Guest Blog Post with Suzanna Linton

Susanna J. Linton, author of Willows of Fate, is here chatting about betraying the trust of those we love, and the unintended consequences of it (which aren't always bad).

When We Betray the Trust of Those We Love

Her name was Rhian.

It was the late summer of 2000. I was living with my grandmother in Florida and working my second summer as a pool guard at a hotel/motel.

It was my first job and as simple as pouring lemonade. The hotel allowed the public to swim for a fee of $1.50 per person, so it was my task to take money, make sure everyone signed in, and enforce the rules (no running, no diving, no alcohol, etc). I clocked in using a real punch clock that banged loudly as it punched the time onto my card. It sounded very official and important to me.

Poolside, I wiled away uneventful hours by writing or reading. I listened to Garth Brooks and Shania Twain on my Walkman and watched pelicans fly by. During lunch, I sat with the maids to eat my sandwich and listen to them chatter about their children, husbands, lovers, and mortgages. I turned dark enough to pass as a Native American as one sun-bright day melded into another.

It being my second summer, I felt like a “veteran” pool guard: confident in my routine of taking names, counting money, and telling adults to stay off the rope separating deep end from shallow.

Then, one afternoon, a flame-haired girl flopped down into the chair next to me. Her sudden appearance, disrupting the order of my day, was like an unexpected blast of sea spray in the face.

She introduced herself as Rhian and I would learn later that her full name was “Rhiannon”, which she hated. She lived next door to the hotel and was two years or so younger than me. I can't remember what that first conversation was about but I do remember we hit it off.

My memories of those next weeks are full of her. Sleepovers at her house. Walking on the beach at night. Swimming at the hotel pool. Giggling over and flirting with boys. In my memory, we were inseparable. We both shared a fascination with magic, fantasy, and the occult. We talked about auras and spells. We even went on little adventures, like that time we wandered among the shops near Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine. It was an almost idyllic time.

However, as the sunlit summer slowly wound to its end, storm clouds gathered.

I was attending the nearby high school, about to begin my sophomore year, but my parents wanted me to return to South Carolina. There was a lot of arguing over the phone and crying. I'm sure I talked to Rhian about it; we had no secrets between us.

Then, my parents came down to convince me to return with them. It was too hard to tell them no to their faces. Rhian was devastated. It violated an unspoken trust between us that we would always be there for each other.

The day I left, the sky poured rain. I took a book from my grandmother's that I knew wasn't Rhian's, but I used it as an excuse to beg my parents to take me by Rhian's home. In the book, I slipped a letter explaining why I had to go and I was so very sorry. I still remember the surprised, sorrowful look on her face when I turned up on her doorstep, soaking wet and trying not to cry. My parents were in their car with the engine running, so I only had time to shove the book in her hands and gasp an apology before sprinting back to the car.

I tried writing and calling but the friendship was broken. It would be years later before we reunited on Facebook, but the magic and closeness of that summer is gone. I ask myself, now, if I would have done anything different. And the answer is: I don't think so.

If I hadn't come back to South Carolina, I probably would have ended up going to college in Florida and living there. If I had done that, I wouldn't have met the man who became my husband. I can't imagine a life without him and don't want to.

Sometimes, making a decision for yourself or your loved ones means leaving others behind. To gain one thing sometimes means to lose something else. We don't always mean to betray the trust of those we love--and I loved Rhian in the unabashed, effusive way of a thirteen year old--but life is such a messy, fragile thing. Sometimes, it can't be helped. It's one of the hardest lessons I've ever had to learn.





All her life, Desdemona has seen things others haven’t. Dragons, knights, dwarves, kids with three eyes. Heeding her mother’s advice, she keeps silent about this and struggles through life, pretending everything is normal. The break comes when her father's disappearance drives her into a life of sex and alcoholism. Eventually, she struggles free. She begins to build a life for herself and learns how to ignore the "phantoms".

At her mother’s death, Desdemona returns to a home haunted with memories but she is determined to not be shaken from what little normalcy she has. However, when her brother is murdered and she uncovers a family secret, Desdemona realizes that she may not be insane after all. What she sees may actually be real. And what she sees has begun to tell her to go with them to their world, that she is in danger, and that she has something others would kill for.

Suzanna J. Linton was born in Charleston, SC but grew up in rural Orangeburg County. At age eight, she tried to read The Secret Garden by herself. After following her mother around for a day, asking questions about the Yorkshire accent, she gave up, but that didn't deter her in developing a deep appreciation for books and the worlds to which they open. A few years later, she wrote her first poem, which eventually led her to try writing fiction.

In 2002, she went to the summer program at the SC Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, where she refined her poetry and wrote her first decent short story (before this, she mostly wrote novels along with her poetry). In 2003, Suzanna began attending Francis Marion University, where she graduated with a Bachelor's in English.

Today, she continues to live in South Carolina with her husband and their menagerie of animals.