CARBON COPY

Chapter 15: A Dynamic Professional Duo

Chapter 15: A Dynamic  Professional Duo

The Hillcrest Hotel, Baltiney, New York...

     Fake smiles and pleasant speech had been all the rage as both the man of the hour Silas Windward and his lovely wife Beth Windward moved about the elegant hotel where a party in their honor had been hosted. Silas had been the city's most prominent businessman and philanthropist and his lovely wife Beth had been on his arm for much of his rise to fame and power. They had been like night and day when in the presence of admirers and people with bloated wallets willing to throw their money in the lot with their own on various projects and business acquisitions. Beth had always known how to work and room and Silas had been a man that commanded undivided attention no matter what had been going on. Both Windwards had been well aware that they had been under a good deal of scrutiny and then some. Neither of them was of the mind to give their rivals the satisfaction of being able to outdo them. As a result, both effortlessly got along when in the presence of the socialite company and potential investors in their various projects and charities. 

Beth Windward had been quite the talk of the town as far as her own accomplishments had gone, being one of the biggest socialites in the city seemed to make it possible to open doors for even the most mundane of people whenever someone curried her favor it was almost always known that they needed or wanted a favor from her husband. It had been rather difficult for Silas not to have been proud of the woman he had married, she'd gone from a clueless young thing to being the talk of the social-lite world given her lack of meaningful skill in anything else. She wasn't much of a homemaker, they had servants for that. She was even less capable of being a wife and mother, her affairs and frequent bouts of drunkenness had made her hardly one to approach for a measure of affection, at least that was the case following the tragic events that led to Silas and Beth's firstborn daughter perishing in the wake of a fatal car accident courtesy of her no good boyfriend, Rod whom she had only dated due to it earning the direct disapproval of her parents, most notably her father in the process. 

Katherine Leanne Windward affectionately known as "Kathy" had been the main reason for the colossal rift between Silas Windward II and his wife Beth. She blamed him most of all which had been nothing new given he'd suffered the brunt of her hatred and disdain ever since they'd gotten married. Their marriage had been hastily arranged by her father, Leonard Milton, who had been attempting to get into Silvanus "Silas" Elrod Sylvester Windward S.R's good graces. Silas II had known better than anyone that there was no good when it came to his father's graces if he even had any. 

Milton had despised his most defiant younger daughter's attitude and her embarrassing relationship with a young Collin Daves, a clerk who worked at the post office, and ended up forcing Beth to marry Silas II as a means of keeping the two lovers away from each other and currying favor with Silas I. Rumors had been going about that Beth had been pregnant from a first-time encounter with Collin and simply passed the child that would be Kathy off as Silas II's. Still, he had never cared one way or the other and protected her during the most difficult and early states of their marriage. 

She'd grown into a fine young woman all things considered given her age when they were wed and the position her father and his had put her through. She mellowed a bit with Kathy's birth and even delighted in her second pregnancy with their daughter Carolanne. Their only son Everette had come along some years later and their lives had been for or less normal for much of the time. Kathy's rebellion and later death left a rift between them and the household at large with Carolanne pushing her luck with a rebellion of her own often throwing her older sister's death in her parents' face to get her way. Everette had more or less been a shy and awkward by who kept to himself and had been even more traumatized by the rift in the family being he'd been the youngest in the household.