The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

My entire life, I thought my mom was the most honest and the most truthful person I knew. It was her motto 'I will always tell you the truth' that lead to me being open and honest with her in return. Seeing him though, live and in the flesh jolted me wide awake, it was as if I had been tossed into the great Pacific Ocean in the dead of Oregon winter. It was a wake up call, that she had lied or maybe she thought he had died… Maybe it was his lie that fueled the truth that fell so easily from her lips. It didn't matter though, he was alive and he was just five feet away from me, admiring my Sally.

"So, that's happening." Braden whispered to Thomas as she watched the man walk around the Mustang, a familiar smile on his lips as he admired the car. "He looks like Hayes when he's just finished washing and waxing his car. It's so eerie."

"Hush." Thomas shook his head slowly as he sat back down on the picnic table, his hands tensing and relaxing as he locked eyes with his older brother. "Don't even think about it Hayes."

"Shut up Matty." Abel moved towards his brother, holding the cup of ice water above his head, threatening to tip it over at any given second. "You look a little hot there, not used to the California sun just yet huh?"

"Not yet." He swatted the cup from his brother's hand, stopping mid-laugh as he watched it land on his best friend. "Oh, now you went and did it."

"I'll kill ya." She growled as she reached forward and pinched Abel's arm. "It feels good but still, not nice to toss ice water on a woman."

"This is a nice car, the nicest Mustang that's come through this place." He looked at the trio. "Who does it belong to? I'm Jax by the way."

"Matthew, this is my brother Hayes and our friend Bray." Thomas smiled. "That's my car, my brother drives a weak ass Camaro, not even vintage muscle either. I'm talking a new era Chevy, he's a punk."

Abel rolled his eyes. "I have an old school Camaro, just not with me. I'm in the Marines and well, I left the sunday car home and got an every occasion car." He chuckled. "You see anything wrong with this car though. He swears he heard a knocking but I think it was all in his imagination."

"He knows nothing about cars." The younger brother shook his head. "I'm not trusting him to tell me there's nothing wrong."

"Well, I'm an okay mechanic." Jax chuckled. "I don't see or hear anything wrong with this car. It sounds good and from the short drive to the bay, she runs just as good as she looks. I noticed the plates though, not from here."

"Just an okay mechanic." Braden smirked. "I guess your looks make up for the okay part…"

"Excuse her, she has tourettes and can't help the shit that comes from her mouth." Abel covered the brunette's mouth. "How much do we owe you for taking a look at the car? You've saved us a bunch, we're passing through town. Thought it'd be fun to stay in a place called Charming until we got here and figured out there's not actually a damn thing to do in this place."

"Not a penny." He shook his head slowly. "Didn't do any work so you don't owe us any money. You're like every other tourist have been tricked by this town. We have some shit but not much. The biggest attraction is the MC, I guess we're of interest to outsiders for some reason." He gestured towards the line of bikes. "Don't know why but we are."

"Awesome." Bray smiled at the man. "So, which one is your bike and are you like a ranked member and how does that work exactly? How does one become president?"

"You start off as a hang around, meet members and hope someone likes you enough to take you under his wing as a prospect, you put in the grunt work for a year and you're a patched member, if the table decides that you are. Then you just work your way up, sometimes you don't make it far and sometimes you do but it'll take time." Jax smiled at the brunette. "I'm the president of SAMCRO, Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original. My dad and a few others founded the club, so it was only right that I took the gavel."

"That's pretty cool." Abel nodded his head and smiled. "Our dad is a weekend rider, he loves a Harley but he's not cut out for those over there. We give him shit because he looks like a dork when he rides but he says it's fun and it's a sense of freedom that we all need to try. I personally like flying helicopters to get that sense of freedom and clearing of my mind."

"I'm the nerd of the family, I like to write." Thomas shrugged his shoulders and smiled as he leaned against his best friend. "Get a lot of shit for it since it's not a guy thing. I like to think I'm a decent writer though."

