Jo Roethke

occupation: Owner of the Middle Of

story: Spunky octogenarian Jo's Nowhere Island High School sweetheart, Peter Lively, graduated the year before she did. He took work on a fishing boat with every intention of saving for an engagement, a wedding and a modest home while she finished school. Fate had other intentions. Jo discovered that she was pregnant on the same blustery winter day that the fishing boat Peter was working on capsized, killing him and two others.

Neither her parents nor the Livelys reacted well when her belly became too obvious a thing to keep hidden, anymore. The Roethkes insisted that she give the child up for adoption and then finish school. The Livelys refused to acknowledge the child as their son's, accusing Jo of loose and unfaithful behavior. She gave the child -- a son -- the name Daniel and his father's surname when he was born; a sentimental gesture and a vindictive one. She also kept him.

An uncle on her father's side of the family gave her a job as a maid at the Middle Of so that she could support herself and Daniel. Jo never finished school. She worked six nights a week, cleaning up, then supervising, then managing and finally upon her uncle's death, owning the inn and bar. Assuming that her long work hours to provide for Daniel and that he had no father figure were the reasons for the mildly strange behaviors he began to exhibit as he became a teenager and then a young adult, she never thought to have him evaluated for mental illness. Mental illness wasn't something people talked about, then, and if they did it was in hushed whispers of gossip. Daniel's behaviors escalated. The local paper began covering what law enforcement was calling "a rash of brutal sexual assaults and murders."

It wasn't until a young Suquamish woman showed up at the Middle Of with a screaming newborn in her arms, tears in her eyes and blood on her dress that she realized the error in judgment any mother would make.

"Your son..." the young woman began. "Your son has done this to me. Please. I can't..." How could she? How could she keep a living reminder of the abhorrence that was committed against her? And how could Jo question her claim? She refused to do to another what the Livelys had done to her. The infant's eyes were a rich, brilliant blue-green, just like Daniel's. Just like Peter's. She ushered them both inside. She called the local doctor.

She turned Daniel in to the authorities that very night. The next morning, she found the young woman gone... and herself caretaker of a little girl. She gave her the name Saleh, and spared her the Lively surname, knowing that the Monster of Nowhere Island would become local horror story. Saleh would be a Roethke.

Saleh's mother wasn't Daniel's only victim to come to Jo. Shortly after Daniel was arrested, there was another. She was blonde, and despite claiming to be three months with child, obviously intoxicated. When she tried to shake Jo down for hush money, she was told with a decidedly indignant glare that there would be no hushing. For years, she forbade her daughter, Clio, from having anything to do with the Roethkes, and did everything she could to make life difficult for them. Her vitriolic efforts to distance Clio from Jo and Saleh only sent her careening toward them, and as the girls came of high school age, Clio spent more time in Jo's home than she did in her mother's. "Family," Jo would say, "... is family, no matter how it comes about."

That said, she won't discuss her son at much length with his illegitimate daughters or anyone else, for that matter. She has made the three hour drive northwest to maximum security Clallam County Corrections Center to visit him on his birthday every year for over a quarter of a century, always quietly and alone, calling it her "yearly mourning ritual." Saleh and Clio assume that it's a hokey superstitious thing that she picked up from the other oddball local elders and have no idea that Jo has any contact with Daniel.

These days, Jo lives a slow-paced, small town life... for the most part. She turned management of the Middle Of over to Saleh several years ago, and aside from the occasional visit to the bar, is usually found at the singular church on the island or the town hall, where she serves on the council.

Her service to the council has required her to re-think her stance on hushing.

face claim: Angela Lansbury

aol/aim sn: None, NPC

#local #human #NPC #female #council