History

Title and Deed

Joanne was born on October 6, 1967. Her parents were Theodore and Karlene Harris, respected members of the community in Lakewood, Louisiana.

Theodore was a property attorney. It was hardly a glamorous position, but lucrative. The Lakewood of Joanne’s childhood was undergoing a period of intense modernization, spurred by postwar redevelopment. Joanne grew up with an intense admiration of her father and made no secret that she wanted to learn his trade.

Some fathers of the time may have balked at the notion of their daughter going into a career, but Theodore was willing to embrace more modern attitudes for Jo’s sake. All through her childhood, Theodore mentored her in the tools of the trade, showing her the ropes of the business, introducing her to clients, and letting her develop her own opinions from the work he did every day.

By the time Joanne was a teenager, she’d witnessed dozens of sales as Lakewood continued its transformation into an upwardly mobile suburb of New Orleans. Wren Lake, historically something of a slum district and industrial waste dump with little in-between, became a luxury neighborhood, with palatial lake houses hugging the coast.

Not all the sales were happy ones. During the 1970s and ’80s, the farms north of Lakewood began struggling to stay in the black. For a brief time after World War II, the local agriculture industry had boomed, and more than one GI home from the front had staked his future in working the land. But those days had been short-lived, and returns on produce and dairy were diminishing with each passing decade. By the time Jo was in high school, the farmers were beginning to cash out while they still could.

One of these farmers was a young man named Troy James, who operated a sizable tract of land acquired by his father, Owen, after the Korean War. The James farm had primarily raised poultry and cattle, but like its neighbors had been struggling for most of Troy’s lifetime. By 1985, Owen was long dead, and Troy was left to take care of his unwell mother and his younger brother Brandon, who’d been born disfigured by Proteus Syndrome.

Troy was eager for a clean break, and had worked out a deal with his best friend, Roger Lipinski, who operated a smaller farm to his property’s east. Roger, a genteel country boy with a bellicose, gladhanding manner, was all too eager to double the size of his property, while Troy was eager to wash his hands of the one he’d grown up on.

Theodore handled the transaction with his customary professionalism and, as had become increasingly common in recent years, Joanne was brought along as an apprentice. During this time, she got to know Troy, and the two hit it off. Joanne was attracted by his austere charisma, and Troy by her wits and headstrong nature.

The relationship never progressed beyond flirtation, however, with Troy wary of Joanne’s youth. The sale was closed in April 1985, with Troy coming away with enough savings to secure a tidy suburban home in Lakewood proper for his mother and brother…and to invest the rest in himself. He left town, leaving Joanne with no illusions she would see him again.

Legal Eagle

Joanne completed her education and embarked on a career of her own, inheriting her father’s law practice. Theodore and Karlene retired and relocated to Florida to live out the remainder of their years in peace and comfort. Meanwhile, Joanne endeavored to establish herself as an attorney in her own right.

She had a leg up here thanks to one of her father’s old clients, Roger Lipinski. After acquiring Troy James’ property, Lipinski had become a leader in Lakewood’s small but still-influential agricultural community. When he made friends, he always went out of his way to keep them. In the early ’90s, with Joanne only relatively lately out of school, he recommended her services to his friend Clint Belmont, a dairy farmer.

Clint had been hoping to purchase a plot of land to the east of the Lipinski property, to establish a farm of his own. This plot, however, had been set aside for developments by the local government, and the sale was seen as a done deal. Jo was able to cut her teeth on the case, securing the land for Clint and his wife Adeline, and cementing her reputation as a formidable attorney in her own right.

During the case, Jo developed a hot-and-cold rivalry with the attorney representing the town of Lakewood: a slick customer named Toby Keener. Toby was a classic, macho-man type, and took a certain grade school pleasure in putting Jo down as a woman in a man’s world. Joanne wasn’t intimidated by him, however, and let her actions speak for her.

The Belmont sale closed in 1993. Joanne and Toby were married in 1994. Theirs was a passionate romance, their dueling competitive streaks making way for wild sex and unpredictable affairs…ideal for young lovers, but perhaps less conducive to a healthy marriage. The newlyweds’ bond would only be further tested by a looming tragedy.

