#merrockbio

full biography / background

triggering / sensitive content warning: topics.

Lilah was born and raised in Merrock for most of her life. She lived mostly with her mother, but her father always made time for her and was an active presence in her life. When she was little, she was shy and spent most of her time coloring or drawing pictures instead of running around the playground and making new friends. Her grades were decent, but nothing that was overly exciting other than her reading and art skills. From a young age, she was reading well above her grade level, and the librarian would keep putting harder books in her hands to encourage her to continue to grow her love for disappearing into the world of books. 

It was this that helped fuel her creativity, and she would often draw what she would read about. Her room was full of sketches of animals and scenery from the books she would read over and over again. By the time she was in middle school, she had moved from loose paper to sketch books, and it wasn't uncommon to see her working away at one even when she was on the sidelines for whatever sport she had been put into to try to encourage friendships. She was never someone without friends, but she was selective over who she wanted to surround herself with. 

High School wasn't much different. Most of her time was spent drawing, but her art teacher also encouraged her to try other mediums of expressing her creativity after a few weeks of shared frustration with the lack of assignments turned in because Lilah's sketches weren't where she wanted them to be. She never wanted to stick with only one creative pursuit, but drawing had always been what she focused on. Painting was a hobby she had when she was little, but she found her love for it when she returned to it as a teenager. She would come into school early and stay late working on pieces in the art room. Graduation was coming, and most of her friends had their acceptance letters to college. Lilah had missed the deadlines after being unable to decide where she might want to go or what she might want to pursue. It was a shock to everyone, but she tried to play it off and pretend like she wanted to take a year off. 

The year turned into more than one, and she found a job working as a cashier to pass the time. She kept her hobbies up, but eventually she grew tired of answering the same questions about what she was doing with her life and made the decision to leave Merrock. She moved to New York City in January of 2020. She stayed with roommates and found a job working at a small boutique. She tried to stick with her creative hobbies while she was there, but she found it overwhelming when she didn't have enough space and privacy for her painting. She lived there for four years before returning to Merrock. 

full biography / background

triggering / sensitive content warning: none.

zeina petra has never been particularly good at staying where she’s expected to stay. born and raised in miami, zei grew up learning early that home wasn’t always synonymous with safe, and she got very good at making the best of whatever situation she found herself in. there were plenty of things about her childhood and home life that she simply doesn’t talk about, not because she’s ashamed of them, exactly, but because she’s never been interested in making her pain somebody else’s dinner conversation. if anything, zei became the sort of person who could walk into a room carrying the weight of the world and somehow leave everyone else laughing five minutes later.

she spent most of her twenties in miami, picking up whatever work paid the bills and collecting people along the way. her father continued to be a mystery to her and her mother continued to physically exist while being mentally elsewhere. but zei has always been something of a wanderer, even when she technically had nowhere else to go. she gained many side jobs by doing this, so she’s got quite a list of things she’s done. somewhere along the way if life she picked up art.

full biography / background

triggering / sensitive content warning: mentions of parental death, emotional parental neglect.

Chloe Sage Norris was born on a summer night during June, in a town called Alexandria, Virginia. The town is nestled somewhere along the Potomac river and would never be anything other than a location on her birth certificate. She came into the world to two parents who couldn't wait to welcome their daughter. However, she never got a chance to know her mother as she died due to complications during childbirth. Her father might not have blamed Chloe for her mother's death but she could see something in his eyes as she grew to look more and more like the woman she saw in photographs. There was a sadness, a longing and an expectation. Almost like he was waiting to see if she would be worth the sacrifice. She could feel that pressure long before she could put into words what it was. If it weren't for her brother, Henry, she might have succumbed to it entirely. It was to his care that she was most frequently left with while her father pulled doubles to pay for medical bills and to keep food on the table for his two children. Her brother was the one she sat at the dining room table with while she did her homework, the one who packed her lunch and tucked her into bed. Chloe's father tried but there was always distance there.

