Chapter Two
The brief courtship of Charles Adam Everett III and Amelia Tabitha Barnes was a modern version of Romeo and Juliet. Our fathers despised and reviled each other in a feud that had endured since long before our births. Though I was familiar with her many brothers professionally, I never met or even laid eyes on Amelia until my dad’s funeral.
Charles Adam Everett the Second died of carbon monoxide poisoning. This was not an accident. It happened in the back seat of his soon-to-be repossessed Cadillac limousine following the latest stock market crash. Utterly ruined, Dad shut the car in the garage of his soon-to-be seized mansion (the last of what used to be several palatial residences), started the engine and settled himself comfortably where he’d ridden like a reigning potentat
