Ep. 8 - The Gannette Family Fallout
One of Gail's trips home was quite memorable. A troop of entertainers came through town on their way West. They decided to put on a show for the locals and even some of the people from around the area thought they would cash in and take advantage of the situation.
In one of the booths, Gail and her sisters decided to visit a strange fortune teller. She seemed familiar, but she couldn't really place the face. The kind woman invited the girls into the tent to tell about their future love life.
All the girls were raised to fear such things as the supernatural as they were tools of Satan. Curiosity got the best of Gail who ignored the pleas of her sisters not to follow the strange woman who looked eerily like that strange woman on the edge of town. Gail wanted a thrill. She wanted confirmation of what she believed life would hold for her - a rich man would marry her, let her do as she pleased, and she would remain child-free so she could travel without having to worry about children tying her down.
If she heard anything else, she would write off the reading as a fake fortune teller. Gail knew herself and knew what kind of man she would marry. She really did not need a fortune teller to tell her the future because she knew in spite of what her mother and father told her, in spite of what the nuns told her, in spite of what was expected of women, she was going to be footloose and fancy free. Marrying one man and staying faithful while raising a brood of children is what she thought of as hell.
The strange woman asked Gail to sit down and reached across the table in the dimly lit room to take her hand and trace the lines in her palm. She offered Gail some tea and encouraged her to drink it down as she sat and gazed into the ball on the table. As soon as Gail finished drinking, the woman dumped the leaves from the bottom of the cup onto a special cloth and examined the patter.
"You are quite the adventurous one, young lady. I see you are living a double life. Your parents, most of your family, and tutors all believe you are one way, but behind their backs you live a totally different and wild life. You think you are quite smart and have everyone fooled."
"Go on."
"You are not really as smart as you think you are. The ones you think you have fooled have only been looking the other way because they fear what you will do will sully their own reputations and well beings, so they pretend you are the good girl they want you to be and hope you will not be so foolish to bring real shame to them."
The strange woman paused as she glanced on the cloth of leaves, then she gazed into the ball when a look of horror came into her eyes, "It is you. You are the key that holds havoc in this town. Your thoughtless ways will cross the paths of innocent lives and you will bind them all to hell. Your ways are so vain and shallow that all the words I say to you will never sink into your mind. You think the world is yours and you can have your way no matter who gets hurt. You are so wrong, my child, and I must bid you farewell. Evil is of your own doing."
"What's that supposed to mean you crazy woman?"
"Farewell. Please go. I have nothing further to say to you."
As Gail left the woman's tent to meet with her sisters, she noticed that strange woman from the edge of town walk by. A chill went down her spine and Enid looked her straight in her eyes, like she was giving her the evil eye. Gail could not hold her tongue, "Go to that batty woman's tent, she is just as strange as you."
Gail and her sisters had a good laugh at the expense of those they thought of as beneath them all the time. Only this time as they laughed, a black cat came running past their paths and the laughter stopped. A runaway horse was breaking free from the carriage full of people when it bolted into her youngest sister, killing her instantly and it injured her middle sister causing her to become unable to function below her neck. Gail only suffered the humiliation of having her dress torn off in a public area, which would have been mortifying enough if it were not for the serious nature of what happened to her sisters in comparison.
This was a very stressful time for the Gannette family which used to seem like the most powerful family at one time. Now all kinds of problems seemed to rain down upon them. Gwendolyn took to drink and was rarely seen in public after her daughter's death and to see the life of her other daughter hopeless where there was nothing else she could do for her. It would take Gwendolyn a mere 20 years of extremely heavy drinking to bring her to an early grave. Pierre was unable to get her to stop that habit as he had too many fires to control and she was only doing this to herself in private, so it was an acceptable loss for him. He did love that woman at one time, but she had become a different person.
Although Gail could not prove it, she knew somewhere in the back of her mind, that Enid Kenzie must have had something to do with the incident. She would never trust nor forgive that strange woman for what happened. As for that fortune teller, she wrote that off as a cheap parlor trick that did not mean anything. She always suspected the two may have been related or even the same person, but she had no way of proving it because on one level she did not believe in witchcraft, magic or spells. However, there was a part of her that suspected if there were such a thing, Enid was probably involved.
