Morning Noon & Night by Sidney Sheldon

day, when one of Julia’s classmates teased her about being poor, Julia said defiantly, “I’m not poor! My father is one of the richest men in the world. We have a yacht and an airplane, and a dozen beautiful homes.”
    Her teacher heard her. “Julia, come up here.”
    Julia approached the teacher’s desk. “You must not tell a lie like that.”
    “It’s not a lie,” Julia retorted. “My father is a billionaire! He knows presidents and kings!”
    The teacher looked at the young girl standing before her in her shabby cotton dress and said, “Julia, that’s not true.”
    “It is!” Julia said stubbornly.
    She was sent to the principal’s office. She never mentioned her father at school again.
    Julia learned that the reason she and her mother kept moving from city to city was because of the news media. Harry Stanford was constantly in the press, and the gossip newspapers and magazines kept digging up the old scandal. Investigative reporters would eventually discover who Rosemary Nelson was and where she lived, and she would have to take Julia and flee.
    Julia read every newspaper story that appeared about Harry Stanford, and each time, she was tempted to telephone him. She wanted to believe that during all those years he had been desperately searching for her mother. I’ll call and say, “This is your daughter. If you want to see us …”
    And he would come to them and fall in love all over again, and marry her mother, and they would all live happily together.
    Julia Stanford grew into a beautiful young woman. She had lustrous dark hair, a laughing, generous mouth, the luminous gray eyes of her father, and a gently curved figure. But when she smiled, people forgot about everything else but that smile.
    Because they were forced to move so often, Julia went to schools in five different states. During the summers she worked as a clerk in a department store, behind the counter in a drugstore, and as a receptionist. She was always fiercely independent.
    They were living in Kansas City, Kansas, when Julia finished college on a scholarship. She was not sure what she wanted to do with her life. Friends, impressed by her beauty, suggested that she become a movie actress.
    “You’d be a star overnight!”
    Julia had dismissed the idea with a casual, “Who wants to get up that early every morning?”
    But the real reason she was not interested was because she wanted, above all, her privacy. It seemed to Julia that all their lives, she and her mother had been hounded by the press because of what had happened so many years earlier.
    Julia’s dream of one day uniting her mother and father ended the day her mother died. Julia felt an overpowering sense of loss. My father has to know , Julia thought. Mother was a part of his life . She looked up the telephone number of his business headquarters in Boston. A receptionist answered.
    “Good morning, Stanford Enterprises.”
    Julia hesitated.
    “Stanford Enterprises. Hello? May I help you?”
    Slowly Julia replaced the receiver. Mother wouldn’t have wanted me to make that call .
    She was alone now. She had no one.
    Julia buried her mother at Memorial Park Cemetery in Kansas City. There were no other mourners. Julia stood at the graveside and thought, It isn’t fair, Mama. You made one mistake and paid for it the rest of your life. I wish I could have taken some of your pain away. I love you very much, Mama. I’ll always love you . All she had left of her mother’s years on earth was a collection of old photographs and clippings.
    With her mother gone, Julia’s thoughts turned to the Stanford family. They were rich. She could go to them for help. Never , she decided. Not after the way Harry Stanford treated my mother .
    But she had to earn a living. She was faced with a career decision. She thought wryly, Maybe I’ll become a brain surgeon .
    Or a painter?
    Opera singer?
    Physicist?
    Astronaut?
    She settled for a secretarial course at night school at Kansas City Kansas