Camille White stood upon the barren expanse of land she had recently bought. It was the first home that was truly hers, even though it wasn't much to be proud of yet. This was the beginning of her life... though it had taken several endings to get her here.




For long months she'd been by her mother's bedside in Pleasantview Memorial Hospital, praying for her to survive the cancer. Camille had just turned eighteen and had graduated high school, though college would be a financial impossibility. She didn't care. All she wanted was for her mother to be healthy again.




Eventually, they both had to accept that Lucy's life was coming to a close. And so, she finally gave her daughter the truth she'd hidden for eighteen years: the identity of her father. Richard Henry Foxworth III, the wealthiest and most powerful businessman in Veronaville. Camille had been conceived during a single night that Richard would later deny ever happened. He didn't need an illegitimate child with a poor waitress marring his reputation. But, Lucy impressed upon Camille during her last days alive... Richard was all she had left.




It seemed Camille's tears would never end once her mother was dead and buried. She'd been Camille's rock, her best friend, her confidant... the only person in the world who loved her. Where would she turn now? How would she survive with no money, no skills, no hope for a future at all?




She had no choice but to find the father she'd never known; a father who'd never wanted her. The father she'd yearned for all of her life; the father she'd wished she'd had every time she saw other little girls basking in the warm love of their daddies. Each minute of the bus ride to Veronaville found her ever more nervous and anxious, even as she crafted the speech she would deliver to earn his compassion and sympathy, if not his love.




But the moment Richard Henry Foxworth III realized exactly who this young lady was, it became clear she would never win his love. He didn't need this stain on the fabric of his life any more now than he did eighteen years earlier. He had a wife, and a family of his own; he couldn't have this poor, uneducated girl ruining all of that. Camille hadn't been prepared for how much this rejection would hurt, and oh, did it hurt.




She pleaded with him, begged him to reconsider. She needed him. She had no one else to turn to, nowhere else to go. And so, the business tycoon tried to solve this problem as he did any other: he threw money at it. He wrote Camille a check for $20,000. All she had to do was disappear from his life, and forget he existed.




Once he stormed out of his modern office, Camille broke down into tears. Money. She didn't want money! Money solved nothing! She needed family; she needed someone to care for her and love her. She needed a father! But she knew there would never be a place for her in his life. And she tried to tell herself that it was his loss, not hers.




She looked back at the cold building with a new bitterness in her heart. She didn't need him. She'd survived this long without him, after all. But one day, he would regret throwing away the daughter he thought an embarassment. One day, she would be somebody to be proud of. And he would know it, for she would bear his name from here on in. It would be a constant reminder to her of how important family was; and someday, it would remind Richard Henry Foxworth III of what he lost.




In this day and age, $20,000 did not go very far. But it was enough for Camille to buy a plot of land in the countryside of Veronaville, and to build on it a small trailer that would be her home. And so began her new life as Camille Foxworth, a woman without a family, or an education, or very much money. But she had faith in herself, and a strong determination to survive. And that was enough... for now.