him, and he told her how sorry he was about Charles, which brought tears to her eyes again, but she didn’t give in to them. She wanted to be strong for Eleanor and Alex, and all they had to face.
Their time together that summer was good for all of them. Louise and Eleanor had both been shocked at the reading of Charles’s will. He was by no means a rich man compared to what he had been, but he had made sound investments with what he had left, he had saved much of the money from the sale of the Tahoe property, and he spent almost none of what the earl paid him annually to run it. Louise would have no financial worries for the rest of her days, and he had left half of what he had to Eleanor, which would give them a cushion now, if none of them were extravagant.
Alex grew strong and healthy in the mountain air. He even devised a system to take Eleanor boating. He wheeled down to the boathouse with her one day, lifted himself into the driver’s seat of their favorite boat, and told his wife to get in, in front of him. He reached around her and held the steering wheel and instructed her to work the pedals, which were similar to those in a car. So together, they drove the boat, with Alex steering, and Eleanor in charge of the gas pedal and the brake. It was a little out of sync at first, but they both got the hang of it quickly, and had a good time running the boat around the lake, while her mother babysat for Camille, and was delighted to do it. She could hear the sound of Alex and Eleanor laughing as Eleanor pushed his chair back up from the lake. It was music to her ears. The agony of war was starting to dim for Alex, despite the horrors he had seen and what it had cost him. He still had nightmares on many nights, but they were fading slowly.
He had written to his brothers and told them about losing his legs. Both of them were desperately sorry to hear it. They couldn’t imagine him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, at his age. But after their initial sympathetic letters, he hadn’t heard from them again. In reality, he wasn’t part of their lives anymore, and only a distant voice from the past, and he knew it, and expected nothing of them. He kept in touch because they were his brothers, even if only in name. Eleanor and Camille were his life.
On a sunny summer day, Alex and Eleanor were just a happy couple, lying in a hammock and laughing or quietly side by side at night. Eleanor’s love and strength was healing him more than the doctors.
While Louise kept busy with her gardening, Eleanor decided to explore the barn one day. She was looking for something of her father’s that her mother had put away, a box of rare books that Alex remembered and wanted to see again. It had been years since Eleanor had looked into the barn with any seriousness, and as she peeked under the dust covers, some of them custom made, she pushed aside sheets and drapes and plastic covers and suddenly remembered more of the furniture she had grown up with in her parents’ house and how beautiful it was.
She was surprised by how much her mother had kept. There was nowhere for her to use it in the small house and the cottage at Lake Tahoe. There was enough there to furnish several houses, and it was sad to see it abandoned and unused, knowing they would never use it again. And in a stronger economy now, it was worth a lot of money, far more than when Louise had put it away. She mentioned it to her mother that night at dinner.
“Now that you’re going through Papa’s things, why don’t you send all of that furniture to auction? You might as well get rid of it, it’s been sitting in the barn for years.” Fourteen years to be exact, beautiful things but that she no longer had any interest in. At the time, Eleanor had paid no attention to what her mother put away. It seemed pointless to Eleanor to keep what was there. She thought they should sell it now.