When Chloe was around eight years old, her family moved to the city of Berkeley, California as her father got a new job as a college professor. Chloe took solace in school – the hours away from a home that permanently felt sad. That never changed even if her reasoning did. Education offered her a chance to prove herself. That she was worth the sacrifice her mother made for her. She pushed herself to excel academically. Nothing but the best was good enough for her. No one was harder on Chloe than herself and it started to show. Chloe sacrificed a social life and those teen experiences that she saw her peers enjoying. That could all wait, she decided early on, even if she wavered a couple of times. But it was worth it when a combination of stellar grades and her performance on her SATs earned her a partial academic scholarship to Cornell University. She saw the pride on her father's face when she told him, even if he told her that going to school in Berkeley was a more practical choice. If only he knew the real power he'd had over her growing up, how his lack of doting had created this tightly wound person fearing his disapproval. Chloe didn't care about his opinion on this particular matter. She would deal with the consequences of loans later. She knew that she wanted to go to an out-of-state school more than she wanted anything else. So she went and got a real taste of freedom.

But college was like a blur – she studied and she studied, exams, extra work, and before long she graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a degree in environment and sustainability. It wasn't long before she found herself applying to graduate school in New York City. Her master's was in her grasp. Her aptitude for collaboration and passion for the environment impressed her professors. But more importantly, the progress reports she sent back to her father were what really mattered. The praise, the heralding of her having a bright future. It was all she could have hoped for. But still, she felt like something was missing.

She didn't count on meeting Barry. He was a legacy from old money – legal and political connections in Chicago – studying law at Columbia and had hopes of a political future. He had big dreams, bigger than she had ever dared to dream. It was inspiring and being around him made her want to be better. Their relationship was one of mutual encouragement and lofty ambitions. They both knew what they wanted and their visions aligned. They wanted the same things. And he wanted her. They were still dating by the time she finished her program at Columbia and he asked her to stay with him while he finished school. She happily agreed and she spent a year bouncing between odd jobs before securing a position at Brown and Caldwell. She worked hard. She went above and beyond to prove that she was capable and that she had something that made her stand out from the other employees hoping to move ahead. It took up more time than she thought it would but she shined professionally.

Chloe's relationship with Barry was much like it always was. He continued law school at Columbia and both of their demanding schedules didn’t leave much time for one another, but they figured that it was only temporary. She was comfortable even as the passion she once felt dimmed. It seemed like a side effect of getting older and being with him for three, four and then five years. He proposed on their five year anniversary. Of course, she accepted because that's what you're supposed to do after all that time, right? It only took a few weeks before the excitement started to wane. She started thinking about the life she would have with Barry and she felt… unsure. She couldn't put it into words but she wasn’t rushing to plan her dream wedding. She kept claiming work was the reason, which was half the truth. The engineering firm was planning to expand and she hoped that it would lead to a promotion she had been working towards for years.

Spoiler alert: she didn't get the promotion. Feeling defeated with her career and the lack of passion in her relationship, she decided she needed space from The Big Apple. She told Barry that she had gotten the job, telling him that the job was out-of-state, making up the little lie so she could get out of the city. Barry, equally as ambitious as she was, understood what it would mean for her. They agreed to break off the engagement, looking at the separation as a chance to find themselves again. She felt a sense of relief at the distance; at the chance to figure out what went wrong and why her engagement ring didn't feel the way she thought it would.

Not wanting to hear those four words ‘I told you so’ from her father, she knew deep down that she couldn’t go back home until she figured out her next steps in life. After searching online for jobs that suited her interests, she stumbled upon The Vinyl Hub. She thought the timing worked out perfectly and she jumped at the opportunity, finding housing in a Brownstone within Merrock's historical downtown. Moving to Merrock was the first time she wasn't reliant on anyone else but herself and she welcomed the independence, despite the adjustment. It was the first time she felt truly in control of her own life.

full biography / background

triggering / sensitive content warning: mentions of pregnancy, childhood cancer, death, miscarriage.

