“No, sir. I was about to, but it was small, and she assured me that it was nothing, just a formality. I was stupid not to, but I was also very young and, as I said, I trusted her after years of a close relationship. I had no reason to believe she would include anything potentially threatening to my personal brand.”
“Why do you think Mrs. Thomas is so eager to own that brand?”
Because she’s the motherfucking Devil.
“Objection. Speculation.”
Jessica glanced at Dolores’s attorney, careful not to look straight at the plaintiff herself.
The judge agreed with the objection.
“What benefits do you see going to the person who owns your personal brand?”
How many hours had she considered this in the isolation of her condo? How many circles had her mind completed around the mental track, coming up with nothing, nothing, nothing …
And then, only in the last few days, something.
“The benefits for me to own it are freedom of speech. I believe everyone has a right to state who they are and be able to claim that without fear of litigation. If I don’t have that first amendment right, guess who does? Everyone else. The press, Jimmy Dean, Dolores Thomas, and anyone else with an internet connection. If this trademark is enforced, it’s stripped me of my right to tell my own story, and everyone else will tell it for me. I only have one story of who I am and why I was put on this earth. A person’s story is everything. Who has the right to control it for them? Who has the right to twist it around, to crush an individual and twist every bit of good I do into something bad?”
“The press, Miss McCloud.”
“Exactly. And I deserve to defend myself from that without fear of being sued.”
He nodded. “Going back to the original question, what benefits do you see for someone else who owns your personal brand?”
“They own my story. They own my life. They’re able to keep me from fulfilling my calling.”
“Which is?”
What? He hadn’t told her he would ask that. Shit.
“Which is …” she said, swallowing hard, and looking from one familiar face in the audience to another. Jesus flashed her the peace sign and an encouraging smile.
“Which is bringing peace to the United States.” She thought she might throw up. Reporters scrambled to write that down verbatim, and she could practically feel Dolores silently laughing at her. It was so pretentious, so futile, and to many, so unnecessary. The United States wasn’t in a civil war. It didn’t need peace. And she was no Abe Lincoln.
Then she remembered that Abe Lincoln was a little bit of a closet racist, according to God, and she felt a sudden strange sense of superiority to the Great Emancipator.
She was brought back down to earth by the sound of the gavel, and though her head still swam, it felt like she’d just thrown up something that had been making her ill since she was fifteen. Jesus shot her an enthusiastic two thumbs up.
Well, Jesus approved. That was something, she supposed.
“Do you have further questions for Ms. McCloud?” the judge asked Daniels.
“Just one more.” He turned to Jessica. “And I only ask this because I have a feeling Mr. Lindgartt is planning to ask it. Where were you on the evening of Thursday, January tenth, twenty-nineteen, between the hours of six thirty and nine thirty p.m.?”
“I was at Gordon’s Burgers in Austin with Chris Riley.”
“Can anyone verify that besides Mr. Riley?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. A lot of people can. I believe I was caught by multiple cell phones resurrecting a man who had just been struck by a car outside the restaurant. You can check YouTube. I believe there are close to a hundred individual recordings of me spanning the duration of that time frame.”
Clint Daniels grinned up at the judge. “That’s all, Your Honor.”
Now it was time for Patrick Lindgartt to question her. Daniels had warned her about him. He played dirty. And when an attorney says another attorney plays dirty, it’s smart to believe it. She’d prepped for this, though. He would grill her relentlessly until she slipped up. That was his favorite trick. So, she had to not slip up.
“Miss McCloud, when did you first publicly declare yourself the daughter of God?”
She thought back to the date in Atlanta and provided it.
“And what day did you sign the contract with my client for financial backing of your bakery?”
“I … I’m not sure.”
“Can you give a month and year?”
She gave it her best shot.
“So,” he continued, “you admit that you didn’t publicly brand yourself ‘Jessica Christ’ until after you signed the contract with my client?”
“No.”
“No, you don’t admit it?”
“No, I didn’t brand myself … What does that even mean?”
Patrick Lindgartt nodded and looked to be enjoying none of this.
“When you signed the contract, were you drunk or otherwise intoxicated or impaired?”
“No.”
He addressed the judge now. “It’s not the place of the court to decide someone’s divinity. It is the place of the court to enforce intellectual property rights. This doesn’t have to be complicated. She signed a contract, didn’t deliver on her part, and so the consequences agreed upon in the contract took effect. Now she’s breaching the agreement and infringing upon the brand of It is Risen and Jessica Christ. We’re obligated to take the necessary legal action to enforce our trademark or else it becomes void. The defense can paint my client in a negative light, but that’s irrelevant to contract law. Miss McCloud wasn’t coerced into anything, and she was of a clear and sound mind when she signed. Yes, she might have felt like she had no other options, but if that voids a contract, then we ought to forgive every loan in existence to the peril of the nation’s economy.”
The judge listened, her head tilted to the side, but appeared about as disinterested as Patrick Lindgartt himself. “Do you have any other questions for Miss McCloud?”
“No, ma’am.” He turned and walked back to his seat, and, for a moment, Jessica felt glued to hers. That was it? It couldn’t have lasted more than two minutes. Clint Daniels caught her eye and nodded for her to get off the stand. She jumped up and returned to her seat next to him.