Marriage and Divorce

On Halloween night, 1994, five students at Lakewood’s George Washington High School were killed, and a sixth grievously injured, by Brandon James, Troy’s younger brother: the sheepish boy with the birth defect Jo had briefly come to know when she’d assisted her father with the James-Lipinski sale a decade earlier. That same night, Brandon was shot in a standoff with the police at Wren Lake, his body falling into the water and, despite hours of dredging, being lost.

The killings cast a shadow over Lakewood, utterly transforming the town. The community was close knit enough that there wasn’t anybody unaffected by the murders in one way or another. For Jo, her connection wasn’t merely that she’d briefly flirted with the teenage murderer’s brother as a girl: one of Brandon’s victims, Brett Keener, was her brother-in-law.

Brett’s death changed the cocky, swaggering Toby. He turned his customary fiery energy inward, becoming broody and difficult. Things got worse when Jo commented that she knew Brandon, however briefly, and had known his mother as well, expressing sympathy for elderly Cassie James, who hadn’t been the most well-adjusted woman when she’d known her, and would surely be suffering worse now.

Toby had no sympathy for the James family and resented Jo for even thinking of them. The spark of passion that had ignited their romance now burned over into an untamable blaze. Jo and Toby didn’t exactly lack things in common. Rather, their headstrong natures and uncompromising will meant neither of them were willing to give up any ground as they clashed, grief turning into anger.

Sick of the constant barrage of verbal and emotional abuse, Jo filed for divorce before her marriage was even two years old. Toby bitterly contested it, not wanting her to get away with a penny of his money, and the two attorneys battled it out in an acrimonious dispute.

Toby got what he wanted: Joanne left the marriage with everything she had going into it, and not a penny he could claim as his own. The divorce was finalized in 1996, and Joanne washed her hands of marriage, ostensibly for good and all.

Back for Round 2

Protest though she might, Joanne wasn’t done with marriage yet. A few months after the divorce concluded, she ran into Troy James at the Grindhouse, a local coffee shop. Joanne knew Troy had returned to Lakewood after a few years on his own, and had spent a good chunk of the time since working for Roger on the land that had once been his own, but they hadn’t seen each other very much in that time.

Joanne certainly hadn’t seen Troy since the events of Halloween ’94. She extended his condolences for his brother, noting he probably hadn’t heard much of that, but acknowledging that, whatever Brandon may have done, his death would’ve been a loss to his family as well. With a dark humor, Jo offered to sell Troy a house far away, so he could escape the cloud of rumors and gossip that had clung to him and his family over the last few years.

Troy had been aching for a confidante and appreciated Joanne’s candor. They began seeing more of each other, catching each other up on the course of their lives. Joanne was eager for someone to vent to over her divorce. Meanwhile, Troy opened up on a broken engagement of his own, with a woman he’d known in Florida. It was on account of that failed relationship that he’d returned to Lakewood in the first place, though he found himself wondering more and more if he never should’ve left at all. If, perhaps, Brandon’s bitter isolation wouldn’t have gotten so bad if he’d had his brother around to counsel him.

Friendship soon enough blossomed into something more, and Troy and Joanne began seeing each other formally. Troy was still working for Roger, who took a particular relish in hosting the new couple for barbecues at his farm.

But there were larger troubles at work. The cloud cast by the Brandon James killings proved slow to lift, and Troy had to deal with more than loose talk and disparaging rumors. More than that, his mother Cassie was 65 and losing more of herself with every day that passed without her “Golden Years child” to keep her tethered to reality. Much as Troy would’ve liked to take Jo’s advice and strike out anew, he wasn’t a wealthy man, and all his previous attempts to start his own business and be his own boss out in the world had backfired.

Salvation came from an unlikely source. Quinn Maddox, an up-and-coming politician from a well-established Lakewood family, had secured a seat on the city council in the immediate wake of the murders, campaigning on a ‘tough on crime’ approach which greatly appealed to the traumatized population. Now, Maddox approached Troy with an offer. Aware of the suffering the James family had experienced in recent years, Maddox was willing to write Troy a check to help him establish himself and his mother elsewhere, free of the prying eyes and wagging tongues of Lakewood.