Meet Libby or, if you’re one of her mothers, Elizabeth Marie Stewart (and she usually doesn’t tell people what her full first name is). She was born and raised in Thomasville, Georgia, and had a modest, middle class upbringing. Her mother, Daisy Stewart, is a school teacher while her other mother, Robin Stewart, is a bakery owner. The Stewarts are your typical small town family, who have been the owners of the town’s quintessential bakery since Robin’s family first got there in the 1950s. She is the second oldest of the Stewart clan. When she was younger, Libby always had a vision of herself being something of a role model for her younger siblings, but well, that was probably not the best idea. As she got older, it became obvious that she wasn’t the kind of older sibling that the younger ones should be looking up to. Which is mostly just a really nice way of saying she was a complete handful. It was almost as if she had made it her life’s mission to run her parents crazy when she was growing up. They did everything they could to try to keep her in line, but the fact of the matter is that, while she always respected her parents (even though it didn’t always seem like she did), no one could ever make Libby do something she didn’t want to.

From the time she was a little girl, Libby has known who she was and what she wanted to be when she grew up. One day, she was going to be an interior designer, but not just any designer. She didn’t want to work for a firm or a company, she wanted to be her own boss. She wanted to be like those designers on HGTV with their own businesses. She set that goal for herself as a part of her ten year plan and set her eyes on SCAD so that she could make her dream a reality. When Libby gets her heart set on something, she’ll do anything to get it. That was the case with Lincoln Scott, the boy whose name was once scribbled on her notebooks with hearts drawn around it. She liked him a lot, like, a lot a lot. They had been best friends since they were toddlers and over time, she had grown feelings for him. Luckily for her, he felt the same way. He was her first serious boyfriend, and because she could recount her grandparents’ love story as if she were there 80 years ago, she had ridiculous expectations for love. She believed in love at first sight, and she believed in soulmates, and she believed that her very first boyfriend could be the one.

He ended up being the one that knocked her up during her junior year of high school, which was most definitely not a part of the ten year plan. She was seventeen and pregnant and scared, but family was important to the Stewarts and important to Libby. And though there had been options dancing through her mind, they were nothing more than fleeting thoughts because when her eyes saw the sonogram for the first time, she knew she wanted to be a mother. Nine months later, Freida Rose Scott was born into the world to two teenage lovers with plans of graduating and marrying after high school. With a baby, going to college wasn’t an option for Libby, and while she’ll never outwardly admit it, she felt that the decision was made for her and that she didn’t necessarily have a choice in the matter. And so it goes, Libby married her high school sweetheart straight out of high school (while keeping her last name), moved into a house with a white picket fence, got a permanent job at her family’s bakery and in turn pushed aside her dream of becoming an interior designer, and raised her baby. However, that all changed during her twenty first year of life. When she should’ve been going out for her first legal drink, her husband and family spent their months in hospital rooms and waiting rooms. Their baby girl had been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia.

They spent that year trying to find treatments, trials, and medicines that would cure their daughter. Nothing seemed to work. During that year, they spent all of their time making sure their baby girl got to still live the childhood she deserved. A year or so after getting the diagnosis, Freida passed away in her sleep. The Stewart-Scott family was rocked to the core, none more so than Libby herself. Freida was literally Libby’s entire world, and there was no denying that. She took one look at that little girl and suddenly everything changed. Libby was willing to do whatever it took to give her daughter the very best life she could give her, and would’ve done anything she could to protect her. Her entire life changed after her daughter died and she was lost. Over the next few months after Freida’s death, the Stewart-Scott family had to find a new normal. With their daughter gone, they began to feel a strain on their marriage. That only continued to shift from a lax rubber band to a tightened rope around her hands when Lincoln told her that he wanted to have another child. They struggled a lot within their marriage during that time, but she felt they’d get through it. At the age of twenty three, she suffered a miscarriage and made the decision to leave Thomasville for good. The place held nothing but heartbreak for her.

