chased down by some of the more unsavory characters he was indebted to. He put up no resistance to the legal proceedings to separate him from Mommy. Our financial advisors and lawyers did the best they could creating- barriers to his raiding what was left of our fortune. Once she had loved him passionately, with a young woman's excitement, and now there was no one she hated more.. And I was to tell her this person had done one more terrible thing to
us?
My throat closed every time I thought I could
do it. and I was too frightened and knew no one to go
to who could help me find a secret way out of my
dilemma. I was still barely showing. But I knew it was
going to be very hard to keep my secret much longer. While all this was going on our financial
advisor had located a couple who were very interested
in renting Joya del Mar. the Eatons. They had no
problem about our living in the beach house and were
even willing to keep on all our servants. Preparations
were begun for our taking over the rear apartment in
the beach house, the biggest one at least. and Mommy
began to sell off whatever she could from the house to
build up our bank accounts again and at least give us a
sense of some security.
Mommy behaved as if someone had died the day we moved out of the main house. She would break out in quiet sobbing on and off and then suck in her breath to give the servants another order. The maids packed all our clothing and brought it to the apartment, which had no closet space in comparison. One of the bedrooms in the apartment had to be utilized for storage. and Mommy wailed about all her wonderful dresses and gowns, her pants suits and
shoes that would be ruined.
Another fact of life would be the use of the
servants themselves. After this day they no longer
worked for us. They worked for these new people. the
Eatons.
"It's been so long since I've cooked anything,"
Mommy complained. "We'll starve."
Her sighs were so deep and came so often I
thought she would eventually crack in two. Out of the
garage came our two automobiles, now to be parked
on a section of the driveway.
"We'll have to sell one of the cars anyway," she
concluded. I didn't really care. I had no interest in