When she was nearly seven years old, Katherine-Scarlett left her father in cold, hard New York City for the dreary suburbs of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Being seven years old, there wasn't much for her to mind, apart from her dolls and going to school. It wasn't until her maid had packed all of her and her brother's things into many suitcases, and her mother yanked her onto a plane at Idlewild Airport, that she was coldly told that she was never going to see her father again.
She remembered crying hysterics, not because she missed her father, but because she didn't understand what was going on. Being seven years old, she could only ask why they were moving and why the older von Walderberg wasn't joining them.
Her brother, Paulie, sat next to her with a stony grimace and silent tears.
In tough situations he never verbalised his pain. He just held himself together until the pain was gone, then allow himself to focus on being happy.
Just like their mother, Charlotte, whatever emotions he felt; hysterics, anger, confusion, or whatever was brewing in his heart, he concealed it under a cold mask of indifference.
He always did.
It was somehow as if that plane ride from Idlewild to Tulsa symbolised his own transformation from the baby boy of the von Walderberg line to the man of their new family; the Holdens.
It was their mother's maiden name.
The Holdens were comrades of the Confederacy, and were staunchly proud of their Louisiana roots, save for the fact that it was well after the Restoration, that they had migrated to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Their name only started meaning something after her great grandpappy, Paul Clarence Holden acquired most of the oil rigs in Tulsa county and made a million a night.
Charlotte Florence Holden liked to say she was hailed from the mighty South, leaving acquaintances with the impression of great big Georgian plantations, white lady refinery, and summertime sweetness so sought after in Southern wives. The truth of the matter was, she was from the South, just not as deep as she liked to have claimed.
Tulsa, Oklahoma nowhere near captured the romance of gallant soldiers and white opulence of the Deep South.
All it had to offer to the ritzy Upper East side von Walderberg's was a stately home in the western suburbs of town and a monthly allowance from their retired grandpappy.
With carefully constructed false pretenses Charlotte Holden reentered Tulsa society with the grace and elegance that won her Miss Oklahoma 1941. She became the town favorite again by hosting the morning news show and running the annual Miss Blue Ribbon pageant.
Paul fitted right into the crowd like an old beloved baseball mitt with his churlish friendliness and eagerness for sport. He never showed any pain of being deprived of a father figure, but Katherine noticed how frequently he and his best buddy Darryl, would tag Darryl's dad. They looked like the ideal father with his sons picture, save one son being blonde with blue eyes.
Somehow though, Katherine didn't seem to meld in just like her mother and brother did. She hated the country town she was locked into, and she hated the dumb southern twang the people talked with.
It didn't mean she wasn't the outsider in her age group, although she felt like it. She was very much in with the crowd she was supposed to be with. But Tulsa wasn't her home; she was a Yankee, pure and simple.
Katherine ever wondered whether her brother and mother ever missed the Upper East. She wondered if they ever missed William von Walderberg, her father who she thought about nearly everyday.
If they did, they never showed signs that they did; only smiles of contentment with her slow lives in Tulsa.
And Katherine hated that.