Leaving her old life behind, she went off on her own with her savings and eventually found her way to Boston, Massachusetts. There, she enrolled at MASSArt where she earned a bachelor’s degree in fibers. With her background in fabrics and her passion for interior designing, she found herself employed, working for a company that staged open houses for homes that were on sale. It was only a year before the company called her about a job in Merrock, Maine. It really hadn’t been her intention to stay in the small town but alas, she did. She moved in with someone off a Craigslist ad, and got a job working at Polished Brass Market as an antique picker.

Though, it didn’t take long for her past to catch up with her because before she knew it, her estranged husband eventually tracked her down in Merrock. After having to tear down the guard she had built up so fiercely, Libby had to face her grief head on and managed to let go of all the hurt she was carrying. And to her surprise, she ended up reconciling with her estranged husband in the process. Feeling like the pieces of her life were finally falling into place and putting her back together, Libby finally decided to chase her dream of becoming an interior designer. Wanting to dip her toes back into the real estate world, she left her job as an antique picker and accepted an offer from Bardales Inc. to become a home stager, making their properties attractive to potential buyers through her skills as an interior stylist. As she gained connections and experience during her time with Bardales Inc., Libby took a leap of faith that led to the founding of her creative studio -- Designed by Libby Stewart. Her studio is recognized for its body of well-designed residential and commercial work, valuing high-end craftsmanship, detail, and thoughtful, enduring design. It’s the one place that brings her true peace when she needs it the most and loves being there.

full biography / background

triggering / sensitive content warning: car accident, death, sibling death.

They didn’t have a lot of money growing up. They didn’t have much of anything more than a two bedroom house, a used car, and a vegetable garden. Delilah, known affectionately as Dilly by all those she loved, felt it like a heavy hand on her shoulder. A hand that, in a different life, might have belonged to her father. He followed a wayward wind south when Dilly’s little brother was barely two. That’s how her mother put it, and for all Dilly cares he’s still chasing that wind. Her family downsized after that, any financial comfort that she knew was a memory bleached by time. 

And yet, it was a happy childhood. She lived in her older sister Darcie’s hand-me-downs and she cut out grocery store coupons on Sunday morning while watching cartoons. She slept in the renovated attic of their little home with her older sister and the two bonded tightly. She thrived as the slightly overlooked middle child. She didn’t feel the need to be as practical or hardworking as Darcie, and she wasn’t coddled like her little brother. She was a goofy kid, a bit mischievous and with a strong moral compass. She didn’t enjoy her education, though she was able to struggle through on passing grades. She loved a good hike, and a night out during the summer. Sometimes she liked a good risk too. Her mother wouldn’t call her rebellious, but there was a night or two that ended in some unsanctioned fun. 

Dilly was always good with her hands. Whether she was doodling, painting, or gardening she was most at peace when her hands were occupied. Pottery was something she stumbled into during her late teens. It was a challenge learning how to work clay, and it tested her patience at times, but the result was often something that made her heart sing. She scraped together enough money to take classes and worked with connections to get a mentorship by a potter an hour north. 

After high school, she stayed home. She loved Merrock, she loved the community, and she didn’t want to make a life chasing wind like her father. So she put down roots. She worked every odd job under the sun and she saved up money. At the busiest seasons she’d hold down three jobs at a time and stumble back to bed exhausted. She didn’t have a passion for anything but pottery, and year and year she grew closer to her goal of opening a shop. Her family grew more stable too, more streams of income and savings to anchor them in the world. Vacations became an option for the first time. At twenty-six, she moved into her own apartment and three years later she bought a small space in the hideaway market to open Earth & Stone. Her shop sold handmade pieces and she hosted classes two nights a week to teach others. 

