer right this minute, plus I’m not sure it’s feasible.” Belle sighed. “I’m going to have to return to Hawaii, at least until my school situation is settled.”

“And it’ll take a couple weeks for me to get a transfer out here,” Shawn added. “I can’t just disappear.” He crossed his arms. “Like we said, we don’t want to reward bad behavior, but we also think it might be better for Claire to stay here rather than bouncing back and forth between here and Hawaii.”

“Plus if we take her home she’ll be badgering us endlessly about when we’ll be able to move back and that’s going to interfere with what I have to do.” Belle grimaced.”But at the same time… Claire has this idea she’s constantly in my way and that I’d prefer not to have her as a daughter. So maybe… What I’m trying to say is, we’d like to ask you and John if you’d be comfortable taking care of Claire until we finish tying up loose ends in Hawaii, but first we wanted to know if you thought that would be good for her. We don’t want her to feel rejected or anything like that.”

“Tell you what,” Marlena said. “I’ll talk to John when he gets home. But first let’s let Claire in on this conversation. Where is she?”

“We had rented two rooms,” Belle explained, “and we sent her to hers while we had this conversation.” She opened the adjoining door. “Claire, honey, you can come out now.”

Claire came out. Her face was tearstained and her eyes were red. “I’m so sorry, Mom,” she said. “I should have just talked to Grandma Hope instead of asking Ciara to do something illegal.”

“You should have,” Belle agreed. “But that’s in the past. Come sit down and tell us: how would you feel about staying with Grandma Marlena for a few weeks while Daddy and I are in Hawaii making arrangements to move to Salem?”



“Home?” Valerie could barely contain the tears in her voice. ”My baby is coming home? When?”

“I don’t know yet,” Abe said, “and it’s not guaranteed, but her lawyer is petitioning the court.”

“Thank goodness.” Valerie took another bite of her fish. “I don’t understand how this happened, the last time she was in court the public defender didn’t have the time to spend on appeals.”

“That is a long story for Hannah to tell you when she gets home.”

“Of course. I’ll have to call her father and let him know. Though maybe it would be better if I waited until after her court date so that we know for sure that she’s going to be released.” Valerie sipped her iced tea. “Oh, Abe,” she said softly. “Do you think she’ll ever understand why I wouldn’t bail her out the night she was arrested or pay for a private attorney for her?”

“I’m sure she will. But tell me, why did you make that decision?”

“Because when I got that call it sent chills down my spine! David though it was an isolated incident, a mistake that could be easily corrected at home, but he’s not here, he doesn’t see what I see.

“It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. That Natalie she chose as her best friend was bad news and she was going to get her into something she couldn’t get out of. But every time I told David how scared I was that this girl was going to ruin Hannah’s life, he said that we raised her properly, that she knows right from wrong and we just have to trust her to do the right thing. So I was here all alone waiting for the other shoe to drop and then one warm September night it did.

“When she told me Natalie won those concert tickets, I had a terrible feeling but I didn’t want to argue with her because Lord knows we had enough fights over Natalie and I was smart enough to see that the more I pushed the more she was going to insist on hanging out with that girl. So I just smiled and told her to have a good time and then as soon as she went out the door, I prayed that girl really won those tickets and hadn’t forged them or stolen them somehow.

“And then the next time I heard from my baby was when she called me from jail. From jail, Abe! It was my worst nightmare coming true, my child arrested, her good name tainted forever. She insisted it was all a mistake and begged me to bail her out but I thought, if I do that, what will it accomplish? She’ll just go hang out with Natalie again tomorrow like going to jail was no big deal and next time she gets arrested, it’ll be for something far worse than an open container. So even though it broke my heart, I had to refuse to bail her out. It was the only way I had of saving her. She got so mad. She saw it as a betrayal and she started yelling and crying like she hadn’t done since she was a toddler. I was so afraid of what the guards might do to her because she was raising her voice while she was in custody that I ended the call for her protection.” A tear rolled down Valerie’s face. “I thought she would only spend the one night in jail and then be made to pay a fine. I was going to pay it and then insist she get a part-time job so she could pay me back. I never dreamed she’d go to jail for a year over this.”

“Of course not,” Abe said. “You were only doing what you thought was in her best interest no matter how much it hurt either of you.”

“I’m glad you understand that.” Valerie dabbed at her eyes. “Tell me one thing, Abe. You have a son. Would you have done the same thing if it had been him?”

Abe stiffened. “To be honest, I don’t know what I would do. My son has Autism and I try very hard to hold him as accountable as possible for his choices but sometimes it’s hard to tell what he can and cannot help. I can tell you, though, that he does know right from wrong, just as your daughter does, and if he were to be arrested for something like underage possession of alcohol I likely would feel that he needed to suffer some consequences for his poor choice.”

Valerie nodded. “I wish I’d had you to talk to when Hannah was arrested. I think you understand a lot more than David does what’s at stake here.” She sighed. “Anyway, there’s no going back now. Hannah’s been in jail since September, and as much as I want her to take responsibility for her part in that, I have to take responsibility for mine. She was given a public defender who didn’t put up much of a defense when I could have paid for a top-notch attorney to get her out of trouble. So half the reason she’s behind bars is because of me and I just hope when she comes home she can forgive me.”

“I am sure in time she will come to understand that you did what you did out of love. In the meantime, I will give you her lawyer’s number. I suspect he would like you to be there when she has her court hearing so that he can show that she has family ties in the community that would make probation a reasonable option.”

“I have the public defender’s number somewhere, not that it did any good.” Valerie rummaged through her purse.

Abe put his hand on her wrist. “Valerie. She has a private attorney now.”

Valerie’s mouth dropped open. “A private… how on Earth did that happen?”

“You remember when JJ Deveraux came with me to meet you and he said his girlfriend had been in jail with your daughter? They became good friends and when Paige was released she asked her lawyer to take the case.”

“This Paige is paying for it?”

“I don’t know. He might have agreed to work pro bono. If not, Paige certainly has the resources to take care of the bill.”

“That’s nice of her. But she’s doing what I refused to.” Valerie took her phone out. “All right. Give me this lawyer’s number and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to help my daughter come home.”