Valorie always knew the circumstances around her birth were different. Sure, when she was younger, the fact that she had never met her parents and was raised by a reclusive old bachelor who spent his days fishing had never bothered her, but when she grew older, she started to have questions about her identity. She loved her pa but became frustrated by his refusal to share what little he knew about her parents.

Now, Valorie is a young adult who spent years working to confirm her legal status so she could be accepted into a college. As she makes plans to establish herself in the world with her new legal identity, she receives the devastating news of Pa’s death. For the first time in years, she returns to the small community of Cape Town to bury the man who raised her and go through everything in her childhood home before saying goodbye for the final time. But a discovery in the attic provides a new clue about Valorie’s family and leads her on journey that reveals secrets that some in the community would rather remain hidden.

(This story is technically a rough draft for a webtoon I'm in the process of creating. Both the novel and webtoon versions are intended to serve as a way for me to practice doing all of this for the first time, and I don't expect either to be awe-inspiring. However, I still think it will be fun to share them, so I've decided to do just that.)