for sale’? It would make a hell of a garage sale.” He smiled at her.
“I’m serious,” she said again as her eyes lit up with excitement. “What if we open a really high-end antique store?”
“Here?” It was a quiet community, and no one had fancy antiques worthy of Versailles at Lake Tahoe.
“No, in San Francisco. We could rent a shop in the right neighborhood. People have money now, and they’re willing to spend it. We have enough in the barn to supply a store for a couple of years.”
“And when we run out of your parents’ things?” He looked skeptical. It sounded a little crazy to him. Selling them at auction would be simpler.
“Then we go to Europe and buy more. The war will be over by then. I suspect there will be a lot of people there who have lost their fortunes, and will have to sell their chateaux and will want to sell their antiques. People don’t live like my parents did anymore. They want smaller homes, simpler things, but there must be a market for beautiful things, for people with money, just not on the grand scale that we grew up with. I don’t think any of us realized how remarkable it was. It seemed normal to us then. It was the only life we knew. We were the children of a golden era. I think we could have a very successful business with an antique store,” and it was something he could do too. He could help her run the business end, and he didn’t have to be able to walk to be an antique dealer. “What do you think?”
“Do you really want to be a merchant?” he asked, looking surprised and she laughed at him.
“Don’t be such a snob. You sound like my father, or my grandparents. Yes, I do. I’m not afraid to be ‘engaged in commerce,’ as my grandmother would have said. I’d love to try it. We could open a shop instead of my going back to teaching. And if it doesn’t work and no one buys anything, we give up the store and send everything to auction. Why not give it a try?” He thought about it and started to be intrigued by the idea. Successful businesses had started in stranger ways, and they certainly had more than enough merchandise to get started.
“You don’t mind moving back to the city? I love it here,” he said wistfully.
“We can come for weekends and holidays.” They had lived there for nine months, and it was beautiful, but very quiet. Eleanor was thirty-four years old, and not ready for a bucolic life yet. She missed seeing people, having a job, and keeping busy. With her mother gone, there wasn’t a lot for her to do there. And eventually, she wanted to put Camille in a good private school in the city, although she wasn’t four years old yet. Alex would have been content with a quiet country life forever, but Eleanor wasn’t there yet.
She suddenly loved the idea of running an antique business and had never thought of it before, and they might meet interesting new people running an antique store.
They talked about it for several days, and she convinced Alex to let her go on a reconnaissance mission to the city, and see what was available in the way of shops to rent. They could make a decision after that, depending on how high the rents were. She didn’t want to invest too much in it, and risk what they had or gamble all of it, in case it failed, but they already had a full inventory, so all they needed was a store where they could sell it.
She left three days later, and had already called a commercial real estate agent, to show her some shops to rent in San Francisco.
“Don’t go too crazy,” Alex warned her when she left, but he was intrigued by the idea too.
It all happened very quickly after that. Eleanor said it was destiny. She saw four shops that afternoon, and one of them was absolutely perfect in an area called Jackson Square. A small brick building was available with two floors they could use to show the antiques, a third floor where they could store them, and a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor. It even had an elevator. It was just what they needed, they could even live there. They could leave some of the extra larger pieces in the barn in