Chapter One
June 1904
The scene was affluent. Young girls and boys ran about the lush green lawns, chasing each other playfully in their fine white clothes, much to the dismay of their nannies. Elders, the old men and women that bore these children's parents, sat among their own wrinkled friends and admired their posterity. The women read romances and discussed society in their parlors, while the men were away in the oak-paneled libraries smoking their cigars and trying their luck at games of cards. The small northern town of Harbor Springs is the second home to many of Michigan's finest families. The Point, a long peninsula which juts out toward the Little Traverse Bay, is where we build our cottages and spend most of our time away from busy city when the summer heat comes annually. Everyone has their own place here, meaning both a large home and a tightly knit group of acquaintances. My friends and I had our own place among the others.
Caroline Abendroth sat next to me, attached to my arm tightly throughout the time we sat there, and she wouldn't loosen or release her grip. She had chosen me from the other suitable young men, and I was hers. She was eighteen as was I, and she looked absolutely stunning with her ruffled summer dress, her white lace gloves, and her long blond locks pulled back in a fashionable bun. I smiled at her, and she grinned at me. Both her light blue eyes and her rare perfect teeth glimmered. I was more than content that I would eventually be her man, and she my wife. That will be of course, after my schooling in New York, so far away from my native Michigan.
Across from us, also seated on the high porch that wrapped itself around three sides of my summer home, were two of the people that meant the most to me, my closet friends. My younger, rambunctious sixteen-year-old sister, who smiled cordially at Caroline and me, admiring our close bond and dreaming she had the same passionate connection with her own, Edmund. Janet was naturally beautiful, but her summer costume made her appear to be the blood daughter of the Greek goddess of beauty rather than the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. Her summer dress was a blue pattern of lilies, and she complemented her look with a yellow sash and a derby sun-hat.
Next to my sister, sat my best friend. Edmund Waldgrave was the handsome eighteen-year-old whose curly brown hair and good sense of style had made me jealous since we were little. He loved Janet, and he held her gloved hand as tightly as Caroline held my own, but Janet refused to acknowledge his love any longer for some unknown reason, and now she looked as though she wanted to get as far away from him as possible.
"Hello dear friends! It has been so long since we have seen you" said a forthcoming, musical voice.
The Faye twins, two lovely seventeen-year-old ladies with rich crimson hair and green eyes, were the daughters of an Irish immigrant who had made his wealth in the logging industry. Their father had known our father long ago, when they had both first immigrated to the United States. My father, Karl Leopold, had been born poor in Germany during an earlier era and he had married another German named Edith after they had met on board the ship bound for the Americas.
"Cassandra, Phyllis, I have been missing your lovely faces for quite some time now," spoke Edmund politely. He was their second cousin, the son of some related aunt.
"And we have been waiting ages to see you again too, Edmund. Oh how handsome you have grown up to be!" said Cassandra, whose comment caught Janet's attention. Janet tightened her own grip on Edmund's hand, and he smiled to himself, for this was what he wanted.
The two sisters were the same height and size, and had small, slender bodies that fit perfectly next to each other when they took seats next to Caroline and me on the porch sofa against the window. They too wore fine gloves and light summer dresses like the other young women.