Dilly’s love life was chaotic. Girlfriends came and went and then returned like a bad case of the hiccups. Her sister’s was not so much. But then, Darcie was a single mother and she raised her son with precision. She could wrangle any problem into submission with her Type A personality, motherhood included. Darcie’s son was two the summer Dilly got a little too drunk after a bad break-up. A friend called Dilly’s brother to come pick her up, but it was Darcie that got in the car that night. And it was Darcie who totaled her car. It was Darcie they laid to rest. 

full biography / background

triggering / sensitive content warning: adoption, cancer, death.

Six months after his birth, Matthew was adopted by Damien and Antonia Ames, anything that came before completely forgotten by most. They had been struggling to conceive and wanted to find a way forward at that point in their lives; Matthew was that way forward. In the future, things would change, but for several years, it was just them and him —- the perfect upbringing in the small coastal town of Merrock, Maine. He was eventually joined by two younger siblings, making the Ames family complete.

It became apparent rather quickly as Matthew grew, that he was curious about the world around him. Nature became a prominent feature. By the age of ten, he was spending hours and hours exploring the countryside and the coast of Merrock, a newly obtained camera clutched tightly in his hands. It was quite obvious where it was going even then. During high school, he started his own photography club, which turned out quite popular in the end. He was the chief photographer for the school newspaper and would often find stories before the student “reporters” even did. At the time, he was convinced it was his calling, but in the end, he chose to focus on the photography side of things and made his way to college in New York.

That was the only time he left Merrock. Three years were spent in the Big Apple, where he met his wife-to-be, Amy. He worked several jobs, spent every second of his free time taking photos, and he fell in love. His time away was worth it as far as he was concerned. But he came home again pretty quickly and she came with him. By the time they were both twenty-three, they were married out in the countryside. An idyllic wedding with flowers and lace absolutely everywhere, rose petals floating on the breeze, and the horses that she loved so much featuring prominently.

The age of twenty-five brought new challenges. A baby. Their son. Fatherhood came as a shock, but he embraced it like he had everything else in his life. A year after that they took over Gull’s Landing, another fresh start, another exciting way forward. Amy adored it, taking time to make each room perfect and unique; Matthew adorned the walls with photos he’d taken out in the countryside and at the coast that lay before them. It became a real gem, somewhere everyone wanted to stay when they were visiting town. The years that followed were dedicated to raising their son and running the B&B. There wasn’t time for much else.

It wasn’t until 2015 that things took a dramatic turn. A diagnosis too late and three months of hell. Amy was diagnosed with stage four cancer in March and passed away in early July. It left both Matt and his son devastated, and for almost a year, the B&B began to slide slowly downhill

full biography / background

triggering / sensitive content warning: car accident.

Theodore Joseph Dearborn was born to a mother and father on February 18, 1980. He is the eldest of 4 children, including younger brother Jason and younger siblings. From a young age, he realized his family was not like others. They made money (or so he thought)  and they absolutely had to show that to the rest of the world. Whether it was having the fanciest car, or the biggest house, or by going to the most expensive school, the Dearborn Family had to let everyone know who they were. He was a happy child, getting everything he ever wanted, including a little brother to play with. He was the best big brother, though he might have been a bit overprotective of his siblings. Something he tends to be like even now.

Growing up Theo played sports and was always popular, playing soccer for the local high school and dated the most popular girl. Despite not actually having money, no one outside the home would know it; and no one would know they didn't either. He had a lot of friends then and he still talks to and hangs out with plenty of them to this day. He was and still is a likable guy. 

While in school he witnessed a bad car accident which then resulted in the car bursting into flames. After calling emergency services, he watched as the firefighters handled the scene and put out the flames and saved the passengers. From that moment on, he realized he wanted to do the same. Fight fires and save people.

His parents were against this and wanted him to become a doctor or lawyer. However Theo rebelled and as soon as he turned 18, he went to college and then straight to the Fire Academy. He did not keep in close contact with his family while in college and then the academy, opting to travel out of state for schooling. He is currently a captain at the Merrock Fire Department and has worked through the ranks over the years.

full biography / background

triggering / sensitive content warning: military, 9/11, ptsd, depression, mental health.

