by Blair Young
Secret Bay High Issues
By Blair Young
Copyright © 2019 by Blair Young
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Prologue
Sutton
I was shell-shocked. The words hung in the air and there was a ringing in my ears as I tried to process what Susan had just told me.
She’s my mom – my real mom? How is that even possible?
I had spent so long wondering why my adoptive parents had sent me to live with Susan when they passed, and I knew there had to be more to the story than her being a friend of the family. My entire growing up life, they hadn’t said one word about Susan or her boyfriend, so when she told me she was a really good friend and therefore the first choice for a guardian, I knew she had to be lying.
I wasn’t close to my adoptive parents. My father was a PI and was rarely home, always on the job looking for someone or investigating someone else. He worked closely with the police department and private clients, often coming home after I was in bed or leaving before I was out of my room in the morning.
My mother, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. She rarely left the house, and she had few social connections. But, that didn’t mean she was any more involved in my life. In fact, she was even more disconnected to me than my father.
She spend her days drinking wine on the couch, often in a state of drunkenness or actually passed out. She always smiled and tried to act as though she was involved when she talked to me, but I could tell her the same story over and over and she never really made the connection that I’d repeated myself.
I always thought my father distanced himself from the house because of my mother, and though I didn’t have a bad relationship with either one of them, I had to admit we certainly weren’t close, either. On the other hand, I knew them both well enough to know if Susan was such a good friend of the family, I would have seen her, or at the very least heard her name mentioned at some point.
But, I didn’t even know she existed until shortly after my parents were murdered. I was shocked by the event, assuming that my father must have gotten involved with the wrong people and they had come for revenge. The police said they were investigating the case, but with each passing week I had less and less hope they were ever going to find the murderer.
So, I had done my best to find answers myself.
My parents’ attorney took care of most of the paperwork and legal matters after their passing, and I was sent to live with Susan and her foster son, Damon. No one gave me any real reason why Susan had been the one chosen to be my guardian, and I had only found out the truth about being adopted through my counselor during our therapy sessions.
When I asked Susan about that, she had just brushed it off, telling me that she was aware that I was adopted, but she wouldn’t go into any more detail about it. She knew I wanted to know who my real mother and father were, but she didn’t offer any help or explanation to me until now.
And I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
A mix of emotions ran through me. I was relieved to know the truth, and I felt that her being my real mother really did explain most of the questions I had in regard to her. But, I still didn’t know why she had kept it a secret for so long, or why she had given me up for adoption in the first place.
Not to mention, knowing that she was my real mother only made me wonder if there was a chance she had anything to do with the murder of my adopted parents.
That’s crazy. There’s no way this woman could have had something to do with that. Look at her. She’s sobbing on the couch with a bottle of wine on the floor next to her. There’s no way this woman had anything to do with any of that.
And if she wanted to have custody of you, then why would she give you up for adoption in the first place? Clearly, she has money, and the means to support kids. And she took in Damon. On the other hand, was fostering Damon a way to relieve the guilt she felt giving me up for adoption when I was just a baby?
You could ask her, but look at her! She’s not in any state of mind to be grilled over the truth here. She’s a wreck, and it’s not like Dean is any help, either. Does he know she’s your real mother? Is that why he acts so weird whenever you’re around?
How could he not know? Damon said he and Susan have been together for over a decade! He has to know. But why didn’t he say anything, either?
“I’m sorry,” Susan said. She grabbed a tissue from the box on the end table next to the couch and wiped her eyes. “I shouldn’t be such a wreck, and I really should have told you sooner, but I didn’t know how. I know you’ve been through so much, and I really thought there would be a good time to let you know the truth that wouldn’t be so upsetting.”
“It’s okay,” I said softly. “I understand life isn’t always what we want it to be. And it doesn’t often go the way we want it to, either.”
I felt sorry for Susan, even though I was once again launched into an identity crises of sorts. I could only imagine she did want it to be special when she told me the truth, and it had to be hard for her to know when the right time to do that would be. I was going through a lot, and it wasn’t that she and I had the best relationship anyway.
She didn’t approve of the fact Damon and I were dating, and she knew there was tension between me and Dean, even though I did my best to keep the tension at bay. She and I also had a rocky relationship just because we did. I wanted to be home with my parents – the people who were murdered – not living with her, as a stranger, in this house.
How would someone dealing with all that find the right time to tell their daughter that they were her biological mother?
On the other hand, I was also rather put off by the fact she had waited so long to tell me. She certainly had her chance to do that more than once, even if it wasn’t ideal for her to let me know. I had asked her about my adoption point blank, and she had skirted her answer, avoiding telling me anything that was really helpful.
