full name: laura lynn sutter.
age & birthdate: august 1st, 1988; 26.
hometown: cherry grove, nc.
residence: cherry grove, nc.
occupation: manager, Cherry Grove Motel.
education: high school.
transportation: tba
relationship status: single yet committed.
sexual orientation: heterosexual
children: daniel carlton jackson, 5.
other family: father, carl.

Laura is not the most outgoing girl. With people that she knows, she is much more open talking, dancing, hanging, etc. She doen't get loud and only tends to raise her voice (though very little) at work when one someone isn't doing their job. Most people would not look at her and call her hardass - and really, she isn't - but she will be the first to terminate you if you are no doing your job. She is much more of a loner than she might appear. She really enjoys spending time with her son more than anything. She is a hardworker and generally very focused. She's soft-hearted but not a pushover. She has intense concern for other people, but knows that she has to focus on herself and her family first before she can be of use to anyone else.

• Ben Jackson is the defining person in Laura Sutter's life. They got together just after starting high school and, even though they have not seen one another in three years, most would say that they have been together ever since. He keeps her stable yet drives her insane. He's the father of her son and the love of her life and the bane of her existance all wrapped up into one.

• Laura is the manager of the Cherry Grove Motel. She hates her job, but quitting is not an option. It's too much hard work because - no matter who she hires or fires, there are never enough workers available and she is always left to do someone else's job on top of her own. She works day shifts sometimes and night shifts others. The owner basically puts the place into her hands - and she hates that too.

• The nights she doesn't work, she almost always can be found at her favorite bar. Her son tends to hang out with her father because her father thinks she needs time to cool off and unwind. She hardly ever is able to really do that - no matter how much time she spends with her "friends" at the bar.

• Laura lived with her father until her son was born. After that, she insisted on moving into her own place and being responsible for him on her own. Other than for babysitting, Laura does do it on her. Ben does what he can, but she's limited on what she will allow. Seeing his son? No problem. But providing for him? That is a whole other can of worms.

The memories of her mother are few – the outline of a woman with a blurred face, screaming about how she wanted something better than this dump of a house in this hellhole town, walking out of the door and never coming back again. The finer details aren’t important, but the bigger picture is – her mother left her before she was old enough to even pick out the finer details and it had been her and her “pop” ever since. He didn’t take the abandonment as well as she did, making the years after harder as she got older.

Laura Lynn Sutter was barely 3 years old when her mother walked out – without even a promise to call or keep in touch. She simply packed her bags and left, leaving her 3 year old in the care of a spiraling and depressed father, who loved her but was much too much of a mess to really parent her. In her teen and adult years, Laura would manage to follow in the footsteps of both her father and the mother that she really did not know, but somehow manage the chaos just a little bit better.

From the outside, you would never know it. The minute she turned 13, she was a total mess and it occupied a lot of peoples’ time just trying to keep the mess from overflowing. Teachers at school figured that she would be one of the first to drop out – if not fail out – and a graduation day would never come for her. They were wrong. Laura did manage to graduate but it was hard-pressed and more to do with the fact that she considered school as a social activity. She attended regularly due to that and that was the only reason she managed a graduation day and everyone knew it.

The days that she did not show up had more to do with her father than the days when she did show up. He never pushed her into attending or doing well at school, but when he went overboard on his drinking or somehow nearly killed himself…Laura was always left to clean up the mess in the morning. It is why she always said that she was too busy cleaning up her Pop’s mess to concern herself with her own. Nevertheless, her life was better…by far…than some of the other people that she knew. The main one being her long-term love interest. Compared to his life, hers was fantastic and she never thought otherwise. Her life felt stable compared to his.

But neither one of them had it good…and to the outside, they embraced the crazy together. What he got, she took. What she got, he took. And they both gave it to each other consistently. The only thing that you could expect was that just as things were getting good, something would go bad…and dynamite would blow but then things would get good again. It was like that from the moment they got together in their freshman year of high school until they broke it off three years ago. Two years after their son was born, six years after he enlisted in the Navy, and ten years after that moment when they promised to never turn their backs.

In fact, it was a shock to everyone when Laura walked away. When she called him on the phone and gave him an ultimatum – come home now or when you get here, it won’t be to me. Deep down, she knew that he did not have a choice – he had to stay. But at that moment, she needed him and she needed a miracle that she didn’t get. So, she fell apart and then she was done. He already barely knew their son – having left the day after she told him that she was pregnant after all but calling her a liar. He wasn’t there for the birth. He had no part in naming him. Laura was the only parent that that 5-year-old really knew. And, unfortunately, she is so broken from having *** choose his family of her and their son, from having to bring herself up in the world, and trying to control the utter chaos that is her life…their son is living a life not much different from what his parents knew at his age.

The only difference? Laura stayed...and she tries to get it together and keep it together every day. Something her father nor her mother never did.

PB: Blake Lively.
Writing: Third person, past tense, storybook. EST. Threads and customs are preferred.
Journal: ~lauralynn
OOC Contact: contact post.
CREDIT: tjwest, with modifications by ennk and autumncole.