“I told you Charlie, no more tall tales, alright?” Charlie’s mom hollered to him as he sat in the back of her old Buick.

“It isn’t a tall tale mom, I really saw them steal that gold bracelet!” Charlie whined back to his mother. He stared out the window as she screeched her tires out of the parking lot.

The afternoon was a bit warm as the golden glow of the sun perched over the horizon. The landscape seemed to glisten as the sun started to coast to the west to prepare for another beautiful sunset. Busy people walked by, crossing the little streets, as they headed back to their cars before dark. Charlie’s mother hated the crowds the most. She hated the warm weather. But more than anything, she hated the fact that Charlie had always fibbed about the truth with her, especially the truth about Brian Woods and Eddie Whitaker.

She had always wanted to be in that high-class social group of those two boys’ mothers, Mrs. Elaine Woods and Mrs. Mary Whitaker. Sure, she had gotten invitations for their usual big parties in town. The fact that the entire Woonsocket was always invited didn’t make her feel any special. She wanted to be in that group, where all the women hung out with both Elaine and Mary. She wanted to join them in their little tea get-togethers, their Tupperware parties, their cosmetics jubilee or just their private barbecues just with close friends on a cold and crispy autumn day. She wanted to belong in that high-end social group. She wanted so much to belong that she would deny and ignore what her son had been telling her for many years, that Eddie and Brian were the instigators of Woonsocket’s mysterious petty thefts and that they were the culprits of the unfair treatments against the town’s good-hearted, smart fellows like her son.

Every time Charlie would talk about the two boys, she would get mad at him. She didn’t know what to believe. Deep inside she knew that her boy could be right. But with Charlie running around town, all clumsy and silly with his highway patrol attitude and tough cop persona – she couldn’t help but feel a bit ashamed of him. Oh, she loved him deeply and she had been a great mother to him, reading books to Charlie when he was a little toddler and playing with him in the park. She would go the extra mile to get him his favorite dessert: apple cobbler. She would even go along with him to buy him the latest fake cop badge out there, or maybe a silver buckle for his cop uniform or the vintage posters of his favorite cop shows from the olden times. But she couldn’t help wonder why Charlie couldn’t excel in sports like football or even basketball. She couldn’t help but wish that he would go home with straight A’s or be the school’s president or something. She wanted to call her friends from the neighborhood or from the parlor about what her own son had accomplished. But instead, she would hear giggles and hushed comments about how weird her son was, how ridiculous he looked with his cop uniforms, how he would walk around clumsy, knocking down everything he passed by. How she wished he would be different.

Charlie kept quiet in the car. He never expected his mother to believe him. As far as he could remember, he had always told the truth. But the truth never did set him free. The truth had always gotten him in so much trouble. Besides, his folks never believed him. Sometimes he still feels like he’s two – his parents still worry about him, reprimands him about tall tales when all this time, he had been open and honest to them about everything.

“They just don’t understand.” Charlie would say to himself, his way of reassuring that he was still doing the right thing. After all the things he had shared with his parents and after all the times that they neglected to believe in their only child, Charlie was still loyal and dedicated into someday uncovering the truth about Eddie and Brian. “It’s just a matter of time,” he would say to himself. One might think that trying to unravel the truth about these two boys would be frustrating and futile. But to Charlie, he had managed to look at it as a “game.” And in Charlie’s game, there is only “one winner”, in just “a matter of time.” He smiled as he looked out the car window. “It’s just a matter of time, ladies and gentlemen, just a matter of time.” He snickered softly and smiled.