Before you complain about the treatment of the lawyer (other than the sharks won't eat him and snakes don't bite him due to professional courtesy) - there's backstory that comes up in Book Two to explain it. Remember, I set up the whole child molesting thing 20 chapters BEFORE I revealed it.
Other than that, the cliffhanger at the end of this chapter is relatively mild.
I'm writing Chapter 37 of Book Two. After Friday mornings post of Chapter 30, I plan to June and July to finish writing Book Two. There won't be 'time skips' in Book Two, but there will be times when a paragraph may cover an entire week or more, simply because there's not much going on that needs to be covered in quite as much detail. (Something along the line of ... classes in February went pretty much as we all expected.)
Supposed to be in the mid-90's this week. Yay... :)