"He's selling himself short." The taller blonde rolled his eyes. "He's an amazing writer. He even landed a few scholarships for it. He goes to school in the fall. Stop us at anytime, before we bore you to death with our life stories."

"Nah, it's cool." Jax nodded slowly and smiled. "Don't have many guys your age that are doing shit in life. We get the assholes who wanna join the club thinking they get to raise hell, when we actually just play poker and have parties on weekends."

"I'd love to go to a party." Bray smiled at Thomas. "I'm thinking we should stick around long enough to see what a SAMCRO party has to offer and all that. It could be inspiration for your next story Matty."

"Yeah, you should." Jax shrugged as he looked at the trio before looking at Abel carefully. "You remind me of someone."

"Well, I'm told I'm pretty much identical to some celebrity, like a younger more handsome Brad Pitt but I don't agree because I don't look like him at all." Abel laughed and shook his head. "Every white boy with blonde hair and blue eyes look the same."

"We should get going." Thomas nodded slowly. "Thanks again man. I'm just super cautious with Sally and I'd hate it if anything serious put her out of commission for longer than a few days. We'll see you around, maybe at that party before we leave. Later."

.

.

"I can't believe he's alive…" Abel looked at Thomas and sighed before passing him the cigarette. "This entire time we were told he was dead. We came here chasing after a ghost and he's not so much a ghost at all. Should we tell mom about him? Call her up and let her know that she literally isn't technically divorced from a dead man. Right?"

"I'd love to see that reaction." Braden looked down at the boys before holding out two beers. "I can see Wendy having a damn fit over that. She'd fly out here and kick that man's ass. I just know so."

Thomas nodded slowly. "When her and Uncle Nero left town with us, they were going on word from Jax, telling them that they needed to get us out of here, that we weren't safe in Charming anymore… Maybe she had gotten word that he died or he just wanted to be dead to her and to us."

"But our mom, not our current mom. Our other mom, Tara, she was killed. Mom told us that and that has to be true otherwise we wouldn't be with mom now." Abel groaned as he popped the top of his beer. "It's too much to process right now. I can't deal with this shit. I came here for ghost stories, not for our entire lives to be flipped upside down and for us to have even more fucking questions."

"It's too much to take in." She shook her head slowly as she sipped her soda. "I so don't envy you guys right now. What's our next move though? Stick around a bit and see what else we can dig up?"

"I guess we find their library and do some more research." Thomas nodded slowly. "See what we can find on Charming that the internet wouldn't know. A small town like this has to have secrets just like in Bandon, with all of those weird attacks no one knew about."

"Well, to be fair we didn't have internet there for a long time." Abel shrugged his shoulders as he looked at his brother and nodded slowly. "We have to figure out how Tara was killed and who killed her. I also want to see if Gemma is still around here. I know Unser has kicked the bucket, he was on his way out when I was like five. I still can't believe Chibs is still around, he was the guy with the accent at the lot."

"I don't know what gave that away, his accent or the fact he introduced himself as Chibs or maybe even the name on his shirt." She smirked at Abel. "Come on then, off to the local library we go. Let's not look so suspicious when we go though."

"Yes, let's wander forward and find a library." He shook his head slowly. "Let's first if all google it if anything then if it comes up empty then we can ask the front desk."

"What's her last name anyways?" Thomas looked at his older brother. "Tara's last name, what is it?"

"I don't really remember, it starts with a K, I remember that much and she was a doctor." Abel shrugged as he finished off his beer and set the bottle in the black wastebasket beside the queen sized bed. "I think it was like Knowles or something. I wanna say Knowles."

"Dr. Tara Knowles?" Bray looked up from her phone and smiled. "Well, she's not alive but she is buried not too far away from where we're at in the cemetery. That's not a bad thing, at least she's somewhere nice. We should put flowers on her headstone."

"Don't be suspicious she said, let's put flowers on a headstone she said." Thomas mumbled as he rested his chin on top of the brunette's head. "We're not putting flowers, we'll walk through the cemetery and pay our respects but no decorating. We have no ties to this town remember? We're just passing through."

