It would have been easy to feel bitter about the injustice of it all during the painful times growing up when there wasn’t enough money for Michele to go to sleepaway camp with her friends or buy the cool clothes and cutting-edge gadgets everyone else had. But Michele knew she had no right to complain, since she never would have been born if it hadn’t been for Marion’s exile.
When Michele was old enough to understand, Marion had told her the story, just once. It was a story that had left an indelible imprint on Michele’s mind, one whose details she could call to memory at any instant, without ever having to pain her mom by bringing up the subject.
In 1991, the sixteen-year-old heiress Marion Windsor fell in love with Henry Irving, a nineteen-year-old from the Bronx. They met in a photography class at the Museum of Modern Art, and Marion was instantly fascinated with him. “He was so … completely different from every other boy I knew. It was like he came from another world. Everything about him, even his name, seemed special and unique to me.” Michele remembered how her mom had stopped at this early point in the story, swallowing hard and taking a few deep breaths, as if gathering the courage to continue. “He lived alone—his parents were far away—and that made him seem so much older and more mature than everyone else. I’d become so used to the grungy guys of the nineties, with their low-slung baggy pants that were practically on the ground, their slouching, and the careless way they would treat us girls. Well, that first day of class when I met Henry, he was standing tall and well dressed, and he actually took off his cap as he introduced himself to me, just like a gentleman. I was hooked right then.”
As the class progressed, Marion grew to love the look of fierce concentration on Henry’s face as he studied a print, the way he could see the beauty and worthiness in objects and settings that no one else would bother to photograph. He had a different way of looking at the world, and it drew Marion to him like a magnet.
“I was desperate to get to know him, so one day I decided to just bite the bullet and sit next to him in class. And what do you know, that was the day the teacher had us work in pairs with the person sitting next to us,” Marion had told Michele in a voice that sounded tremulous and different from her own. “Halfway through class, I could somehow tell that he was just as taken with me. He asked for my phone number, and we went on our first date that Saturday night.”
The relationship soon grew serious, and Marion was unable to believe her good fortune as Henry fell in love with her. But her conservative, strict Windsor parents considered this boy from the opposite side of the tracks a nightmare of a choice for their only child. “At first they thought it was just puppy love, a passing phase. So even though they disapproved, I wasn’t forbidden to go out with him. We were together through all of my last two years of high school. But during my senior year, my parents started forcing me to go on dates with their friends’ sons and attend these ridiculous debutante parties to meet boys they had preapproved. Henry and I both knew that I was getting closer and closer to being trapped by my last name and what it meant.”
When Marion was eighteen and approaching her high school graduation, Henry decided to solve the problem for them—by proposing. He was ready to start a life together. Marion had always known that he was the one for her, and she ecstatically accepted.
“I wasn’t expecting my parents to be happy about it … but I never could have imagined their reaction when I told them the news,” Marion had said, her eyes darkening at the memory. “Mom cried all night, and Dad ranted and raved about how I was the last in the centuries-old family line and that marrying Henry would disgrace the Windsor name. With no brothers, I was expected to marry a businessman who could run the Windsor empire, someone from a solid old-money family who would also help the Windsors continue their reign over Manhattan society.” Needless to say, Henry was neither. But Marion loved him and refused to give him up.
“It will never work for you two to be together. New York won’t accept it, and neither will we,” Marion’s mother had declared. So Marion and Henry decided they had no choice but to leave New York … and the Windsors. As Marion explained to Michele, at the age of eighteen, how could she even contemplate spending the rest of her life without the person she loved most in the world? Henry had some money saved up from his part-time job, and a friend from their photography class who had recently moved to Los Angeles offered to take them in until they found a place of their own. So Henry and Marion began planning for a new life on the West Coast.
On the evening of June 10, 1993, the day after Marion’s high school graduation, she stuffed her most important belongings into a backpack subtle enough to go unnoticed by the household staff, and waited nervously for her parents to leave for a dinner party. Half an hour after they left, Henry arrived to pick her up. Marion took one last look at the beautiful bedroom she had spent eighteen years growing up in, then stole through the house. She left a note in her mother’s parlor on the second floor, then hurried out the front doors and into Henry’s arms.
Los Angeles was an adjustment at first, with Marion and Henry both feeling homesick and out of place in California. Despite her conflicts with her parents, Marion still missed them and struggled with guilt over hurting them. But not once did she or Henry express any second thoughts about their decision. “We always knew it was the right thing. And once we moved into our own place, it was what I had always pictured domestic bliss to be,” Marion remembered with a sad smile. “He was so brilliant that I encouraged him to take an unpaid assistant position with a UCLA physics professor, in exchange for free college classes. He worked long hours while I waited tables at a diner, but we were young and in love, and planning to go to Vegas to be married as soon as we had enough money for the trip. There was this feeling that we could have, do, or be anything—so long as we were together.”