He didn’t look at her, and that told her everything she needed to know about how things had just gone.
Then the judge announced, “Next, we’ll hear from Dolores Thomas.”
Chapter Forty
72:12:57:02 until Doomsday
Never in her life had Jessica seen Dolores Thomas dress in the fashion she wore in court today. She looked like a little old church lady, and were hats allowed in the courtroom, Jessica was sure the Devil would have been wearing one. Maybe a little round boxy thing with a bit of lace around the edge and a broach pinning a silk flower to it.
Jessica wondered if anyone else noticed that her hand hovered just above the cover of the Bible as she was sworn in.
“Mrs. Thomas,” Daniels said, “how long have you known my client?”
“Since she was five years old. I believe that’s seventeen years ago, now.”
“From what you know of her, does she strike you as the type to expect the best or worst of people?”
“You can hardly blame her for it, but she always expects the worst. Projects it onto people, I think. Self-reflection isn’t one of her strengths.”
Jessica blinked, stunned by the sudden accusation. She should have expected it, perhaps, but she hadn’t, and she thought that sort of disproved the Devil’s claim.
“You’d say she’s a suspicious person?”
Dolores pretended to think about it, chewing her lip. “She has moments of intense suspicion that I’ve seen. It’s not all the time. Consistency isn’t one of her pronounced traits, either. She’s very hot and cold.”
“Can you provide an example?”
“Oh yes. She confided in me quit
e a lot growing up. As she said herself, she thought of me as a second mother. Anyway, for years she suspected her best friend of trying to steal her boyfriend. She even went so far as to sneak over to her boyfriend’s home to watch him and make sure her best friend wasn’t there.”
Daniels clearly wasn’t expecting that. But neither was Jessica. What in the hellshit was this bitch talking about? She’d never suspected Chris and Miranda!
She shut her eyes to steady herself against the lie, and a flash memory of Destinee beating the snot out of Ruth Wurst on the Wursts’ front lawn flashed into her mind. Except now Jessica had Dolores by the hair, and Sandra and Fischer were forced to look on.
Ahh … that felt good. It was too bad these things couldn’t be settled in her mother’s preferred court of two-fisted justice.
Satan was speaking again. “I did think of her like a daughter. I gave to her selflessly over the years, helped her out when she needed it, provided guidance, kept her out of harm’s way throughout her school career. I did all that even though she never once showed gratitude, never once changed her behavior. I don’t do the things I do because I need praise or a thank-you. I do them because they’re the right thing to do. That’s why I offered her the money in the first place for her bakery. She seemed truly passionate about the culinary arts, and I wanted to encourage her to follow her passion after such a rough and neglected childhood. But at the same time, I recognized that she had a certain pattern of behavior, so I wrote those clauses into the contract at the bottom just in case. Having boundaries and limits to the abuse you’ll take isn’t malicious, Mr. Daniels. It’s called self-love.”
“I’ll show her where to shove that self-love,” Destinee murmured a few rows back.
Daniels said, “Sounds more like martyrdom to me.”
“Objection.”
“Upheld. Let’s not opine, Mr. Daniels.”
“Knowing what you claim to know about my client, why did you believe it was a good idea to get into business with her at all? Did you believe she had a chance of success?”
Dolores tilted her head to the side and said softly, “I always believe my students can succeed. If I didn’t, I would leave education. Perhaps I’m a fool for believing in her after I’d been burned so many times, but a contract is a contract.”
“Did you go into it with the belief that my client would not be able to uphold her end of the bargain and you would be able to seize her personal brand?”
“No.”
Liar! Jessica’s gut felt like it was on fire, and she wanted to scream and probably not stop for a good long while. But what could she do about it? Smite Dolores?
Could she smite the Devil? Did the laws of the universe even allow for such a thing? If Dolores suddenly exploded, would anyone genuinely be able to point a finger at Jessica? Maybe she could do it real sneaky-like. No big show with her hands. Just direct the force under the table …
Daniels took his seat next to her. This was her chance. A clear shot. Then it would all be over, right?
UH NO. SATAN JUST KEEPS COMING BACK.
Damn. Another metaphysical boomerang. Okay then.
Lindgartt nodded at his client and then began, and Jessica knew she was in for a world of hurt.
“Would you say Ms. McCloud is spoiled?”
“I don’t know about that, but she does seem to feel very entitled to things. I mean, she claims to be the daughter of you-know-who. Can you blame her?”
“Do you believe she’s the daughter of God?”
Dolores did a good job of feigning sadness and met Jessica’s eyes directly, causing her to jerk back before she could stop herself. “No. I don’t believe she is. How could she be?”
“So, when you encouraged her to pursue a life outside of being God’s daughter, you were trying to protect her?”
