With my heart more bruised than I could even admit aloud, I turned to anger, white-hot coils of searing anger. Anger toward Leila and her team of scavenging lawyers. Anger toward Mother for her years of melancholy—why hadn’t she fixed things better so that I might have been spared just one battle resulting from her and Papa’s antipathy?
And anger toward the pair of men in my life as well: Papa and Eddie. Had Eddie been a more attentive son-in-law and an adequate heir, Papa would have had no misgivings about bequeathing his empire to us and the future generations of our Post family. For all Papa’s talk of raising me to be strong and educated, we had always known a man would have to someday run the company, and I had always believed that man would be my husband. But Eddie had ruled that out, and Papa had had no choice but to give up that hope. And Papa. Oh, Papa, why have you once more let that woman snake her way between us?
Sensing my heartbreak and perhaps, too, my rage, Eddie roused on my behalf. “I’m going back to Battle Creek,” he told me one June morning not long after our return home. My husband had appeared in my bedroom looking freshly shaved and alert, already dressed in his sharpest lawyer’s suit. “I’ll be your representative there. Sort this out. We won’t let Leila steal this thing, my darling.”
“Thank you, Ed.” I kissed him with relief. By lunchtime he had boarded a train west.
As my surrogate in Battle Creek, Ed spent hours, days, scouring all of Papa’s papers in his study at the farmhouse. Leila no longer lived there, having set herself up in a posh brownstone closer to town.
I received a telephone call from the farm several days later and immediately told the operator to patch it through. Ed’s voice sounded ebullient, even if far away. “I’ve got it, my dear. I’ve got it.”
“What have you got?” I asked, sitting down on my bed in Greenwich.
“It’s all sorted, dearest. Or at least, it shall be—and soon. You see, I’ve located the first contract from 1895, signed by both of your parents.”
“Probably written up in the white barn,” I said, swallowing hard. “With Shorty Bristol and Uncle Cal as witnesses.”
“That’s it, my dear. The paper establishes the Post Cereal Company and declares that all family shares shall pass from your father to you. Marjorie, the company has been intended for you since you were a girl. You already knew that. But now we’ve got the founding charter to prove it.”
I could have wept in relief. Ed went on: “The law is on our side.” He sounded triumphant, even as the telephone line from Battle Creek crackled. Now I just longed for him to return to us, contract intact and in hand, so that I might wrap him in a grateful and exhausted embrace.
“Now it’s just a question of how long Leila wants to fight it,” Eddie added. “But the good news is that I’ve got the paper, and you’ve got me.”
* * *
As winter rolled in, I woke one morning just before Christmas to a fresh fall of snow and a newspaper article that finally brought good news, the best possible news to make our holiday season joyful and our New Year celebratory. Leila had called the papers the day before with her announcement, and I read the resulting headlines:
Post Scandal: No Litigation in Sight
Husband’s Memory Too Dear for Mrs. Post to Oppose His Daughter
I let out a whoop from my bedroom. Eleanor came bounding into the room, her eyes wide. “What’s happened, Mother?”
“It’s glorious news, my little darling. It’s glorious news!” Leila had finally quit. She’d keep the land Papa had given her, the buildings, the millions, and she’d retreat into more wealth than she could ever spend. But that was all fine; I just wanted her to stay out of my life. Husband’s memory too dear for Mrs. Post. I scoffed at it; it was an outrage that she had his name. But at least she would not have his company. My company.
I was suddenly and finally free of Leila, and richer than any young woman had a right to be, particularly a lady still years shy of her thirtieth birthday. And it was time for me to show the world just who Marjorie Merriweather Post intended to be.
Chapter 17
Greenwich, Connecticut
Spring 1916
I was Papa’s heir, and the only member of our Post family still alive—the only true member of our Post family, though Leila would of course have argued that—who’d had a hand in the founding of the company, and it was time I had a say, even if that meant I had to get creative.
Because I was a woman, and therefore could not sit on the Post board of directors, Eddie would stand in for me at meetings. With Papa gone, we decided to establish a cabinet, an unofficial assemblage of the company’s top leadership, and I asked Uncle Cal to become the chairman of the board. My uncle, along with his longtime right-hand man within Post, an honest and friendly man named Colby Chester, would now manage the major decisions that Papa would have previously overseen. Eddie would keep me apprised of matters within the board. Uncle Cal would also seek my counsel and input, I knew, out of respect for Papa and our family, and so I could serve as a leader of the company, albeit in an unofficial capacity.