But a few short weeks later, the dream turned into a nightmare. Marion came home from a late shift at work to find that Henry wasn’t there. When he finally got back he seemed distracted and dazed, like he was in another world. Sure, he hugged and kissed her like usual—but without really seeing her. When Marion asked him what was wrong, he gave her a tense smile and said that it was nothing, that he was just tired. “It was like he had something huge on his mind, something he couldn’t share with me.”
The following day, Marion again came home to an empty apartment. She didn’t think much of it at first, assuming he was working late again. But then he didn’t come home at all.
Panicked, Marion called everyone she could think of—his boss, the friend they had stayed with when they’d first come to L.A., acquaintances they’d made during their brief time in California—but no one had heard from him all day. She called the police, all the local hospitals, but there was no trace of him.
As Marion struggled to keep from hysterics, the phone sounded its shrill ring. She leaped up to answer it, sure that it must be Henry. But her heart sank when she heard the voice of his boss instead, the eccentric physics professor Alfred Woolsey.
“No, he didn’t come in to work today,” Alfred had said slowly. “But … I want you to know, Marion, I honestly think he’s all right.”
“Where is he?” Marion demanded, her voice rising. “How in the world could you know that he’s all right?”
“I don’t know where he is,” Alfred said regretfully. “But … I think you should know that yesterday your parents called my office to speak to him. They spoke for nearly an hour, and when Henry got off the phone, he seemed … well, different.”
Marion could scarcely breathe. Her parents had called him? Her own parents might have had a hand in his disappearance? She hurried Alfred off the phone, barely registering his parting words about something Henry had left behind in the office.
“I called Mom and Dad right away … and they admitted to having offered Henry one million dollars to break off our engagement. But they actually said he refused their offer, and they were almost relieved, because they were overcome with guilt over the whole id
ea.” Marion snorted angrily. “I know a lie when I hear one. They were capable of making that disgusting offer, so they were capable of following through and lying about it to cover their tracks. I know that’s why he left me. My parents might have thought paying him off would bring me back home, but it only cut me off from them for good.”
Two weeks later, while Marion was still reeling from the betrayal of her fiancé and parents, she discovered that she was pregnant. Now Henry hadn’t just abandoned her—he had left their child fatherless.
“I’ll admit that when I found out, I was at my lowest low. But then it hit me that I had lost everything—my fiancé, my family, my home—and now God was giving me something to live for,” Marion had said, taking Michele’s hand. “There was a reason for all this pain. Maybe I had to meet and fall for Henry Irving in order to bring you into the world. And when I met my daughter, it was love at first sight. I vowed to myself that I would be a real parent to you. I’d be everything that your father and grandparents couldn’t be.”
And Marion did just that. She was more than a parent—she was a best friend to Michele. And whenever Michele had gone over to friends’ houses and seen a traditional two-parent family, with grandparents on either side, the usually tension-fraught relationships between parent and child made it easy for Michele to feel that she’d gotten the better deal.
Though Marion had never seriously dated anyone after Henry, she had thrown herself into being a mother and a designer and seemed to find fulfillment in those roles. So one could say that things had turned out surprisingly all right. Still, it was painful for Michele to hear or read about the famed Windsors. While other people saw them as the symbol of the American Dream, Michele saw them for who they really were: the cruel, dictatorial characters who had nearly ruined her mother.
After hearing the story, Michele had asked the question that had stood out in her mind above all the others. “How … how did you ever get through it? Didn’t everything just make you want to die?”
At that, Marion had grabbed Michele’s shoulders and looked her firmly in the eyes. “Listen to me, Michele. There is nothing in this life that can ever destroy you but yourself. Bad things happen to everyone, but when they do, you can’t just fall apart and die. You have to fight back. If you don’t, you’re the one who loses in the end. But if you do keep going and fight back, you win. Just like I won with you.”
Even though she had been just a child, Michele knew in that moment that her mom was stronger than the rest. That she was special.
“Michele? Michele!”
Michele’s head snapped up. Her teacher was eyeing her sternly.
“Let’s see if you were paying attention,” Mrs. Brewer said. “What is the name of the family that became the Windsors’ greatest rivals in both business and society, and why?”
“The Walker family,” Michele answered automatically. “They had a majority ownership in some of the railroads the Windsors wanted to gain control of. And the women in the two families were always trying to upstage each other in society.”
Mrs. Brewer raised her eyebrows, clearly surprised by Michele’s knowledge. “That’s right,” she said slowly.
Kristen caught Michele’s eye and the two of them shared a knowing look. Kristen was the one who had told Michele about the Walkers. She and Amanda were the only friends who knew Michele’s secret and, curious about her famous family, had done their fair share of research. But they had guarded the secret well. No one else ever could have imagined that ordinary Michele Windsor had been born to blue blood.