Things changed drastically around the Gannette home. With one daughter dead and another one put under lifelong care with a nurse, hidden away in a far wing of the mansion, Gail was now the prized daughter, the only bargaining chip Pierre could have in a business deal. Given Gail's earlier scandal in town, Pierre was going to see to it that she was kept on a short leash. Any more scandal would not only make Gail undesirable in any high class circle and bring shame unto the family name. If such a time would come, Pierre made it clear to Gail that she would be disowned in an instant and forced out of town.
When Wayne became one of the wealthier men in town, and one of the major competitors to Pierre's locally owned industries, it seemed like the best time to pawn off his oldest daughter before she became too much of a burden. Alliances were made against Gail's wishes as she was given an ultimatum, make Wayne marry her and get all the money and power she craved or fail in this and be disowned. Gail had no other real choice. She loved the money and power. Without it, she would be no better than the others she laughed at. Besides, she always saw that man as a big pushover.
Gail pried herself into Wayne's life and faked a pregnancy to get him to marry her. It worked a lot better than she had hoped because he was on the verge of marrying another woman, Enid. There was no way she would let Enid win over her.
Gail had no desire for Wayne. In fact, she was sleeping with just about every other man in Paris while they were on their honeymoon in hopes that someone more worthy would be the father of her firstborn. Gail would, from time to time, grace Wayne's bed, but would lay there and let him finish his business. Eventually, she was able to conceive a child, but the paternity of the young boy would never be solved.
Gail gloated in her win and was even happier at the news of the death of Enid, but was less than thrilled her husband had a child with that woman. On orders of her father, she was to immediately produce a child with that man and make the other child disappear. Gail pressured Wayne to get rid of the child by announcing she would stay at her father's home until that child was gone and her father would see to it he did the right thing.
Under pressure from Pierre and the growing scandal in town, the young Agatha was sent away. No one knew exactly where she was sent, except for Wayne who knew she was in good hands. That left a bitter Wayne stuck with a wife and child he did not want and the guilt of what he had done weighing heavily on his mind.
Claude was never Pierre's favourite son, even if he were the older one. The older he got, the more it was clear that he was not interested in women in the way that would be acceptable in society. Everyone in town knew about his very close friendship with Jonathan Smythe, but in polite society they were only friends. No one would dare speak of such a scandal to a Gannette unless they misbehaved in public. Claude worked as Jonathan's secretary and bookkeeper.
Besides, Jonathan seemed like such an everyday common man. He would go to the meetings in town and lead in improvements to the community. He would volunteer at the shelter quite often as this was his first home when he came to town. He was a successful business man partnered with Wayne Brecklin. All the women in town were enamored with his sense of fashion, kind manners, and soft spoken ways. If he were a homosexual, it would be hard to equate such a thing to a man most people liked. A town with almost Puritan values equated such behaviour as evil as witchcraft and it could not be tolerated.
Evander was born quite fragile. His birth caused Gwendolyn Gannette to become sterile. Evander was Pierre's bright hope at a future for the family line to continue. However, Evander was quite headstrong and disliked his father's ruthless business tactics. He witnessed his father take land away from people illegally and paid officials to look the other way. One of his friends from town was a servant girl who was sold off into the Johnson home. They took her in with the goal of freeing her when they taught her some skills so she could become a productive member of society. Pierre thought the idea of taking in such a person with a goal making her an equal was dangerous and could not be tolerated.
Young Ada Johnson was homesick for her parents who were stuck in a plantation in Alabama. She knew she was being given a wonderful opportunity, but it still could not make up for the fact she will never see her family again. Evander saw her running errands in town and noticed her crying. He went up to her to give her some comfort until his father came and scolded him for talking with the rabble from town. That did not stop Evander from seeing her. In fact, it made him more determined to continue his friendship with the young lady.
