Life was so much simpler when she didn’t know she was part colored.
Damn that Mrs. Hollingsworth!
But if it hadn’t been for southern-born intolerant Mrs. Hollingsworth, Marie wouldn’t have known the comfort of her father’s protective arms wrapped around her as he whispered, “My child.”
Thank you, Mrs. Hollingsworth.
THE END
DAUGHTERS
Marie’s life was about to change. Her father, Jonathan Brooks, a man she had met for the first time just two months earlier, was going to arrive at her coach house apartment in less than twelve hours to take her to meet his family—her newfound family—in St. Charles, Illinois. It was a ten-hour car ride from her home in Atchison, Kansas, and Jonathan promised Marie they could talk about anything and everything on the way.
Anything and everything in twenty-four-year-old Marie’s mind meant nothing was off limits, and she intended to take full advantage of the opportunity. Jonathan was married and had three children of his own when he met Marie’s now deceased mother, and Marie knew very little about their affair. She wanted to know how they met, what they did together, how long the affair lasted and what caused their breakup. Most of all, she wanted to know what attracted them to each other in the first place. After all, Jonathan was a Negro, and her mother was white, a rather unlikely pairing in 1923 Chicago.
Discovering who her father was also meant discovering her own ethnicity. With olive skin, nut brown eyes, and hair the color of raven’s wings, Marie could easily pass for white…and did for the first twenty-four years of her life. If it weren’t for the guilt and self-loathing she endured from it, she would continue to pass for white, because that would be easier on so many levels. But her strong need to know who she really was and where she belonged drove her to find the answers, the truths about herself, and she was hopeful her father would be able to give her valuable insight.
What brought Jonathan and Marie together to begin with was a threat Marie’s estranged husband, Richard, had made to expose Jonathan. Richard ran with a dangerous crowd in Chicago and had made it clear on more than one occasion he wanted her back. What frightened Marie was Richard always got what he went after. Two months had passed since that threat, and nothing had happened, but Marie and Jonathan knew it was just a matter of time before something did.
While she packed, Marie thought about Jonathan’s family—his Negro wife Claire, their three grown sons, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. What were the chances she would be accepted by all of them, and what kind of relationships would emerge from their first meeting? She didn’t know.
A lot could happen as a result of Marie’s two-week visit with the Brooks family, but she could not have predicted the most life changing consequence of her visit was going to spawn from an encounter with a twelve-year-old girl named Rachael.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Florence Osmund grew up in a Victorian home in Libertyville, Illinois, complete with a coach house, the same house she used as inspiration for her first two books. She earned her master’s from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management and has obtained more than three decades of experience in management positions in corporate America. Osmund currently resides in Chicago where she is working on the sequel to this novel.
Visit her website at www.florenceosmund.com.
Follow her blog at florenceosmundbooks.wordpress.com
Table of Contents
DISCLAIMER
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1: Signs
CHAPTER 2: Marie
CHAPTER 3: Richard
CHAPTER 4: Newlyweds
CHAPTER 5: Capone
CHAPTER 6: Courtship and Marriage
CHAPTER 7: Virtues and Faults
CHAPTER 8: The Box
CHAPTER 9: I Do It For Us
CHAPTER 10: Ethnicity
CHAPTER 11: Change
CHAPTER 12: The List
CHAPTER 13: Graceland Woods
CHAPTER 14: Shelter
CHAPTER 15: Libertyville
CHAPTER 16: Track 13
CHAPTER 17: The Coach House
CHAPTER 18: Karen
CHAPTER 19: Atchison Police
CHAPTER 20: Carousal #4
CHAPTER 21: The File
CHAPTER 22: Father
CHAPTER 23: Jonathan Brooks
CHAPTER 24: Genesis
DAUGHTERS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Coach House Page 35