Chapter 5: The Weight of Specifics

“The defense calls Mrs. Joan Coswell to the stand.”

There was no motion in the courtroom. As rehearsed, Brad James rose and said, “Your honor may I approach the bench.”

The judge motioned him forward. The defense attorney came forward as well. There were some whispered words, and then the men returned to their tables.

“The defense calls Joan Paige to the stand.”

Joan rose and walked to the front of the courtroom. She was sworn in, and took the witness chair.

The interrogating lawyer said, “Up until a short while ago and for ten years prior were you Mrs. Joan Coswell, the defendant’s wife.”

“I was.”

“And you divorced him.”

“I did. He had been abusing me and driving me towards committing suicide.”

“OBJECTION, your honor. Please instruct the journey to strike the witness’ last remark. This trial is about proving my client innocent of exactly those charges.”

Joan looked anything but contrite. The judge said, “Sustained; the jury will disregard.” Everyone in the room already knew the message had gotten more firmly embedded in the jurors’ minds by the objection.

“What kind of marriage did you have with Mr. Coswell?”

Joan looked puzzled. The question was a strange one and invited wandering in many directions. She responded, “I came to use words like controlling, demeaning, and repressed. We initially had a lot of love and caring for each other, but after we’d been married a couple of years, that seemed to change. Brian became very career oriented, but he was insistent about what jobs I should take, and how I should behave at home. We had many arguments over his controlling attitude. It was not a good time.”

“When did you first contemplate divorce?”

“Oh, not until my friends rescued me and got me in counseling. It was then that I realized I had become an abused woman; that’s what the counselors called me. I also learned that my husband had been in a long-term relationship with a woman named Amanda Tyler. At that point, I realized I couldn’t continue being married to the man.”

“At one point in your marriage you went to a party where some other colleagues of your husband were there. Did that change you?”

“Yes, it did. Greatly. The place where the party was held was a large cohousing project, and we were by the pool. I remember it well. I heard people discussing the group that lived there. They were kind, loving, and fostered and nurtured their relationships with each other in positive ways, exactly what I wanted to have happen with my husband. I even asked him to stay and listen to some of the group’s philosophy and how they put it into practice. He would have nothing to do with the subject, and walked out. I had to run after him to be sure I had a ride home. He was very dismissive of me after that.”

“You claim that he made abusive statements, did those start then?”

“Oh, no. Those had started a couple of years earlier. They just became more intense after that party. In hindsight, I think that might have been when he wanted me to harm myself.”

“Can you cite a specific occurrence or are we left to use our imaginations to conjure up what MIGHT have occurred.”

“Certainly,” Joan responded. “On Friday, September 14, 2015, I got a several texts from my husband. One asked whether I had done anything useful that day. It wasn’t teasing. That was his attitude. A second one, an hour later, asked why I was such a poor excuse for a woman. A third one, in mid afternoon, told me I should be thinking of ways to get him to respect me, because I hadn’t done anything that he could think of to deserve such. At night, at home, he repeated those, and then would use little words under his breath about me such as ‘worthless’, ‘slut’, ‘waste of flesh’, and things like that. He kept making those remarks all weekend, and otherwise ignored me.”

“And another?” The defense counsel didn’t sound so confident.

“On June 12, 2017, he texted me several times. He was taunting me again with his degrading questions. ‘What should a worthless person do? End their life?’ ‘Hey, you’re worthless. Get on it.’ ‘Take the easy way out. You’re miserable in this existence.’ At home that Monday night, he rode me. He told me I was good-for-nothing, valueless, wouldn’t even be good as a cheap whore, and that I was despicable, contemptible, and pathetic. He ranted all evening about what a terrible mistake he’d made marrying me and how his life would be so much better without me.”

“Did my client even mention divorce?”

“Not that I ever recall,” Joan stated firmly.

“How was your memory during that time period? You are recalling dates and circumstances quite specifically now.”

“Actually, it was very good; it always has been. At work I was a steno typist for doctors, transcribing their dictated client records for retention. I could recall records back several weeks when I’d run across the same patient. Several times, I called the doctors to call their attention to prior remarks they’d made so that they didn’t make damaging prescriptions.

“When I was being treated at the rehabilitation center in Austin, Texas, that you heard about from Attorney James about, they explained that they thought that my husband had been ‘gaslighting’ me.”

“Please explain.”

“He was often telling me that I remembered specific situations completely wrong – a date, a day, a situation, or the conclusion of some discussion we had.”

“Give an example.”

