Growing up on the Eastern seaboard should have been a dream, but for my family that was the furthest from true. I was 15 when my dad came home with a woman that wasn’t my mother and our lives changed forever. My dad and his fling stayed in New York, but my mother ripped me from the life we knew and moved us to southern state of Georgia. We put our roots down in the town of Macon full of sweet Magnolia trees, summer carnivals, and rich in civil war history.
We were settled for about a year, when my father was killed in a fishing accident alongside six of his colleagues. I remember being 16 and having my grandfather read the autopsy report to me like it was the Sunday paper. The Deputy Inspector stayed late one night to go over some of the details with my grandfather. He said the unusual thing about the accident was the water. There weren’t any swells beyond the usual 5 foot caps or any larger boats in the deep waters surrounding the Port of New Bedford that could have caused a gruesome accident of the sort. After the Inspector left, I over heard the adults talking and my mother asking my grandfather if he or the rest of our water fae family cronies had anything to do with this. He gave his most convincing denial and the conversation turned to making preparations for my father. That would be the first and last time I ever heard the word Fae used between the two of them.
We cremated my father and laid his urn to rest in his family Mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. I didn’t need much time to say goodbye, my anger kept me from grieving for him. In the year preceding his death, I didn’t see him, or even hear from him on my birthday. I didn’t fit into his life anymore, out of sight out of mind.
Upon returning to Georgia, my mother hopped out of one bed and into another, always promising that the next man would be better than the previous. They never changed, one alcoholic predator after another, always smelling of stale cigarettes and soured whiskey.The men were always sketchy, never reliable, and had criminal records in multiple states. It would take years for me to get the feel of their hands off of my body, and the emotional scars would always be a reminder of where my value would lay with the men in my life.
It was a Tuesday when the phone call about my grandfather came. He had died of a blood clot to the left lung, causing him to asphyxiate. My mother melted, dropped the phone to the floor, and let out a bellowing and bone chilling scream. There would be no grave for my grandfather, but in it’s place, my mother and her family had his body placed on an ornately decorated wooden raft and sent into the Gulf of Mexico. I vaguely remember my mother telling me that my grandfather was Hindu that day, to help me make sense of what was going on. I thought it was strange because he would take me to the Baptist church down the street from his house in the summers when i visited him. Maybe he was Hindu, but It felt like she was hiding something from me.
My mother couldn’t handle the death of her father, he was the only person that held her together. When he died, she said that she was afraid of what would happen to us now, that our only protection was gone. My mother was losing her mind, it started with the freaking out when I was a few minutes past curfew, then not leaving the house. and finally the refusal of anything Lemon because she said it would kill her. Lemons mother.. really? After a few months of her erratic behavior, she was committed to The Kingston Lounge, Central State Asylum in Milledgeville Georgia.I visited her all throughout the first year, but at the beginning of her second year, she started refusing visitors, even me.
I had just gotten settled into my Freshman year at Northwestern University, when I got the visit from a distant relative telling me that my mother had been murdered by an orderly at the hospital in Georgia. I was relieved instead of sad and that caught me off guard. I took a sabbatical for the first semester to go home and close this tragic chapter of my life. I remembered my mother saying that she wanted a ceremony like my Grandfathers although I didn’t understand, my mother was exactly the religious type. On the day of the ceremony, one of the elder members of my mothers family gave me a note and told me to read it when I was alone. I kissed my mother goodbye and sent her into the Gulf of Mexico on the same kind of wooden raft my Grandfather had been released into the after life on. I watched her float away until she disappeared into the horizon, not feeling anything other then curiosity about the note in my hand. I said my goodbyes to the strangers that had gathered, and sat down under a distant Mossy Oak to read the note.
“We never forget the betrayal of our flesh and now your payment has been collected “ ~ Neave & Lochlan ~
As the sole heir, I inherited the family fortune, and the title to my grandfathers estate and various other properties. Wanting nothing to do with the bad juju following my family around the last few years, I sold everything I could at an estate sale.
I was angry, why would two men want to hurt my mother? Sure she had her faults. I remembered the man warning me not to talk to anyone about it, so i tucked the note in our family bible forgetting about it once I returned to Northwestern.
I made a few friends in college, but it was abbymasonbt and her crazy antics that diverted my attention from the dark cloud hanging over me. Abby was my brand of crazy, I never knew what to expect when she was around. That girl was a wild child, hell bent on destroying herself on whatever adventure we ended up on, that being what made her so attractive to me in the first place. We were instant friends, Abby knew how to have a good time and was fiercely protective of me. If I ever found myself in any kind of dangerous situation, you can bet that it was either Abby who started us on that path, or one of her crazy friends. Abby left school after three years, but I stayed and graduated with honors. When I was accepted into Ole Miss Law School, I was excited to be moving to Mississippi, closer to my best friend who was now living in Bon Temps and working for the Bon Temps Bugle. The three years i spent in Law School went by so fast, I barely noticed them flying by. That’s what happens when you’re learning Latin as a second language.
I finished law school, and decided to stay in Oxford. After a slew of terrible relationship choices, internships, and terrible apartments, I decided that it was time to put down some of my own roots. I searched for a few years for the perfect house, looking at well over 200 properties until I found the Old Wheeler Plantation. I fell in love instantly, paying cash for the land, and existing home. The house needed some work, but nothing I couldn’t handle myself, but the gem of the property was an old stable that was dilapidated and falling apart. Overwhelmed by the work that was to come, I decided to take a long weekend and visit an old friend. Abby had a bar in Shreveport, I needed a good drink, and wanted to reconnect with my friend. I made the 6 hour drive to Shreveport, walked into the bar looking for my long lost friend, but what I would find there was not only a surprise, but life altering.