She’d done the same thing when it came to why I was sent to live with her and Damon. She could have told me the truth either of those times, and she had chosen to keep it to herself.
But then, I wondered if this was going to affect the relationship I had with Damon. More things about how Susan acted toward our relationship now made sense, that was for sure, but what was this going to mean for the two of us?
I looked over at him, only to find him already watching me. He smiled a weak, nervous smile and clasped his hand over mine, giving me a gentle squeeze to let me know he was there for me. He had promised me he would have my back no matter what, and clearly he meant it.
I felt a little better with Damon holding my hand like that, but I was still shocked over the announcement, and I wasn’t sure how to react to the situation at all. Damon himself seemed to be grasping for the right words to say, while Susan was trying to get her crying under control.
“Well, I never thought this is how I would tell you I was your real mom,” Susan said with a bit of a painful chuckle.
“I didn’t know if I was going to ever find her anyway,” I replied. “I wasn’t sure if she was even alive, but here you are… Mom.”
The word hung in the air, and Susan’s face changed as she fought more tears. I wasn’t sure how I felt about calling her that, or if I was going to do it again. It fe
lt wrong. My mother was dead. She was murdered in her own living room with my father in the kitchen, a half-empty bottle of wine on the floor and a spilled wine glass on the table in front of her.
Calling Susan ‘Mom’ might be right as far as our actual relation was concerned, but I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to do it regularly. I felt like I was betraying the woman who had been my mom for as long as I had any memory – for my entire life as far as I was concerned.
“We have a lot we need to talk about,” Susan said.
I nodded. “But I’m not sure right now is the best time. I’ve got a lot going through my mind, and I’m not sure I want to talk about things right now. I want to be thinking clearly, and not so full of emotion when we talk about how we feel and what all this means and everything.”
I was looking down at the floor as I spoke, and I now glanced up to make eye contact with her. Susan nodded.
“I understand. Take all the time you need, and I’ll be here when you’re ready. I’m glad you know the truth now, Sutton. You should have been allowed to know this a long time ago,” Susan said with a small smile.
Once more, I nodded. I wished that my adopted parents had told me something about any of this at some point. But then, perhaps they didn’t think I would ever find out the truth. It’s not like they planned to get murdered, or for me to have to go live with Susan.
Then again, I felt if something was so big in my life, I should at least know the facts about where I came from and who I was. Even if it didn’t change anything in my life besides just knowing, it would have made all this easier to process when it happened.
“Well, I for one have just now noticed how much you two look alike,” Damon’s voice cut through the air in as lighthearted tone as he could muster. “I thought there was something familiar about you when you moved in.”
He looked at me with a grin, and we all chuckled a bit. It was nice to lighten things a little, even if there was still a heaviness to the air. And, he was right, now that he brought it up, Susan and I did have a resemblance to each other. We weren’t strikingly similar – not like Damon was with his biological father, but now that we knew the truth, I could see that we were very clearly related.
But, among all the thoughts that were running through my mind – and now creeping to the forefront of my brain was another thought. Susan might have cleared up a lot of mystery and answered a lot of questions by telling me the truth about her relationship to me, but she also planted a new question I was going to grapple with.
I wasn’t sure if it was something I could ask her, or if I should just try to wait to see if she brought it up when we talked. There were a lot of things I wanted to know – like why she gave me up for adoption in the first place, and why she didn’t have anything to do with me during my growing up years if she was my guardian.
Did Dean know about the truth, and if he did, then why did they both decide to keep it from me? But even more than any of that, there was one thing that jumped out at me – something that would also help me understand my true identity in the world.
If she was my real mother, then who was my real father?
Chapter 1
Sutton
“If you forget to bring home my homework, I’ll not be mad,” Damon said with a grin.
“And you’re going to have to make up for it later. I know you’re doing better, and I’m not going to let you fall behind again,” I said with a mischievous smile. I knew he was teasing me, but I wasn’t going to let him get away with slacking with his school work anymore.
Graduation was coming, and we had to keep pushing through if we were going to graduate together. I wasn’t worried about myself. My grades were good and they always had been. Damon, on the other hand, found school to be boring and a drag – a waste of time.
He was particularly struggling in math, and I had worked hard to help him pull his grade up from a failing score to being average with the rest of the class. But, since his suspension, I knew he was getting a taste for what life was going to be like when we were done with school for good, and he was eager to just let it all go.
“That’s my girl,” Susan said as she walked into the room with a smile. “You stay on him and make sure he’s doing what he’s supposed to be. I want to see you both walking down the aisle with the rest of your class this spring.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll stay on him until then,” I agreed. Damon rolled his eyes, but he grinned in his good natured way. But, my smile vanished from my face as Dean walked into the kitchen.
