“Budgie.” Papa pulled me in for a hug on our last morning in Washington. For the first time since his arrival, I collapsed into hot, throat-choking tears, unable to speak. Unable to set my mind to the task of packing up the last of Mother’s personal items. Tears pooled in Papa’s eyes, too, as he leaned forward to wipe mine. His voice quiet, he said, “We are so small in this world, Budge. There’s a greater power, and we’re just a small part. Your mother…well, she is finally at peace.”
I didn’t say anything as he held me. I was so angry with him, I could have railed that he had been the source of Mother’s heartbreak. But I let my body speak only through my tears, through the shudders that heaved me further into his comforting hug. In truth I knew that Mother’s melancholy ran far deeper than just the loneliness of her final years. It had plagued her for much of my childhood. And what’s more, I needed Papa in that moment. He was the only parent I had left.
* * *
—
I returned home after the funeral and resumed my life in Greenwich. Life without a mother. The hurt of her absence shifted, until eventually it was less a searing pain and more like a dull but persistent ache. The plain truth was that she had not been part of my daily life in years, separated as we’d been first by her illnesses and then by geographical distance. I missed knowing that she was alive, that she could be reached by letter or telephone or telegram if I needed her, but I had no choice but to carry on. I was still a mother, after all, and a wife. And a daughter. I settled back into those roles, not suspecting—not realizing—that it would all soon change again.
Chapter 16
Greenwich, Connecticut
Spring 1914
I was unprepared. Utterly and entirely unprepared for the gutting shock that came on a mild spring morning, this time in the form of a telegram from California. The footman carried in the note just after Eddie and I had completed breakfast and sent Adelaide and Eleanor off to their piano lessons. I took the paper in my hands with a mild unease, but nothing could have braced me for what I saw. “I’m an orphan,” I said aloud, staring numbly at my husband. Eddie returned my gaze, silent and confused.
“Papa,” I managed to choke out the word. “He’s left me.” Just as Mother had left me. My father was dead. C. W. Post, the strong and dynamic man who had built an industry on his health and his indelible spirit, was gone. Papa had left this world. He’d left his empire at Post Cereal Company. He’d left his millions. He’d left me.
“I’m not even thirty years old, and I’m an orphan,” I said, the words sounding faint and hollow as they slipped out. I was the only Post left. I was a very scared, very rich, and very sad orphan.
* * *
“None of it will be yours, Marjorie. Not if Leila has her way.” Ed looked at me with a face pulled tight, his beautiful lips sealed in a straight line. He was concerned, and I knew he was correct to be so. For as long as I’d known her, Leila had set her sights on what was mine: my father, my family, my name, and now my inheritance.
Under the crippling pain of the fact that Papa was gone, there were searing layers of other unbearable agonies. First, there was the fact that Leila had declared her intention to fight me for the empire that my father had spent his life building, the brand that he had hatched with my little hand in his and Mother at his side. The empire that bore the name of my family, that Papa had first funded with the last pennies of Mother’s dowry. All those afternoons of my girlhood spent stacking crates of raw wheat in the barn, gluing the labels onto the earliest batches, sampling handfuls of Grape-Nuts and Postum—Leila was fighting to steal it all.
But she would not win. I was a Post by birth; I was born of Papa’s blood and mettle, and I was done letting that woman steal what was mine. “I’ll hire the best lawyers in America,” I declared. For once, Eddie did not scoff or argue with me. I would fight her with all of my energy, strength, and smarts. I had something she would never have—a lifetime of Papa’s lessons. Papa’s spirit had shaped me as a girl, and now that I was a woman, it helped to shape my every thought. I would not rest until Papa and Mother’s legacy, my birthright, the Post Cereal Company, was in my hands where it belonged. Where Papa had always intended for it to be. That woman may have fashioned herself as Mrs. Post, but I would show her—and anyone else who needed reminding—just who the real Post was.
But then, even as my resolve hardened to steel and I braced for the legal fight, there came another blow. Worse by far than the telegram announcing Papa’s death. Worse than the headlines outlining Leila’s claims that the Post Cereal Company belonged to her, as C. W. Post’s widow. And that came in the letter that Papa had written to me in his final moments—his suicide note.