“Yes, exactly. Her mother has raised her with the delusion that she was immaculately conceived. I didn’t want to outright contradict that notion—far be it from me to refute what’s taught in the home—but I wanted her to know that there were other possibilities for her besides this delusion. It’s quite an unhealthy thing for a child to be raised believing about him or herself. I always felt for her. So much pressure. The weight of the world on her shoulders. It’s really no wonder she acted the way she did—entitled, paranoid, and so on. She was raised to believe she would follow in Jesus’s footsteps. I mean, you heard her. She’s still worried about being crucified. It’s no way to rear a child.”
“What did you think when you heard that her bakery was based on the premise that she was the daughter of God?”
“Well, I wasn’t all that surprised, let me tell you. But I thought it was a start, you know? Maybe her love of baking would be the thing that steered her away from the grandiosity. But I soon realized that was unlikely to be the case.”
“Mrs. Thomas, did you include that clause in the contract with the hope of saving her from herself?”
She tilted her chin up, rolling her shoulders back. “Yes. Yes, I did. If the bakery failed, I wanted to make sure that she did not fall into old patterns. That’s why I wrote in the clause about her personal brand going to me. It’s also why I paid for her trip to the women’s retreat in Carlsbad. I wanted her to explore herself more, to step out of her old ways and see the vast possibilities of life. It’s not easy for children to break away from the beliefs of their parents, and I could already see that she was struggling to make that space between herself and her overbearing mother.”
The holes in this story were excruciatingly obvious, but Jessica knew it was too late. The narrative only had to make emotional sense to stick. If Dolores had thought the retreat would help, then why didn’t she wait to hear the results before pulling Jessica’s life out from under her? That simple question could unravel everything.
But no. The damage was too severe. Jessica was watching her character be assassinated in real time. But unlike with Jameson, she wasn’t sure she could resurrect it.
“Everything I’ve ever done has been to protect Jessica from herself and her mother. I see the potential in her. I always have. But if she keeps down this road, I’m afraid it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and she will follow in the footsteps of Jesus. All the way up the cross. She seems set on it. Preventing her from continuing this psychotic charade was the only thing I could think to do to help her. If I don’t enforce this trademark, it could cost a young, troubled woman her life.”
“I’m not gonna do nothin’!” Destinee hissed, and Jessica glanced over her shoulder in time to see her mother smack Rex’s hand off of her as she sat back down on the wooden bench.
Good man, Rex.
“One last question, Mrs. Thomas. Who do you think was behind the recent fire that destroyed It is Risen bakery?”
“Objection. Speculation.”
“Upheld. Please drop the speculation, Mr. Lindgartt. This is a trumped up civil suit, not a criminal matter.”
Dolores bowed her head briefly, and Mr. Lindgartt acquiesced. But then suddenly, Dolores was speaking again. “I know Jessica has a solid alibi. But I believe she paid someone to burn down the bakery. She certainly has the money to do it.”
“Objection!”
“Upheld. Please strike that from the record.”
But it couldn’t be stricken from the minds of everyone present. The accusation was out there.
She’d never thought much about Hell, presuming she couldn’t end up there, but she bet it felt a little like this. The sound of the reporters’ pens scratching on paper, the eyes of the Devil upon her, all those she cared about listening on while her entire life was spun so that she appeared credibly awful.
She even believed it herself. She was entitled. She was ungrateful. She had always suspected she was those things. A little voice inside her had been telling her so for most of her life.
She had to face it: nothing the Devil could say would have bothered her if she hadn’t already known it was true all along.
Chapter Forty-O
ne
72:12:41:50 until Doomsday
The judge declared a recess and Jessica hurried out into the hallway, Clint Daniels following after her. But she didn’t wait up. She needed air, not legal counsel.
As a habit, she checked her phone, which had been on silent. Five missed called from an unknown number and a voicemail.
Obviously, she wasn’t about to listen to a voicemail. Life was too short.
The pattern didn’t fit a robocall, so she keyed up the number and hit dial.
On the second ring, “Hello? Jessica?”
She recognized that voice, but the sense of urgency was like a foreign body to it, a virus that had snuck in. “Yeah?”
“It’s Caren Powers.”
“What do you want?” You were supposed to be my galru, and all you did was keep me in the desert while the Devil screwed me!
“I didn’t … Are you upset with me?” came the woman’s smooth voice.
“For being in league with Dolores Thomas? Yeah, just a little.”
“We’re old friends, but I’m not ‘in league’ with her.”
“Bullshit.”
“Jessica, there’s something you should know. Something I need to tell you.”
Oh, this ought to be good. “Go for it.”
“Is this call being recorded?”
Caught by surprise, Jessica chuckled dryly. “No.”
“Well, you’d better record it. Do you have an app for it?”
Now she was really confused. “You want me to record our conversation?”
“You’ll need a record, and it will be less of a conversation and more of a confession, I’m afraid. Download a call recorder app and call me back.”
The line went dead, and Jessica was left staring at the screen with her eyes mildly crossed.
But she downloaded an app, called Caren back, and hit record.
“Are you recording?” the galru said.
“Yes.”
“Okay. Good. This is Caren Powers. Here’s what you need to know. I just had a vision, but I’ll get back to that. On December thirtieth of last year, I received a call from my friend Dolores Thomas with a request. She’d long been aware of my previous relationship with Jimmy John Dean, and asked if—”
The End Is Her Page 25