We hadn’t seen much of him for the past couple days. The last fight he had with Susan had been rough, and it had ended with her telling me that she was my biological mother. He had been upstairs in the master bedroom when she told me the truth, and I wasn’t sure if he already knew or not.
He didn’t say anything about it, so if he did know, it clearly wasn’t a big deal for him. On the other hand, if he didn’t know, then I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. Shoot, Susan had kept the truth from me, her own daughter, for not only my entire life, but for the past several months as I was living with her and Damon.
To think that she hadn’t told Dean the truth wasn’t that surprising. Especially with how volatile their relationship had become. I didn’t know if Dean would be happy with the idea she was my biological mother, or if he would be mad and demand to know who my real father was.
As much as I wanted to know that answer myself, I wasn’t going to put Susan on the spot to tell me, and I really didn’t want to cause more friction between her and Dean.
Damon knew they had been together a long time. He told me that Dean and Susan were dating before he had even moved in with them when he was in the fourth grade. So, I knew they were practically married though they were still just dating.
But, I didn’t know how far back their relationship reached, or who she was with before Dean. Perhaps there was more friction between them and the man who was my father. Dean didn’t strike me as a very reasonable guy, and I could see him being very jealous over the fact she shared a daughter with someone else – even if he was long gone by now.
Either way, I didn’t relish the thought of having that conversation with Dean, and I still felt the less he knew about me, the better. Though, there were times that I felt he knew more about me than I even knew about myself, as frustrating a thought as that was to deal with.
The room fell mostly silent when Dean walked in. Susan smiled and tried to make small talk with him, but there was still an underlying tension to the way they interacted with each other. I sensed it, and I knew Damon sensed it as well.
He and I exchanged a quick glance behind their backs, but we both turned our attention back to our own thing when Dean turned around.
The entire dynamic of the house had changed when Susan told me the truth. For me, at least. I felt like a burden of secrecy had been lifted, even if I wasn’t the one keeping the secret. There was a part of me that felt more comfortable around Susan, even though nothing had changed except for my own perception of the situation.
Yet, at the same time, I felt that Susan was still just as on edge as she had been before she told me the truth. There was something about her that just made me think she was hiding something, something big that she didn’t want anyone to know about. Maybe she was still hiding who my real father was, and she was afraid Dean was going to be mad if he were to learn the truth.
Damon had already expressed to me that he was afraid Dean was going to break up with Susan again, and how hard that would be for her. Maybe she was afraid if he were to know she was my real mother, that would happen, and she would be launched back into misery.
Either way, I hoped she would feel better eventually.
“I’m going to get going,” I said as I grabbed my backpack off the barstool next to the counter. “I’ll see you all later.”
“Do you want a ride?” Dean asked. He and I left the house about the same time every morning, him going to the board shop down at the
bay, and me on my way to school. But, I avoided spending any time with him I didn’t absolutely have to, and especially one on one time.
“No thanks,” I said with a shake of my head. “I’d rather walk while it’s still nice out.”
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug. “But I don’t see why you’d want to walk when it’s that far.”
“I walk fast,” I said. “It’s pretty nice to have some time to think in the morning. Get ready to face the day with all the other kids and the teachers throwing questions at me.”
He nodded but said nothing, and I hoped my answer satisfied him enough. The fact of the matter was that I would do just about anything to avoid talking to him, even though it was true that I liked to think on my way to school, too. He grabbed the keys of the counter and headed out the door to the garage, but I slipped through the front door and headed up the sidewalk in the opposite direction.
I missed riding to school with Damon, and I hoped he’d get a new bike soon. It was a long way to go alone, and I didn’t have Abby to walk with often anymore, either. She was spending so much of her free time helping her mom pack for their move, her mom was giving her a ride to school most of the time.
Susan had mentioned a couple of times she wanted to purchase a car for Damon and me to use so we didn’t have to borrow her car when there wasn’t another option. I wondered if she was going to do it sooner now that Damon’s bike had been smashed up by whoever it was who broke into the garage. I hoped so, for his sake.
He hated having to walk, and though I knew he had a special fondness for that bike, it didn’t change the fact that he would rather have a car than be forced to walk everywhere.
But, whether she got a new vehicle or not, it didn’t change the fact I was walking today. I’d walk myself to school, then I’d walk myself home after. If I was lucky, I might convince Abby to let me walk home with her first, cutting down on the amount of time I’d have to spend around Dean, but that wasn’t likely with all the packing she had to do.