Chapter 1 #3
She had admitted to him once over a long dinner with a bottle of wine that she had never won her parents’ approval despite good grades.
They had set the bar so high for her that she had never achieved their goals.
They had been cold intellectuals and she had grown up starved for affection, which explained her deep love for her daughters.
Her cold parents’ merciless criticism had made her shy and reclusive all her life.
It was a life well lived that ended too soon, with no fanfare, or the lavish praise that would have been heaped on her as Morgan Reed.
Felicia had remained true to herself and her values for her entire life.
She had led an exemplary life as a good mother, good wife, good person, hard worker.
She had lived for her work and her children, with little frivolity, and not enough fun, in Robert’s opinion.
But she always seemed content with her life.
After the two men spoke, Scott sent his letter to each of Felicia’s daughters that afternoon.
He could well imagine that it was going to be a hard Christmas for them, seven weeks after their mother’s death.
But she had left them an enormous gift, and a legacy her millions of fans would cherish.
He could only hope that her daughters would too.
Scott’s letter had requested that they contact him as soon as possible, so he could arrange a meeting with all five of them, to explain their mother’s bequests to them.
It was going to be a very interesting meeting, the first time Scott had seen or spoken to her daughters, when he met with them at the farm in Connecticut, as Felicia had requested, the farm that none of them even knew existed.
He had been there several times. It was a beautiful place and he loved going there, and she always received him warmly and was kind to him.
Felicia’s daughters had a whole world and a whole persona to discover.
Scott couldn’t wait to meet them, and he wondered how well they would match Felicia’s descriptions of them.
As she was in all things, she was honest and direct, although never cruel or unkind, but very straightforward and keenly perceptive about people and astute about their strengths and flaws, their weaknesses.
She even understood their fears and dreams and was deeply empathetic.
She was fascinated by people and the human condition.
Her daughters seemed almost like characters in a book to Scott from the way Felicia had described them.
She knew each of them completely, their needs, their fears, and their strengths.
Each of the five women he was about to meet already seemed real to him, as though he already knew them.
She knew each of them intimately, to their very soul, and they knew her not at all.
She had admitted to Scott that she had never allowed them to know her fully, and had remained hidden in the shadows for her entire life, with everyone she knew, even her children.
It was comfortable for her. She kept everyone she knew at a safe distance, so no one could hurt her, or reject her as her parents had.
She always spoke kindly of her husband, and as far as Scott knew, there had been no men after him.
She never spoke of her personal life. She was as much a mystery as was the author of the hundred and eight bestsellers she had written.
And the surprise ending this time was not a good one, written by a lone deranged gunman with an assault rifle, who had ended the life of a wonderful woman Scott admired deeply, and whose daughters were about to learn their mother’s secrets.
Scott wondered how they would all react and if their mother’s description of them had been accurate.
At the meeting at her farm, he was about to find out more about them.
—
Charlotte Weston’s life had been a struggle for almost twenty years.
She had felt the burden of being the firstborn heavy on her shoulders almost from the beginning, and took her mother’s advice as criticism.
Felicia was careful not to criticize her children.
But Charlotte hated her mother’s counsel and opinions, and hated even more that Felicia was so often right, which was easy to do with Charlotte, because Charlotte was a risk-taker and the risks she took were so often ill advised.
She had grudgingly come to admit that her mother was usually right, as her sisters always pointed out to her, which set Charlotte at odds with them too.
Charlotte was always doing battle with someone.
Her mother, her own teenage children now, Adam, her ex-husband, her business partners when she had them.
Her ex-husband had given up custody of their children and moved to Spain, and was killed there in a motorcycle accident.
Her mother had warned her about him, and Charlotte had brushed off her wise advice.
At twenty-two, Charlotte had married a devastatingly handsome, charming, fast-talking “snake oil salesman” as she called him later.
She had started a business with him, an online magazine destined to fail, and had two babies, and the business had crashed quickly when he kept taking money out of it for himself, and stealing money from her.
The marriage had failed a few years later.
He cheated on her with her friends, emptied her bank accounts, abused her credit cards and her soul, and by twenty-nine, she was out of money, severely disillusioned, and fighting Adam’s demands for support.
He was a small-time crook, as her mother had feared.
Adam was unemployed, and Charlotte had a job.
She wound up paying him spousal support for three years, and was bitter beyond repair after the divorce.
He left for Spain with his alimony and the settlement he got.
He gave up custody of their two children by his own choice.
And three years after the divorce he was killed in a motorcycle accident in Spain, and Charlotte had been angry ever since.
Her mother and sisters had tried to warn her about Adam before she married him.
She refused to listen, and paid a high price for it.
Her son Sean was now nineteen, her daughter Julia sixteen, and were both good kids.
Felicia had helped her daughter and bailed her out financially when she needed it most, which Charlotte found humiliating, even though Felicia was nice about it.
In the past ten years, her mother’s faith in her had been justified, and she had had a very considerable success in business with an online delivery service that wasn’t unique but was extremely efficient.
She was a hard worker and hoped to take the company public in the next few years.
It supported her and her children handsomely and Felicia was proud of her.
But despite her success in business, and two nice children, Charlotte was never happy.
Anger and disappointment emanated from her pores.
Charlotte had remained sour about men ever since Adam.
Her taste in men hadn’t improved, and she had sworn off marriage forever.
She’d had several predictably disastrous relationships with irresponsible, usually opportunistic men.
None of them had had solid careers, and were using her as a stepping-stone to wherever they wanted to go.
She was still na?ve about men, and believed their lies.
She no longer needed her mother’s help financially.
Her business was called To Go, and was a huge success.
And to her credit, she had worked hard for ten years to achieve her success in business, and there had been some very lean years when she no longer accepted her mother’s help.
She wanted to make it on her own and had eventually paid her mother back every penny she’d given her.
Felicia respected her for it. There was often tension between them, especially when she warned Charlotte about men she was currently dating, who seemed dangerous or “off” to her.
Charlotte was always blind to their faults until too late.
Felicia was usually right about them, which infuriated Charlotte.
It was a lesson she hadn’t learned yet, and Felicia worried that maybe she never would.
Charlotte could never resist a handsome face and a man who needed her help to get some project off the ground, which never happened.
They either failed abysmally, or never tried and ran off with the money, which added to her bitterness about men and her lack of faith in them.
The only one surprised by her poor choices was Charlotte.
She was beautiful and bright, but not wise.
She was na?ve about people’s faults until too late.
Charlotte had a good life, and a very reasonable success to her credit, and still wasn’t a happy person.
The glass was always half empty in her eyes.
There was always something to complain about, someone she envied, who she thought had more than she did, or a happier relationship than her current one.
All Felicia wanted for her was to be happy with a good guy who made her life better, not worse.
She hadn’t found that so far, and Felicia wondered if she ever would.
Charlotte was a hard worker, but the grass was always greener somewhere else.
She was a fighter for her business, but a loser in relationships.
Her ex-husband had been irresponsible and dishonest, and didn’t care about their children.
He had lived with a series of very young women after the divorce and she was still bitter about him.
She had been sure the marriage would work, and been shocked when it didn’t.
She was the only one surprised when her marriage to Adam crashed and burned.