3 March 2026, Freewriters Community Daily Writing Prompt Day 3031: not representative of the facts

The thing about a divorce, long ago … and then discovering two of your children survived the aftermath: you discover that you have more obligations than you thought.

Not that Frank and Francesca Wainwright, born Ludlow but adopted by the Wainwrights after surviving their mother's last act of of hatred against their father, needed anything from their biological father, Capt. R.E. Ludlow, than what their chance meeting and initial discovery of the other's identity offered: an extension of family love, for as it happened, Sgt. Joe Wainwright had served with the captain and was among the captain's favorite fellow servicemen. They also were distant cousins, but because Joe and Melba Wainwright lived in the Blue Ridge foothills, they had not realized until the discovery.

The real challenge was that Frank and Francesca had a right to something that Capt. Ludlow had blocked out of his memory for close to 20 years: their mother's parents, their maternal grandparents.

This also jogged the captain's memory that his own grandchildren had a set of living great-grandparents.

There was just one problem.

“I've made a point not to think about the in-laws who assisted their daughter in putting on the front that I bought, lock, stock, and barrel,” he said to his second wife, Thalia. “I've made a point of not remembering how they aided and abetted her in her double life by enabling her to keep on doing whatever she wanted to whoever she wanted before and during our marriage, and then tried to wreck things for their grandchildren. I am a dangerous man, and I was pretty upset back then.”

The Lofton County Bell-Holmeses were the cousins to the Maryland Holmeses who had produced Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and also to Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. This meant they were well situated in high blue-blood affairs in the United States, and well situated in money, too. They liked to think that Capt. Ludlow was marrying up in marrying their daughter … but they too had blocked out something from memory: Hilda “Grandee” Lee, great-grand-niece of General Robert E. Lee. That was the captain's grandmother. She had not liked the Holmeses from the beginning, but respected her grandson's wishes and was kind to her granddaughter-in-law until the truth came out.

Thus it was that the Bell-Holmes's attempts at damage control and blaming Capt. Ludlow for the divorce went wrong spectacularly, and why Alexandra had no recourse but to grant the captain the quiet settlement he offered her – well, that was the second reason.

“She knew me well enough to know what her family needed my Lee family to explain to them: if I offer you peace, you had better take it, because war is a messy thing,” Capt. Ludlow said about that.

The Lees-of-the-mountain and the Lees-of-the-valley in Lofton County had all rallied up, and Lees further on had let it be known they were available if needed. Nobody was going to railroad Grandee Lee's favorite grandson for any reason whatsoever.

“Now, Robert, you know that if you had done wrong by Alexandra, all this would be your problem,” the grandmother had told her grandson. “But continue to do right. Your children are watching and must make their own decisions, but in the meantime, the Bell-Holmes's problems will remain their problems.”

So, the divorce had gone off quietly … and the Bell-Holmeses hated Capt. Ludlow for sparing them the embarrassment because they had not been able to push that off on him and position their daughter as the victim so she could move on to the next stooge easily. The captain had proven to be the end of the line for that. She knew it, and intended to kill herself and their children in her womb as revenge – but they had come a week prematurely, and were so beautiful – blond hair, blue eyes, like both herself and her husband's gorgeousness combined – that she could not load them back into the car that she would drive into a deep valley shortly after giving birth, but left them by the side of the road.

And so, Frank and Francesca had never known about any of the multi-generational drama between their families … but that would go on …

After Alexandra Ludlow's death, Capt. Ludlow made the best of the fact that he had not embarrassed her as she deserved because he loved their children that he knew about: Robert Jr. and Anne, both in their late teens at this time. He took a year's leave from the Army to get them through their legitimate grief for their mother, and also to keep their mother's parents from making that bad situation worse. They tried so hard to prove the captain an unfit father in that year … but Robert Jr. made 18 and that was that, and Anne turned 18 the year following. They knew what their mother had done, and they knew their grandparents had been no help – so they rejected their grandparents and moved on with life, too.

That left the Bell-Holmes in-laws with nothing for their trouble. Other members of the family advised them to let it go: they had gotten off very easy, all things considered. But, the traits that had made Alexandra who she was had come from somewhere … and all that focused on Capt. Ludlow, the steely survivor.

“So, they spiraled out of control – I mean they were blowing the house phone every day since of course Alexandra had left it to our kids but they still needed me to take care of things so of course I moved back in and thus took it right back,” Capt. Ludlow said. “There is no more inventive man with an obsessive story about how I was totally wrong than Alexander Holmes. Never mind that his stories are not representative of the facts – the sheer inventiveness is astonishing. Priscilla is in his amen corner, always.”

In the end, Robert Jr. and Anne sold the house since neither they nor their father wanted to live there; Capt. Ludlow facilitated the sale for the young heirs and turned the money over to them. They went off to college, and he returned to the military, leaving their Bell-Holmes grandparents with no number to call.

“Last I heard, they are still doing a whole bunch of generalized ranting,” Capt. Ludlow said, “but I don't even care to know the details."

The second Mrs. Ludlow considered all this with a sigh.

“Look at it this way, Robert. You found out Frank and Francesca were doing well from Col. Lee's investigation, and chose not to announce yourself so as not to disrupt their lives. The Lord worked it out that all of you would get to know each other anyway. So: if your twins get curious about their biological mother and her family, just tell the truth. They are 19, not Eleanor's age or younger. They have a right to go looking if they want, and like your known two children, they will figure it out.”

“19 is still young for such a heavy legacy,” he said. “I feel guilty for not having vetted Alexandra and her family to this day – I created this entire mess for all of our shared descendants.”

“But that was also God's plan so they would have some sane descendants,” Mrs. Thalia said.

“Well, there is that,” Capt. Ludlow said. “Hadn't looked at it that way. “I paid for that in heart blood – but you know what? I'd pay it again in a heartbeat, so, yes, we'll just look at it like that and praise the Lord!”

Then he chuckled grimly.

“Do you know just how bad a family situation is if you have to get sane descendants through Robert Edward 'Hell to Pay' Ludlow, a distaff Lee, too, with that family's known problems?”

“I will never know,” Mrs. Ludlow said, “and neither will Frank, Francesca, Eleanor, Andrew, George, Edwina, Amanda, Grayson, or Lil' Robert.”

Capt. Ludlow sighed with relief.

“God is good, indeed,” he said.