SOA

"We're looking for Tellers." Abel mumbled as they started through the cemetery. It had been a full day of researching and coming up empty. Now that they had exhausted their available resources, they wanted to take things a step further. See just who was left of their family. "And Knowles."

"I found a Knowles." Thomas stopped in front of a headstone. "Tara Knowles…"

"I found two Tellers." Braden sighed. "Thomas Teller and there's a JT Teller, he's more towards where the war guys are buried. I didn't know you were named after anyone T."

"I think it was an uncle or something." Abel shrugged as he started pushing the pair towards the line of trees. "I hear bikes coming and we can just look like we're taking pictures in front of the redwoods or something."

"Sharpshooter ears." She shook her head as she rested against the tree and held up a camera. "At least take some pictures. I want a few good shots for my blog."

"I think you should relax a bit." Thomas looked at his older brother and nodded slowly. "We can get out of here man, I know it can't be easy for you to be in this place. You have memories of this place. I don't have any. If it gets to be too much, let me know Abe."

"It's fine, I'm fine." Abel nodded slowly, his eyes scanning the property before landing back onto his brother and smiling. "Let's get out of here though, I need to get a damn nap."

"Your fine ass dad is walking this way." Braden smirked at her friends before shrugging her shoulders. "I'm trying to just be your stepmom so don't embarrass me or anything."

"This is really why you shouldn't have a female as a best friend T." The older blonde shook his head again. "They all secretly wanna fuck your dad."

"I'm not even being secretive about it." The brunette shook her head and smiled. "I'm letting you know now. Loud and clear, he could get it six ways from Sunday."

"Jesus." Thomas clamped a hand over the woman's mouth and laughed. "I don't wanna hear it. Keep your perverted fantasies to yourself. Damn it."

"Hayes, Matty." Jax looked at the trio. "Bray, right?"

"Hey." Abel looked at Jax and nodded. "What's up? You following us or something?"

"Nah, nah." Jax shook his head and chuckled. "We roll through to pay respects to fallen brothers and loved ones." He gestured towards he headstones. "What are you guys doing in the cemetery of all places?"

"Wandering freely and decided these redwoods on the edge of the property line were a nice backdrop for taking pictures." Bray held up her camera and nodded. "Plus my grandpa always told me that I should explore cemeteries because I never know if I have family in far off places but sadly we're not related to anyone in this place."

"She's weird, we are aware." Thomas nodded slowly and smiled. "It was good running into you again man. We're heading out though, gotta see what else we can get into before we head to the next town."

"Don't forget about the party." Jax nodded. "We gotta show you that there's something in this place."

"We will be there." He nodded and shrugged. "Have to have one cool memory before we leave a town named Charming."

Abel shrugged as he shifted uneasily. "How dangerous is your club? Like is it family friendly? I've always been curious about motorcycle clubs. Lot of my brothers in the Marines always talked about joining up and shit."

"Some of our shit is family friendly. I definitely wouldn't bring kids to a clubhouse party though." Jax chuckled. "We do fundraisers and shit like that. For a long time though, it wasn't safe for us to have families at all." He shrugged. "We've gotten better though."

"Yo, please tell me you don't have any kids!" Bray looked at the man. "I'll be so sad."

"I got two little girls." Jax nodded. "I am sorry to disappoint you."

"We gotta get going." Abel nodded. "Thanks though. I'll keep that in mind if I ever look into a MC. Make sure that it's kid friendly." He started to walk away before glancing back.

"Thanks man." Thomas smiled as he grabbed Bray's hand. "So sorry to disappoint you. At least you can move on from your crush."

"Yeah." Bray nodded. "But what about you?"

"Not worried about myself, I'm worried about my brother." He nodded. "He just shut down and when he does that. It's no good at all… We'll pull him up though. We always do."

Thank you, thank you all for so much for the support on the first chapter. I'm glad that you're here for a new adventure with me. I hope you all find a character to love and a character to hate. Lol I hope you enjoyed this update and I'll talk to you next time but if you ever have any questions, feel free to PM, send an ask over on Tumblr, same name as my author's name on here.