Jason Everett Dearborn was born not long after the fourth of July in 1983 -- second born to the Clark and Nicolette Dearborn, and forever lording it over everyone's head that the fireworks that light up the sky on Independence Day are a celebration for his birthday. He was a happy baby, with round cheeks and bright eyes, a perfect tag-along to older brother Theodore during his younger years, before he understood the ins and outs of his tumultuous family and began to realize what an afterthought he was to his mother, and how much pressure would be put on him by his father.

Childhood was marked by Sunday morning church appearances with a pressed white shirt and long lectures by his father about how to be good, learning skills he didn't care to learn and being made to feel lesser for wanting to spend his time reading a nature book or taking a long hike by the lake. Add to that a younger brother born from an affair and a younger sister born to fix all the issues, and things began to get complicated really fast, with the once well behaved young boy rebelling in his teenage years. He played sports, but never very long -- he lost interest in football early on, and wouldn't really cut it with wrestling (pulling his opponent's hair a little too hard when he got mad got him removed from the match, and the team), and he couldn't compete with his high school rival when it came to soccer. He did well with art, dabbled in chorus, and excelled in biology, where he could learn about plans, and take that knowledge home to start a garden. But he knew early on that college wasn't going to be for him. The party scene, sure, Jason was frequently found at the hangout in the woods, a worn path from his backyard to the firepit evident even years later, but… not so much the structured learning when he had no path to follow.

Enlisting in the military ticked off many boxes for Jace: an escape from his parents and small town life, finding some sort of purpose for himself, and making his father proud (begrudgingly). He excelled at basic training, always pushing himself to beat out the others, do a little better than the person before him, and he felt like ha had finally made something of himself. Then 9/11 happened. Jason was put into active duty -- six years of it. He saw and did things that he can't unsee or undo for those six years: he was injured twice, lost more friends than he could count, lost touch with his family, and sent home with the recommendation for a purple heart, which still sits in a box under his bed, untouched.

At his first opportunity to get out, he did. He tried to go home, rolling to a stop at that house in the suburbs, but realized that he didn't want to be there. He purchased a camper -- named Annabelle Lee -- and hooked it to the hitch of his Jeep and left. He didn't say hello, he didn't say goodbye. He jut left. The letter his parents received let them know that he was no longer active duty, had left the military, but he didn't tell them where he was, where he was going, what his plans were. Partially because he didn't know. Mostly because he didn't care.

The open road was fun, getting to see the country that he had spent so many years defending, but it was also a dangerous place for a man to be when he was fighting battles. Jason dealt with PTSD, anxiety, depression, on top of lasting health impacts, like the tinnitus in his ear, the creaky knee that probably should have landed him in physical therapy. He found himself doing therapy online, set up in his camper with a laptop, talking to someone who could help him, who encouraged him to find a steady job, to settle down somewhere. He lucked out. An ad for a groundskeeper at one of the parks in Yellowstone. Slowly, Jason learned the ins and outs, worked hard and used his military background to help enroll in Montana State University, where he began to take every class and course that he could involving the environment, agriculture, forestry, anything that would help get him to where he wanted to be. He picked up a side job as a volunteer firefighter after completing training, helping out with wildfires primarily, applying his knowledge of the environment around them to help. And after graduating in May of 2014, finishing all of the courses and training that he needed, Jason became a state park ranger in January of 2015.

He spent some very good years out west, living in his camper, learning the job inside and outside, growing as a person. He made friends with his fellow rangers, with long term campers, he kept on top of his therapy (by some small miracle), continued fighting wildfires, took classes and courses and… somehow found himself on the phone on the cusp of his fortieth birthday with the park manager in Merrock, Maine, asking if they had any positions available. It moved pretty qucikly after that, packing up Annabelle Lee, driving across the country while speaking to a real estate agent about a plot of land he had his eye on, and finally… coming home.