#rl:g2

Over the years Maggie grew to love him more and more. If soulmates existed, she knew he was put on this earth as hers. After a great many miscarriages and still-births, their last child, Ellen Theodora, was born in 1879. Anton worked hard, but, having already made a fortune, he was free to take time off and while they didn’t go on as many vacations as they had before they had children, they traveled all around the West Coast. Maggie hoped the days would never end. 

Life never works out like that though. After a short bought of Tuberculosis, Anton passed away on a dreary December afternoon in 1881. Maggie was heart broken. She spent months in and out of asylums. Her world had shattered and it felt like she was falling through the rabbit hole with no way to catch herself. Her brother and sister-in-law who were childless moved out to California to raise the children (the grand manor didn’t hurt the deal) and they were strict with the children. So much so that they all left the house at a young age. 

Arthur went off to Cambridge at the age of fifteen to attend a prestigious preparatory school, and then followed that with Harvard University. He was the first in their family to attend Harvard but would establish a long tradition that would last up until the present day. He attended Harvard Law after that and went to work for his father’s company. He married a wealthy society lady and the two had six children, he died at the age of thirty eight.

Kathryn would marry a man who worked for her father’s company when she was just fourteen. George had been courting her for just a few weeks when his father fell ill and he had to head back to the East Coast. The two built a home in Nantucket, the town he was raised in, as his family had made their fortune off of the quickly dying whaling industry. 

Sarah left home shortly after Kathryn to live with friends. She did not follow her siblings to Massachusetts, but preferred to stay in California. Sarah lived with her girlfriend, but after a snooping neighbor saw them share a passionate embrace one night, the whole town found out and they were ostracized. Sarah, the one who took the most after Maggie, fell seriously ill. She went home to visit her sister one day a few months after the incident and threw herself out of a second story window. She was only twenty three when she died.

It took Maggie a couple of years, but eventually she started to fall for Anton. He had such patience with her. Growing up without a mother, she had no idea what wifely duties consisted of, let alone how to manage a household of this size. They had servants for everything possible, one woman’s entire job was to dress Maggie in the morning and assist her throughout the day. 

He was so kind to her, doing everything she asked. For the first year of marriage, he brought her home flowers every day he went to the office. They went on vacations all throughout the America’s often. She got to see so much more of the world than she had ever dreamed of and this is where the true freedom lied. She thought that marriage would trap her, and if it was to any other man that may have been true, but instead, it was Anton, and she was such a lucky woman.

They were married for almost two years before Maggie allowed him into her bed. She knew he visited brothels during this time, but that didn’t bother her. She just knew she wasn’t ready and was grateful that he was accepting of that and patient.

Anton Rossi moved to America when he was sixteen to work on the railroad with his mother’s older brother. He spent his twenties chasing money, steadily building a large fortune for himself. He spent his time split between the East and the West coast, with a large mansion he had built just outside of Los Angeles and a house he would rent in Boston, right down the street from his offices. Anton never considered marrying, he had no desire to be a parent, not after the way he was raised. That all changed the day he met Maggie.

Maggie had always been the rebel. Chasing boys, sneaking out of the house. By the time she turned sixteen her father ready to marry her off to the first suitor. She was the youngest of twelve, each more wild than the last, and he was ready to have an empty house. Maggie’s mother died when she was a child and she acted out any way she could to get her father’s attention.