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Eliza Hamilton had put so much effort into her family, she had been so young when they got married and all she had wanted was to give her Alexander the kind of big loving family he had never gotten to have as a child. They had both wanted that, they had both put in the efforts. Somehow they had lost themselves in the flurry of laundry and grades and piano lessons that it took to raise eight children and near single handedly form a national bank. At some point both Eliza and Alexander had disappeared to the stress of their chosen careers and given into the days and days of posing and bragging.
Still, how had she never noticed? This girl had been in her home for years and she had never noticed. Alexander had broughten this girl, so painfully young and naive she hadn’t even realized she was being used as a pawn in someone else’s game of chess. She wanted to be angry but she couldn’t bring herself to that same fit of rage she had been in when she had first read his publication but; How did it all happen here?
“There was a time your father swept me off my feet.” It was the first time she was acknowledging her son standing in front of her. “We would sit and read together for hours, and just talk about our future, how wonderful it would be.” There were tears in her eyes now as well as Phillip’s. “He used to say I was the only one who could understand how he saw the world, he used to let me write for him when his hands ached.” It had been so long since she had even stepped foot in his office, the thought of the room made her start to feel sick.
“Don’t ever get yourself into a mess like this, don’t let your wife make sacrifices for you because she thinks she has to.” Eliza loves all of her children, and she would happily have all eight of them again but she wish she had been more like her sister, gotten herself a career after college instead of being so quick to build her entire identity out of being a wife to Alexander and a mother to her children. Maybe that would have made all this easier, if she hadn’t dedicated herself to giving Alexander everything. Eliza’s life had been a beautiful crystal vase that she had painstakingly made and placed into the hands of someone else, only for Alexander to shatter it and lay their secrets bare all in the name of his legacy.
They had a beautiful home in Harlem, and even if Phillip was leaving for Columbia today there were still seven little children who saw this house as the only home they had ever known. Eliza needed to pull herself together for them, to pick up the pieces, to make it all polish and shine again for them. Her children didn’t deserve to be the victims of their parents poor choices. “Do not give away your days Philip.” She pressed a kiss to her sons cheek, embracing him tightly before watching him walk away from the once perfect him. His father would be dropping him off at Columbia today, and Eliza wished he would never have to come back to such a broken and imperfect home.