"c r i m e - t i m e" the unravel/Chapter 8: by- tomevans:

t h e u n r a v e l/ CHAPTER 8eight:

1982- Bristol, Tennessee:

David and Lydia Parkhurst were married in a park-Wedding. There's a beautiful State Park in Bristol- with a cozy cabin. With only a handful of guests- David & a pregnant Lydia tied the knot. It was a spring time wedding with flowers beginning to bloom and warm winds caressing the newlyweds as they exited the reception in a convertible, headed for no-where- fast...........

Lydia and David's marriage would last only three years and after the birth of their son-Dylan, and their lovely daughter-Anna Marie, his cracks in the ceiling had already began to show. He was an abusive man and even more damaging to his relationship with Lydia were his violent, Jeckyl & Hyde mood swings. One minute he was a loving partner with good qualities and intentions- the next minute he was screaming and slamming all of the doors in the tiny house they shared. He was extremely tempermental and volatile. She couldn't keep up with his complex personality and self-induced silence. She once told him that he had built such a large wall around himself and she wasn't sure she had the energy to try tearing the wall down anymore. With the two children in tow- Lydia left David- this was the lst time. He followed her around, he would sit in front of her temporary home at the women's shelter, he stalked her- but never did he try to harm her or the children. They reunited one time and within' days he was back to the same explosive David. Dylan was 2-years old and Anna Marie had just barely began to crawl around on her own.

One night David mixed drugs with his mental struggles and anxiety- it was almost lethal. When Lydia tried to gather up the children and some belongings, he grabbed her and slammed her to the floor. She was almost knocked out cold and he tried to strangle her into submission, however a neighbor called 9ll and before he could kill his wife- they were there to pull him off of her. This was the final act for Lydia and she filed for a divorce and the confused woman and her two little children never looked back. This supposedly pushed David Parkhurst over the edge and he cracked- ending up in a state hospital, lost in a haze of emotional problems- as well as possessing a broken heart. Lydia moved to Savannah, Georgia where her parents lived and began a new life. It was here in Savannah that she met James Sterling- he was her knight in shining armour, her hero, and the man that took her and her children to places they had never experienced. He gave Lydia a life of realized dreams and sat her on a perch- she became his princess and he loved Dylan and Anna Marie as if they were his own. Over the next l8 years- he would be the father any child would dream of having. Life, even with all the moving and change, was stable in the fact that as a family- the Sterlings were happy and content, they stood by each other and accepted all of the challenges that coming with constant 'adaptation'. As far as anyone who ever knew the Sterling family were concerned James, Lydia, Dylan, and Anna Sterling had stepped right out of a Walt Disney movie and into whatever town they were living at the time....................

While the Sterling family traveled about and slowly built a prosperous life, David Parkhurst searched for his Lydia, and for his two children. He had become nothing more than a drifter with a purpose- the trouble is the Sterling family didn't stay in one place more than a couple of years and they didn't leave huge billboards across the United States of their whereabouts. They weren't hiding from anyone, it just wasn't an easy task to follow their path to wherever it was- they were located or headed. David did, however, begin getting close and after l8-years apart- Lydia wasn't exactly looking over her shoulder for him to track her down, in fact she never thought it a possibility. She couldn't have been more wrong!

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