Upon Ada's 18th birthday, she was given a plot of land to call her own. After the death of Enid Kenzie, there was a large plot of land not being used. The rightful owner of that land would be Agatha Kenzie who was believed to be in an orphanage, but that did not matter to the townspeople who viewed it as free land up for grabs. The Johnson family laid claim to a portion of it and built a home from Miss Ada. A plot that was about an acre away from the foundation of the ruins of the Kenzie home.
Pierre wanted Ada out of town, especially as his son has taken a liking to her. Whenever he turned his back, Evander would be visiting her home helping her out in whatever way she needed. Being one of the minority handful of outcasts in town, Ada appreciated anyone who would give her the time of the day. What Evander did for her was more than she ever expected from anyone, especially from a white man of the richest family in town.
This young couple was a situation Pierre was not about to tolerate much longer. Although it would mean having to right a wrong his family have committed against Enid Kenzie, it was a way to keep her son away from that woman. Declaring that property belonging to legal ownership of Agatha Kenzie, he arranged it so Ada could only be a tenant of the land and the Gannette family would be the legal guardians of the property until young Miss Kenzie were old enough to claim it. Of course he hoped a mere woman would never be so bold as to claim property if she were in an orphanage, he also made a clause in the statement that if she should not lay claim to it he would become full owner of that property.
Catching on to the evil plot of Pierre to steal the rightful land of his daughter, Wayne set about the legal ownership of the rest of the land Pierre did not take. He was determined the least he could do is preserve some land for his flesh and blood and at least pay homage to the only real friend he ever had by naming key areas of the land after Enid or Agatha or the Kenzie name.
With the local in-fighting of the property rights, a judge had to intervene to settle the matter by dividing the land with legal property deeds. In the process, Ada was granted her plot of land which highly angered Pierre. He wanted to control her plot in order to get her out of town, now he had a lot of land surrounding her plot, but none of it of real value to his current needs. What made Pierre even angrier is to discover the judge turned against his attempt to buy the property from under Ada because Evander paid off the judge to go in her favour. Evander knew if his father had his way, Ada would be far away and he would never see her again.
Pierre then had another family disaster to contend with when Gail was caught in bed with Jonathan by important people from town, including Pastor Johnson. It would be harder now for him to get the moral high road over the Johnson family in getting Ada out of town because his daughter was officially the town tramp. The chaos continued in his home because the once close Gail and Claude were no longer on speaking terms. Although they would never discuss the argument with anyone else, Pierre knew it was because she was caught in bed with his boyfriend. The blessing in disguise was now that Jonathan was caught in bed with a woman the rumour about him being a homosexual went away and they discounted any notion that he was in a serious relationship with Claude.
Wayne stayed with Gail up until the time she gave birth to Jacques, a healthy baby boy that did not look like either Wayne nor Gail. Out of obligation, he felt it was his duty to hold his head high above the scandal his wife created when she went to meet Jonathan in the hotel in town. A pregnant woman having an affair in such an non-discreet way was seen as the only legitimate reason for a divorce that would not cause him any further scandal. The fact that he stayed in the relationship until the baby was born only made him seem a saint to the rest of the community. When it was very clear he was not the father of the child, he filed for a divorce and gave Gail and her child the boot from his home.
Gail ran to her father's home only to be turned away at the door. The servants were not going to let her in to see her father and she screamed and yelled, demanding to see her mother or father. Her mother was passed out as a drunken mess in her room and could not help. Her father was tired of the noise and came to the door.
"I have no daughter. Go away before I call the jailers to take you away. If you were wise, you would leave town now and do not approach us again."
Gail was distraught. She was tied down to a child she did not want and had no money and nowhere to go. Even her family in France would have nothing to do with her. Feeling drawn to the spot where Enid's foundation was growing overrun by weeds, she found a nearby tree and hung herself with a crying baby in a swaddling cloth crying his lungs out. Miss Ada heard the noise and discovered the body swinging from the tree. She grabbed the poor child and took him in. Ada tried to talk Wayne into taking the child, but he refused. She went to Pierre with the child, but he refused to speak with her. It seemed as if she could either turn the child over to an orphanage or raise it as her own.
