Chapter 1 #4
In typical fashion, she was angry when she read the letter from Scott Freeman.
She was annoyed at him, and her mother. Why did her mother always have to make everything so complicated?
Why couldn’t she just have a will like everyone else and tell them what she was leaving them?
Charlotte asked. Why did she have to be mysterious and try to control them with money from the grave?
She ranted to her next younger sister, Quinne, who was good-natured, and the most willing to listen to her complain.
The others all got along with their mother easily.
The five sisters had been close as children and had stayed that way, but the others got impatient with Charlotte’s complaints about their mother, who was generous with all of them equally.
“She never tried to control you with money,” Quinne reminded her fairly in a gentle voice on the phone when Charlotte called her. “She gave you money when you needed it for your business, with no strings attached. You paid her back when you could. It was a clean deal, Char. What’s to control?”
“She hated the men I dated,” Charlotte said. She was beautiful and blond like their mother.
“So do you, eventually. So do most people. You’ve dated some pretty awful guys.
Mom didn’t want you to get hurt, and she can’t control you now,” Quinne said sadly, missing their mother.
She had a deep love and respect for her and was still traumatized by her death.
They all were, and showed it in different ways.
Charlotte was angry and Quinne was grieving deeply.
“She probably put all kinds of ridiculous conditions on whatever we inherit. I don’t care, I don’t need the money,” Charlotte said petulantly. Her business was extremely lucrative.
“That’s lucky for you. And that wasn’t Mom.
She loved us unconditionally, no matter what we did.
She never made anything difficult for us,” Quinne reminded her.
“She was proud of you, Charlotte, and of all of us. She helped us whenever we needed it, even when she didn’t have much.
” They all knew that divided by five, what she had left wouldn’t be a lot.
None of them expected a big inheritance.
Their mother had always said that Morgan Reed paid her a fair salary for her editing, and she lived modestly, and saved what she could.
Charlotte just liked to object in principle to whatever her mother did, still acting like a teenager with her sometimes, like her own daughter.
She was a smart woman. She had a gift for business, more so than her sisters.
She and her daughter Julia were engaged in constant battles now too.
Charlotte complained about her. Her son Sean had avoided any battles with his mother by going to college on the West Coast and taking summer jobs far from home.
He got along better with his more open-minded grandmother and aunts.
Sean and Felicia had gotten along particularly well, which made his mother jealous.
“And why do we have to go to Connecticut for the meeting, all five of us?” Charlotte groused.
“It’s just another flaming hoop for us to jump through.
Why can’t we just go to Scott Freeman’s office in town, instead of Connecticut?
I have meetings that day.” Quinne listened to Charlotte’s complaints until she got bored and ended the call.
Charlotte’s problem was that she had been burned by her ex-husband and several boyfriends so badly that she no longer trusted men.
She had two good kids and a successful business.
And her bitterness kept most men away, so there was no man in her life.
In contrast to Charlotte, at thirty-nine, Quinne had been a hard worker all her life, but wanted none of the responsibility or the glory of owning a business, with its headaches and demands.
She had no head for business. She didn’t want marriage or kids.
She was content with a job, not a career, and had been in television production since college, working on successful projects where someone else got the glory and big bucks, and Quinne got the hard work she never shirked.
She just didn’t want the headaches or the stress of success.
She had risen to the top in her field, was a talented TV producer, and was paid decently.
She had more than enough to live on, and to coast comfortably between projects.
She had been in love with the same man since college, Cooper O’Neill.
He was Irish and they had met at USC, and had lived together since senior year, for eighteen years now.
He made a good living with supporting actor roles in TV and movies.
He wasn’t a star but made a steady, very respectable income.
They were in sync on how they lived and what they wanted.
Quinne was phobic about marriage, after watching her sister’s nightmarish divorce and others like it.
Felicia was sorry that Quinne didn’t want to marry or have children.
Quinne loved her niece and nephew, and Felicia liked Coop a lot and enjoyed him at family gatherings.
They were happy. They didn’t want a lot materially, and were content as they were.
They lived in the Village in New York in a small walk-up apartment that suited them. Neither of them wanted a fancy life.
Charlotte lived in a nicer apartment than Quinne, in Tribeca, and was talking about buying a better one after her company went public.
Quinne and Coop lived in a simple apartment that suited them, and when they went on location for several months, they locked the door and left it until they came back.
They had no desire to be burdened by possessions or bound by responsibilities or traditions.
It wasn’t what Felicia would have wanted for her, but she respected Quinne’s right to make her own choices and decisions.
Quinne and her mother spoke two or three times a week and the conversations were warm and easy.
Charlotte loved to argue with her mother.
It was like a sport she enjoyed. They were always arguing about small things that didn’t matter.
Felicia tried not to be upset by them. And she had Quinne and the others to console her when Charlotte hurt her feelings.
All of the sisters had their own distinct personalities.
Olivia was the strongest of them all and had had the hardest challenge to face. Her mother had helped her more than the others, which no one resented in her case.