She was lost-desperately lost. She was left without a mother and her father had broken her heart in his own strange way.
And then, she met him. The boy with the kind smile and the soft eyes. The boy who stole her heart. The boy who could speak wit...
No one had learned to love like she had. For no one held the fierce passions and endless joys that she held in her heart. No one could fathom the deepest sorrows and the most painful of memories that she had buried within herself. No, no one had learned to love like she did-perhaps, no one ever would.
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She was born Petula Anna Parker. She had been made among other dreams in a typical, New England turn of the century home. She had been born with crystal chandeliers, rose tinted wallpaper, and a nursery draped in many shades of soft canary.
Such were the first three years of her life-tinted the same shade as the wallpaper. Perhaps, this is the way that it is for all children. After all, a child so small remembers so little-if anything-about their first few years. Oddly enough, it is these first years of their lives that becomes the foundation of what one is-and of what one shall forever be.
Charles Parker was an affluent man. He had grown during the era of laissez-faire economics. His father, Abraham Parker lll, had begun as an apprentice of sorts for a small oil company-three years later, he had become its owner, as well as the directors of one of the greatest oil giants in the nation. For years, he worked on his empire-lining his pockets with an endless sea of green. Yet, as much as he enjoyed wealth, he did not love it. He could not love wealth-for money cannot love back. And so he decided to find a wife.
He was thirty seven years old when he began his quest. For about a half year, he found nothing. Of course, plenty of young ladies would flock about him at parties-all pretty, Southern belles who had been empresses of their own empire before the war-but to them, only his money was attractive. And so he discarded them, knowing that to live with these girls would be to live in darkness.
And then he met her- a grey eyed, blonde haired thing. To him, she was a queen. Her rags were silk, her tattered slippers were satin shoes, her ribbons scraps were gloves of the finest velvet. To him, she was worth more than any Southern princess showered with diamonds was. And that was how he came to marry Minnie Swanson-owner of none, heiress of all. Two years later, a son was born to them-and he lived in a world that was extremely similar to his child's. He was the oldest of eight-of three girls and five boys-and he quickly became Abraham's preferred child. And that was how Charles (Charlie as his family affectionately called him) Parker became the sole heir to his father's oil company during his sixteenth year. He was a skilled man-as skilled as Abraham had been. He oversaw his empire as he saw fit-and so it grew. And as it grew, so did he. Yet, just as his father had been void of love, so was he. For some time, his own siblings thought that he was incapable of love. For machines such as he could never truly feel love.
And so he gave up any notion of love. He became what his siblings wanted-he ran on steam and oil, his words became mechanical and his movements too precise and too quick. And so he avoided love-but one can only avoid love for so long before it creeps up on the individual and takes them into its arms. And, as he avoided love, it was love that found him. It found him in the form of a small, dirty girl-the only jewels she possessed were her wide green eyes and her mane of raven hair. Love appeared to him in the form of a beggar.