A very bitter Wayne realised his life may as well be over. He was going to hell. What he thought he wanted was not the what was best for him. He destroyed the best chance he had of a good life. Now he was mocked by an ex-wife's suicide, a child he would not take in no matter how much Pierre pressured him, and a business that although it was thriving felt empty. If it were not for the fact that he wanted to leave a positive legacy for his daughter when Hestia would return with her, he probably would have killed himself to spare the pain of this lifetime.
Young Jacques needed a mother and a father. Ada was too much of a caring person to turn away a child, even if she had little means to keep herself. Evander was a great help to her in this situation as he supplied her and the child with whatever they needed. He found himself growing closer and closer to the two and his relationship grew with Ada. Eventually, Ada found herself with Evander's child. This was more of a scandal than Pierre wanted for his family. There was no way Pierre would acknowledge a woman of this nature to raise two of his grandchildren.
It was hard enough for him to force Wayne to take the child away to keep Evander away from Ada, but his refusal made the two get closer as they now had a child to raise. Now that Evander was expecting a natural child with a woman of colour, no one in town would ever accept such a thing, especially if a Gannette were involved.
Pierre gave Evander an ultimatum. He knew of his plans to marry the woman and live with her to become a family. This was not acceptable. Evander was groomed all his life to take over the family business. A scandal as this would never work. He knew his son had a kind heart towards that woman and Jacques, the grandson she was raising, but now that she was carrying another one of his grandchildren, Evander would want to do the right thing and marry her.
The ultimatum he gave to Gail only led to the scandal and her suicide, a shame the family would never live down in that town. He could not bare another failed ultimatum. He told Evander that he would allow him to take over the family business upon his death, so long as he did not marry that woman. He said Evander could continue seeing her, supporting her, and helping her out whenever she needed, but as far as the town was concerned, she would be his charity case. If he married her, he would turn his back on them and the town being as racist as they are would lynch them both.
It seemed clear that Evander had to keep his relationship hidden from the town in order to do right by his real family, so he agreed to the terms. He told Ada of the situation and she agreed this was probably for the best. Evander arranged to buy out the rest of her family from their slave owners and have them live with Ada in her home to help her out. By the darkness of night, Evander would visit his true love and be her husband until dawn when he would run out before the rest of the town would wake up and run the Gannette business to provide for his secret family.
Pierre arranged for his sons to marry women he brought in from royal family lineages from France and England. If they both wished to continue using the family money and power, it was time for them to both step up to the plate and try to look as if they were acceptable members of the town. All parties knew these were marriages in title only, there was no love expected on any end.
Evander had children by his wife and his oldest son by his wife would go on to inherit all the family power and wealth. Evander left a small fortune for his true family with Ada, who never married anyone else and had three more children with him.
Claude never had children with his wife who was allowed to come and go back home to England. Claude continued on with his relationship with Jonathan in secret. Jonathan eventually married a woman from town who knew of his secret and faithfully kept it for him. He allowed her to have any man on the side so long as she was discreet.
Wayne eventually was fed up with the constant pressure and demands from Pierre. Knowing his status as a half-immortal of the last generation, he knew Pierre would be desperately trying to hang on to his life and legacy because at the end of his life he would no longer be able to experience anything ever again. Unlike Enid who could receive visits from her mother who is an immortal, Pierre would have no visits because he was the third generation of near-immortals and had no connection with his lineage.
His mere evil nature were more than enough to keep his family away. Unlike what the Puritan-like people thought, the immortals were not evil beings that rejected their God, but creatures of the darkness with their own set of values. They rejected those who were selfish to the point of destruction of others. The powers they had made it so they could indulge in all their desires, so long as they did no harm to others in the process. Pierre had crossed that line so many times that no one of the Darkness wanted to acknowledge him.
It would take an awesome event to trap Pierre and give him what he deserved. Wayne knew of his bleak fate, but would do whatever it took to make sure Pierre would go down with him.