When the bell rang for lunch a few hours later, Michele jumped out of her seat, relieved to have calculus class behind her. Math was definitely not one of her strong suits. She threw her textbook and binder into her bag and hurried out of the classroom, heading toward the school’s front entrance. Marion hadn’t arrived yet, so Michele hopped onto a bench to wait. Friends trickled by on their way to lunch, stopping to say hi and share choice bits of the day’s gossip.
Ten minutes later there was still no sign of her mom. Michele pulled her cell phone out of her bag and dialed Marion’s number, but the call went to voice mail. Just as she was about to leave a message, her attention was diverted by a police car pulling up to the school. Michele stared at the officer who got out of the car, his face drawn. With a flicker of curiosity, she wondered which one of her classmates might be in trouble.
The policeman’s eyes met hers and then he did a double take, glancing down at something in his hands. With a stab of fear, she saw that he was now heading in her direction. He’s probably just going to ask if I have any information on someone or something, she reassured herself, shifting nervously on her seat. Still, she couldn’t keep her imagination at bay as he came closer. She tried to stay calm as visions of drugs being planted in her locker and similar offenses danced in her head.
“Hello. Are you Michele Windsor?” asked the officer, a ruddy-faced man of middle age.
Michele nodded shakily and got to her feet. She cringed as she realized that her mom was probably going to pull up to the school at any moment, only to find her being interrogated by the police.
The officer placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’m afraid I have some bad news. You should probably sit down for this.”
Michele’s body turned cold. She stumbled back onto the bench and looked from the policeman to the school parking lot, torn between a desperate need to find out what was going on and an equally desperate urge to run away.
“I’ve just come from Santa Monica Hospital,” he continued quietly. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am to have to say this, but your mother got into a car accident at eight-fifteen this morning. Another driver was speeding and ran a red light, colliding with your mother’s vehicle. And I’m afraid … she didn’t make it.”
“What?” Michele asked uncomprehendingly. She had heard wrong. There was no way—
“Your mother is”—the policeman looked down uncomfortably—“dead.”
No. No no no no no no. Michele shook her head frantically and jumped off the bench. Her mother’s words to her that morning echoed in her ears: “See you at lunch, honey.”
“No!” Michele gasped. “That’s impossible. You’ve got the wrong person! I just saw my mom this morning, she dropped me off and she’ll be here any minute to take me to lunch—” She looked around wildly, willing the Volvo to pull up in front of the school. “You’ll see, she’ll be here any second!”
“Miss Windsor, it’s understandable for this to be a terrible shock,” the officer said, his voice grave. “She got into the accident just after dropping you off. I wish it wasn’t true, but … We were called to the scene immediately, along with an ambulance. Everyone did all they could, but we were unable to revive either of the drivers. We found your mother’s wallet in her purse, and that’s how I located you.” He handed her the object in his hands—Marion’s faded brown leather wallet, with Michele’s school picture peeking out from one of the flaps.
As she stared disbelievingly at her mother’s wallet, Michele lost all sense of herself. Her head felt light, her vision nothing more than black-and-white dots swimming before her eyes, and the only audible sound was a vicious ringing in her ears.
“It isn’t true.” She gulped, fighting back the bile rising in her throat.
The officer tried to console her, but Michele pushed him away. If she could just get away from the school … if she could find her mom and make it okay … But as she tried to make her escape, she felt as if the ground was shaking underneath her. With a cry, she fell back onto the pavement. And everything turned black.
“Michele?” came a tentative voice.
Michele didn’t answer, keeping her eyes shut as she lay in bed. It was the tenth day after Marion’s funeral, and Michele was spending it the same way she had spent all her time since: holed up in the guest bedroom at Kristen’s house. She couldn’t set foot in her own home, couldn’t bear to see it now that Marion was gone. Her friends had collected
her things for her, and she had visitors at Kristen’s every day, but nothing eased the unbearable pain. Michele had barely spoken or eaten since her mom’s death. She had dropped nearly ten pounds, and she knew somewhere in the back of her mind that her behavior was scaring everyone. Kristen’s parents had even pleaded with her to let them take her to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, but Michele refused. She didn’t want to get better. She only wanted her mom back.
“Michele?” Kristen’s voice persisted.
Michele reluctantly opened her eyes and turned onto her side to look at Kristen. Amanda hovered beside her. The two of them had dark circles under their eyes from lack of sleep.
“I’m really sorry to do this, but Ms. Richards is here and she’s forcing us to let her see you,” Kristen said awkwardly. “She has news.… I have to let her in.”
Michele buried her face in the pillow. Ms. Richards was the social worker who was suddenly thrust into Michele’s life after Marion died, supposedly to help the courts decide where Michele should live from now on. Because I’m an orphan now. Michele had thought those words countless times over the past two weeks, but they never ceased to feel unreal.
“I’m not going to live with you guys, am I?” Michele asked Kristen dully.
Kristen looked on the verge of tears. “You know we want you to! My parents are ready to become your guardians this minute.”
“Mine too,” Amanda added, sitting on the bed next to Michele. “But it’s not up to us.… You know that.”