Captiva Ever After (Captiva Island Series #7)

“We let the girls stay up a little late so they could hear us telling you about the baby.”

“Oh, Lauren, I didn’t think I could be any happier tonight and then you call me with this news. I’m over the moon. How far along are you?”

“I have no idea. I took a pregnancy test. If I had to guess, I’d say maybe eight weeks. I’ve got an appointment tomorrow morning with my doctor so I’ll know then. I didn’t want to wait until after the wedding. We want to know as soon as possible. I’ve already taken a couple of different tests just to be sure before I tell anyone.”

“This is so exciting. I won’t tell anyone down here though, except Paolo of course. I’ll let you tell the family when you get here.”

“Thanks, Mom. We can’t wait to see everyone. By the way, did you know that Grandma is in Key West with her new boyfriend? His name is Winston and he’s coming to the wedding.”

“Yes, I know. She sent me a text and photo and Beth told me her RSVP was quite clear that she wouldn’t be coming alone. Based on the picture she sent me, I can only imagine what crazy antics she’s up to these days.”

“Well, we won’t have to guess because we’ll all hear about it in a few days.”

Maggie shook her head, imagining her mother with a boyfriend. There wasn’t much point in worrying about something that was probably nothing more than a temporary loss of sanity, and a desire to stay young at all costs.

CHAPTER 24

Two Days Before the Wedding

For the first year of her life, Millicent O’Hara lived with her mother and grandmother in Maine. Her uncle Brian came in and out of their lives, but after he died in a car accident and her grandmother passed away from a heart attack, Millie and her mother Kathleen were on their own.

It would have helped if her grandmother’s place wasn’t a run-down apartment with a pool table for a kitchen table, but downtown Portland in the early 1960s didn’t have much to choose from if you were poor. The pool table didn’t even belong to her grandmother.

Millie didn’t know she was poor, at least not until she was six years old, in school and bullied by the other kids for wearing the same clothes to school every day. It soon became apparent that something about her life was different from the other kids.

The truth was that none of the kids in her school were rich. Everyone was in the same boat, except everyone else owned more than one swimsuit if the boat sank. Not Millie, there were no life jackets for her, at least not until Jack Campbell started dating her mother.

Jack was handsome and charming in a way that every woman he encountered was drawn to. Kathleen, with her long brown hair, swept to the side and behind the ear, liked the way Jack carried himself. She didn’t know where he got his money, but Millie and her mother were treated to the best restaurants and finest stores and Millie, who fell under Jack’s spell as much as her mother, was in love.

She started wearing fashionable clothes to school by the time she was ten and the other kids noticed. She was suddenly very popular and everyone wanted to be her friend.

“Don’t let everybody into your world, Millie,” Jack would say. “People will take advantage of you if they think they can. Always keep a little of yourself private, that way everyone will think you’ve got a secret they don’t know. Make them wonder what you’ve been up to.”

It was the kind of advice that made sense coming from Jack considering he followed it himself every day. Neither her nor her mother had a clue where Jack went during the day. He said it was work, but one day her mother went to his “job” and no one had ever heard of him.

Kathleen confided in Millie when she was twelve but made her promise to keep the details secret. She didn’t want Jack to find out that they knew he didn’t have a job.

“But, where do you think he’s going every day? He smells bad,” Millie asked her mother.

“Never mind about that. I’m sure he has something important to do.”

Kathleen was willing to go along with this story until the money stopped coming in. Gone were the fancy restaurants and pretty clothes, and more often than not, when Jack came home he’d fall into bed without saying a word to either Kathleen or Millie.

Then, one day, Jack came home singing and dancing around their apartment and said they were all going out to the best restaurant in Portland. Kathleen and Millie got dressed up and the three of them went to Commercial Street to DiMillos On the Water.

It was a wonderful evening filled with laughter and joy and Millie felt like things were back to normal. By the end of the night, Jack had proposed, put a ring on her mother’s hand, and announced that the three of them would be a family.

Within days, Kathleen O’Hara and Jack Campbell were married and Millie felt their future was secure and she’d have a chance to be someone. The money kept coming in and that’s all her mother seemed to care about. It still didn’t matter to her how her husband spent his days as long as she could buy pretty things.

By the time she was ready to graduate high school, Jack was gone most of the time, but money kept being deposited into her mother’s bank account, but it was sporadic. Some nights Jack didn’t come home, and again, her mother didn’t seem to care.

It made little sense to Millie, but her mother was happy and that was all that mattered to her. Jack made enough money to send Millie to college. Millie went to York County Community College and worked toward a degree in Accounting.

She worked in the finance office at the school while taking classes and met Russell Brenner in her first year. He too, was taking classes in accounting and they fell in love after only a couple of dates.

Her step-father died the summer between her first and second year in college. Jack was killed in a knife fight in some dark alley in downtown Boston. It was a simple bar fight having to do with money Jack owed a guy.

With no explanation of how he got his money, Jack Campbell died and the money stopped coming. It wasn’t just the money that Kathleen depended on, her life revolved around the certainty that she would be cared for. She never bothered to learn any skills, or get a job, or pay a bill. Her life stopped the second that Jack’s did.