Framed as a conciliatory effort, and an acknowledgement of Maddox coasting to power on the back of the James family’s misfortune, Troy nonetheless found himself in no position to be choosey. He consulted Joanne for advice. She surprised him by pointing out there was no reason for Troy to chain himself in Lakewood anymore. Troy countered there was one reason but Jo, seeing his meaning, noted there wasn’t necessarily anything tying her down in Lakewood either.

It wasn’t an elegant proposal, but sufficient to their purposes.

Troy accepted Maddox’s offer. The funds went three ways: the first, to ensuring Cassie James was taken care of, checking her into a luxurious assisted living complex in the Shenandoah parish of Baton Rouge; the second went to Troy and Joanne’s wedding and a new home, also in Baton Rouge; the third Troy invested into a defunct meatpacking plant in the marshes north of Lakewood, which he called Gift Horse. Troy’s business training was in meatpacking, and he’d spent his wilderness years after leaving Lakewood the first time working at a variety of plants throughout the Southeast, always with the ambition of one day opening his own.

In an indirect way, his brother’s death had allowed him to realize that dream.

What’s Old is New Again

Joanne relocated her law practice to Baton Rouge, attracting a new web of clients, including some quite affluent ones. Meanwhile, Troy’s business was struggling. The meatpacking plant he’d purchased was more trouble than it was worth, and Troy found himself pouring so much into restoring the building that it became functionally impossible for Gift Horse to turn a profit.

Making matters worse, Troy spent hours at the plant, sometimes being there all through the night, consigning Jo to an empty house. The physical and emotional alienation compounded, made worse by Troy increasingly seeking solace in the bottle rather than his wife. Not content to sit by while her husband destroyed himself, Joanne tried to intervene, only for Troy to lash out.

The two fought, with Troy stopping himself just short of raising a hand to his wife. Wracked with shame and self-disgust, he fled the house.

Joanne tried to find him, worried Troy had gone off to do something drastic, but to no avail. In time, Troy returned of his own accord, coming home in time for Christmas. Jo was relieved to see him, but took his claims that he was going to work to be a better husband with a grain of salt.

Things worked out for a while, with Troy actively committing to be more present in their marriage. As a testament to their renewed closeness, Troy and Joanne welcomed a son in September 2000. Troy, uninterested in perpetuating his family legacy, gave Joanne carte blanche in naming their child: she christened him Theodore, after her recently deceased father.

Troy took it one step further: he wanted Ted to have Joanne’s name. As far as he was concerned, the James name was cursed. He wanted their son to have a full life, open to all the possibilities of the world…it would be easier if he wasn’t so overtly linked to a macabre ghost story from half a decade before he’d been born.

Separate Ways

The James-Harris family’s bliss wasn’t fated to last. Though Troy and Joanne doted on Ted, their marriage had its ups and downs. There was never again a threat of physical violence between them, but the emotional gulf between them widened with each passing year, exacerbating by Troy’s mounting professional worries.

The Gift Horse plant wasn’t doing well. The investment had never paid off and, for all of Troy’s experience in the industry, he couldn’t get the pork plant to turn a profit. Making matters worse, in 2005, the plant received a citation from the health board. Troy, who had always run things cleanly and above board, contested it, but no amount of protest could sway the state.

Joanne reviewed the case and concluded the state wanted to repossess the land. She argued that Troy might as well settle out of court…the business had never turned a profit anyway. Troy put his foot down: he’d poured too much into the plant to back out now.

The legal battle continued for a few years more, and Troy ultimately did have to close the plant down, after sinking tens of thousands of dollars into it. Still, he refused to sell the land. Joanne saw this as childish desperation and unhealthy for their family.

Joanne filed for divorce in 2008. Troy was crushed, and more so when the court granted Joanne full custody of Ted, on the grounds she had stable employment and no record of erratic behavior. While Jo made a point to keep Troy’s family history out of the case, Troy didn’t doubt it had come into play anyway.