hospital and see Camille again. He hadn’t seen her in over a year, and he doubted that she’d remember him. Eleanor had told her that her daddy would be coming home now.
He was making good progress in April when Eleanor got a call from her mother early one morning as she was getting Camille ready for school. Louise was sobbing almost incoherently. Charles had died in his sleep. His heart had given out. He was only sixty-five, but the hard blows he had lived through had aged him prematurely. He had looked much older in recent years, no matter how bravely he tried to face the changes in his life. He never complained or talked about the past, but he had never been quite the same again.
“Oh my God, Mama, I’m so sorry,” she said, crying herself as Camille watched her, shocked to see her mother crying. “I’ll come up later today, as soon as I tell Alex and the school. I’ll take care of everything.” Her mother couldn’t stop crying, and Eleanor’s mind was racing. She had so much to do now, and she had to get to her mother. It almost obscured her own grief for her father. But she knew he would want her to take care of her mother. This was going to be a crushing loss for her, which could easily kill her too, and Eleanor didn’t want that to happen.
After she dropped Camille off at the sitter, she explained at school that she needed the rest of the week off to arrange her father’s funeral. At another time, fifteen years before, her father’s death would have made her an heiress of vast proportions, now it would barely make a ripple in their lives. As far as she knew, he had very little left, just a few investments he had mentioned to her and her mother over the years, that he would be leaving them one day. She had never allowed her father to tell her about them in any depth, and he didn’t insist. She didn’t want to talk about what would happen when he died. And now he had, and she knew nothing. Whatever he had managed to save would go to support her mother. And she didn’t expect it to be much. It was the least of her problems right now. She had Alex to take care of, and Camille, and her mother now too. Louise had always relied totally on Charles, and her world revolved around him.
Miss Benson told her to take the rest of the week off. After she thanked her, Eleanor went to the military hospital in the Presidio to see Alex. He was surprised and pleased to see her so early in the day, but as he saw her approach, he could see that something was wrong. Eleanor looked devastated. He held his breath, praying that nothing had happened to Camille.
“What is it? Why are you here so early?” he asked, dreading her answer.
“It’s my father,” she said and dissolved in tears. And this time he comforted her, as she had done so lovingly for him. She had convinced him that they would manage without a problem. She would continue working. He would get a pension and maybe would find some kind of job that suited him. They would save a little money here and there. And the loss of Alex’s salary was small. Eleanor refused to be defeated, and she was carrying Alex along, on the strength of her love for him. But now the loss of her father had hit her hard, and it would hit her mother even harder. After leaving Camille with the neighbor again, Eleanor left for Tahoe that night in Alex’s car, which was getting old, and she used it sparingly.
She found her mother awake and distraught when she got there. Louise was bereft.
“I don’t know how I’m going to go on without him,” she said to Eleanor, as they sat and held hands in the living room in the house she had made so pretty for them.
“You have to, Mother. We need you. I need you. And you have a granddaughter who loves you.” Louise looked at her as though she were lost in the forest. Eleanor realized now that her father had been her mother’s reason for living. She had been the stronger of the two and had kept him going since they’d lost everything fourteen years before. It had taken a toll on her too.