Riverblossom Hills: Viejo/Goldstein/Martin (R1)
In what's decidedly one of the biggest houses in Riverblossom Hills, two elderly ladies live: Catherine Viejo and Betty Goldstein. Along with their best friend Linda Martin, her husband, and Catherine's husband (who have all passed away now), they were some of the very first inhabitants in the small town.
This young lad is Jacob Martin, Linda's grandson. An honest and hardworking teenager, who plans to grow up to marry his girlfriend and then the two of them will join the police and save the world together.
And this is Andrew Martin, Linda's son and Jacob's father. After he first lost his wife, Elena, and then his mother, he and Jacob moved in with Catherine and Betty. Although he knows the locals like to gossip about him - being a single man living with two older, single ladies - he simply sees his mother's friends as his aunts, and Jacob sees them as his surrogate grandmothers.
This is what their house looked like before. It's originally Betty's, actually. She comes from a wealthy family, and is related to the very well-off Roths. When Catherine's husband died, however, she left her old house to her niece and came to live with Betty.
After Andrew and Jacob moved in, the unusual family decided to give the house a makeover.
It felt too huge, even for four people (imagine how it was with just Betty living there!), so they moved all the bedrooms downstairs, and left the upstairs as an empty attic, for storage or further expansion in the future, should it be necessary.
Andrew has never been an especially ambitious man. Lately he's been making his living off of slot machines and online gambling, and has perhaps not always been entirely honest in his methods. Now he's on the outlook for a new job, preferably one that gives him the most possible profit for little effort...
Jacob is quite different from his father. He helps out as much as he can at home, and has an after-school part time job fixing people's computers, consoles and, sometimes, the pinball machine at the grocery store.
He still shares Andrew's love for video games, though.
Andrew's search for a job continues, and on the notice board in the grocery store, he finds a little note in the corner which catches his interest...
Unlike Catherine, who's always been the centre of attention among members of the opposite sex, Betty has been single her entire life. Catherine tells her she just needs to relax around men and learn to take a compliment, but it doesn't come easily to her...
Jacob is the one who invests in new games...
...But Andrew often ends up playing them before Jacob has a chance to. Without regular working hours, he has a lot more free time on his hands than his son.
Jacob often talks about how he's going to fight crime when he graduates from college.
He doesn't notice that as of late, this appears to make Andrew slightly nervous.
There's other things going on in Andrew's life as well. He's finally starting to feel ready to date again, and he doesn't have to look for long. Cleo, Catherine's niece, has been waiting for this moment for a while now.
Their first date is an absolute success.
Jacob is making new friends too. He's very sociable, and is still good friends with his ex-girlfriend, and now with her new boyfriend as well - the new kid in class, David Ottomas. He wishes Sandra, his new girlfriend, and his ex, Jules, would get along as well, but he understands that will probably never happen.
Catherine works part time at the school, and she's the one who helps Jacob with his homework.
Jacob feels very lucky to have two extra "grandmothers" to take care of him. It makes the loss of his mother and his real grandmother a lot easier to bear.
In the midst of everything, Betty is feeling lonely. Although she tries to deny it, she knows she's certainly not getting any younger, and her time is running out. Will she never experience love? ...Or at least a hot affair with a handsome, young man?