it again one day,” she said sadly. “We would have gotten nothing for it when we sold the house. Everything was selling for so little, and no one had any money. So I kept the best pieces. They’re a memory of a happier time,” she said wistfully. Selling the house and everything in it had been so hard. She never talked about it and neither had Charles. And Eleanor didn’t want to upset her now. It wasn’t hurting anyone in the barn, so she dropped the subject when she saw the pain in her mother’s eyes. She wasn’t ready to give up the last vestiges of their past, even now. “Your wedding dress is there too. And your debut gown,” Louise added, and Eleanor smiled thinking of it, and so did Louise. No one had dresses like that anymore, or weddings like hers. It was part of a lost era, a time that would never come again. Everything had crashed around them, only weeks after their wedding. Their apartment in Chinatown was a sharp contrast to their old way of life, which seemed like a dream now.
They had to decide too, with her father gone, who would oversee the Tahoe estate for the earl. It ran itself with the people Charles had hired, but it needed someone on the spot to keep an eye on things. Alex told Eleanor he’d be happy to do it, when they came up for weekends. And her mother was well aware of how things should look, and loved the gardens. The earl had sent a very kind condolence letter to Louise and hadn’t been pressuring them about who would replace Charles. Both women were grateful to Alex for the offer. He couldn’t walk, but he could certainly come up and speak to the groundskeepers and the gardeners, the boatmen and the maintenance people, and he needed something to do. He didn’t want to sit around and be an invalid for the rest of his life. It reminded Eleanor of what a blessing it had been that her parents had been able to continue living on the estate, thanks to the absentee owner. They didn’t seem to miss the big house they had occupied there before, or at least they never said so. But she wondered about it now, with her mother storing so much in the barn, hoping they would need it again one day. But for what? Their old way of life and the houses that went with it would never return.
It was a difficult summer unexpectedly in the end. In August, a month before Eleanor and Alex were due to return to the city, and she was planning to go back to town to find an apartment that would work for Alex, her mother had a heart attack. The shock of losing her husband had been too much for her. Eleanor and Alex had a serious conversation while Louise was in the hospital. Eleanor didn’t want to leave her alone in Tahoe, she was fragile now, and there was no one to look after her. And Alex had thrived in Tahoe over the summer.
“Maybe I should take a leave of absence this year, so I can stay here with her?” Eleanor suggested. They didn’t have a place they could live in now in the city anyway. Alex couldn’t get up the stairs of the Chinatown apartment in his wheelchair. And she hadn’t had time to find another one yet. A year in Tahoe would give Alex time to get stronger, and help manage the estate at close range. And the money her father had left her made her job at the school less of a dire necessity. She could take a year off if she felt she had to, and it looked that way. She hadn’t touched her father’s money and didn’t intend to, and they spent almost nothing in Tahoe. They talked about it for several days, and by the time Louise got out of the hospital, they had made the decision to stay in Tahoe for a year. It seemed to be what they needed to do, and made sense to all of them.
Eleanor didn’t feel comfortable leaving her mother alone now, so soon after her father’s death, and in ill health. And Alex liked the prospect of staying in Tahoe. He had no idea what he was going to do in the city. He could return to his bank job eventually, losing his legs didn’t affect his