“I wanted children in our marriage. Brian had told me he did, too, but not until he’d become well-established in his career at the utility. On February 7, last year, I raised the issue again. He feigned surprised and asked me why I’d changed my mind. I was confused. He told me that for the prior eight or nine years that I’d known him that I was the one that didn’t want children. Later that day, he told me that with my bad memory, it was a good thing that we didn’t have children. He told me that I’d probably kill them by starving them.

“The prior year 2016, we had agreed to go to Europe in April for a week’s holiday. I was hopeful that the trip might mend our relationship. On April 4, when I was packing to go, he asked me about what bathing suits I was taking. I was puzzled. He ‘reminded’ me that the trip was to the island of Aruba, as we’d agreed. I’d agreed to no such thing. I am not a beach and island person. Those are examples of his trying to make me think my memory was failing. In each case, and others, he would degrade me and even make fun of my bad memory, citing how it was additional evidence of what I terrible person I’d become.”

“How can you remember such specific incidents on specific dates?” the defense attorney asked with distain in his voice. He was ready to pounch that Joan had made up the dates or situations.

Joan responded, “I kept a written diary.”

There was a buzz in the courtroom at both tables.

The defense attorney quickly consulted his list of questions. That one had not gone as he’d hoped. He asked, “Where do you live now, Mrs. Coswell?”

“I am NOT Mrs. Coswell, and I live with the people I met at the party I mentioned earlier in my testimony. I now have a townhouse on their property, and they are my neighbors.”

“I understand that you could barely wait to join them towards the end of 2017. Is this because you wanted to engage in illicit sex with some of those individuals?”

Again, the courtroom buzzed at the confrontational question.

The prosecutor was on his feet, “OBJECTION. Counsel is leading the witness.”

“Sustained.”

“Miss Paige, when you were still Mrs. Coswell, did you not want to join up with this group of friends you’d met, and was not one of the draws of that group the openness in the relationships they practiced?”

Joan answered carefully, “I did want to join that group WITH MY THEN HUSBAND. I wanted OUR loving relationship to return, and I thought that setting would help in that regard. THAT was the draw of that group and why I initially befriended them once I understood their lifestyle.”

There was pause and Joan continued unprompted, “I broke down and cried over a lunch with several women from that neighborhood. I had become suicidal at that point and was ready to end it all. They questioned me and that’s when they learned about what Brian was saying and doing to me. The next I knew, but with my agreement, I was in Austin, Texas, being treated for emotional abuse. They had immediately seen the problem for what it was. The Austin clinic verified their analysis.”

The defense attorney was ready to object, but the evil eye of the judge rested upon him and he shut up. The judge asked, “Are you through with this witness?”

“For the time being, Your Honor.”

“Court is dismissed for the day. We will reconvene at ten a.m. tomorrow.”

Brad James descended on Joan Paige like a hurricane. “Diary? You kept a diary? Why didn’t you say something?”

Joan looked surprised, “Because it was just my own stuff, my own feelings and emotions about what was going on.”

“I want that diary in my hands right now. That’ll be a huge help. Just so you know the defense is NOT finished with you. They’ve barely started, probably, but you’ve given me new hope.”

Dave, Jack, and Ty walked through the back passageway in the core building. Two spacious studio apartments had been created, and were ready for furnishing and décor.

Dave commented, “Both women will want opaque window shades before they move in. Neither one seems inclined to join up with our crazy band of misfits. We shouldn’t pressure them.”

Jack made note of it. “I have a curtain and blind company come out this afternoon. I think you can call both women and tell them we’re ready for their stuff.”

Saturday about eleven in the morning a small truck entered the Circle compound. Dave met the truck and the car that followed showing Bobbie Wyatt where to park and how to best move her few possessions to her apartment. Bobbie had been over the previous two days with carloads of clothes and boxes of more fragile things that she didn’t want to trust with the movers.

That day was a little different. Instead of the blue jeans that she’d worn on the other days, she was in shorts – very short and very tight shorts that clung to her lower body like the kisses that each man wanted to leave there. A slight camel toe was visible.

Instead of the normal tops she’d worn, she was wearing a crop top made of thin t-shirt material, and she was braless. She wasn’t particularly endowed, unlike some of the other women in the Circle, but against her svelte body, the tips stood out in invitation.

Bobbie also wore little pink tennis shoes. She was all female, all the way, all day.

Dave and Dale stood beside each other drooling. Dori came up behind them and watched for a few seconds. She whispered, “I’d like some of that, too. Go get her guys. Reel her in. We need that pussy in our clan.”

By noon, Bobbie was moved into the two-room studio apartment. She came out about two o’clock and reported that all the important stuff had been unpacked and put in the right places, more or less. She was looking for a place to put the emptied cardboard boxes.