The municipal bond was back on track. Contamination at the Timberland camp plummeted immediately after Nick’s security guards arrived to patrol the grounds. If it had been sabotage, it seemed the guards were sufficient to stifle it, and the tainted water was regarded as a one-time fluke.
By the end of December, they were on schedule despite the snow. Forty-five houses, six shops, the library, and the church had all been moved. Today they were moving the schoolhouse. The compact building had a small footprint, but its brick construction and two stories made it the heaviest building they would move. Before he left, Enzo had provided a list of special concerns for each building. He said the small classrooms lined up like matchboxes on each floor made the building very stable and a good candidate to move despite its weight.
Christmas was in two days, and in acknowledgment of the holiday, a pine wreath with a big red bow had been placed on the school’s front door. The steamroller had made several passes over the ground leading to the main road to ensure it was perfectly level, and the building was already jacked up and ready to be lowered onto the rails. Members of the work crew were bundled into thick coats and scarves, making them all look alike, but even from a distance Eloise could spot Alex. Something about his energy as he darted across the worksite was distinctly him.
Dozens of people had gathered to watch the school make its historic journey to its new home. Marie Trudeau stood a few yards away, her face a combination of anxiety and wistfulness.
“Enzo said this is one of the easier buildings to move,” Eloise told her, hoping to reassure the older woman.
Marie nodded but couldn’t tear her gaze from the schoolhouse. “I still get nervous with each one of these moves. I taught school in that building for twenty-three years. God willing, I will do so again next year.”
Eloise reached out to squeeze Marie’s hand. Marie squeezed back, the unspoken communication needing no words. It would have been nice to have a mother like Marie Trudeau, whose gentle compassion extended to everyone around her.
Alex gave a quick blast of the whistle, and the jackscrew teams began lowering the school onto the platform. It took an hour to get it lowered and secured, but then the building was ready to move. Dick Brookmeyer guided the oxen toward the road, the harnesses jangling in the cold air. As always, the oxen came to a halt as the slack pulled tight, and then the building moved. Eloise caught her breath. It was always astounding to see a building in motion, and her heart swelled with pride. She’d had no part in arranging this engineering marvel, but it was still a privilege to be part of it.
A crack split the silence, and the wagon abruptly stopped. Mr. Brookmeyer dropped the lead rope and ran to the side of the wagon to see what was wrong.
“Broken axle,” he called out.
Eloise gasped. How could they possibly fix the wagon with a building on top of it? Even worse, the right corner of the wagon sagged. As the wagon tilted, so did the school.
“Everybody move back,” Alex yelled. People ran to the other side of the road. Alex and Mr. Brookmeyer worked to free the oxen, for if the wagon collapsed, it would take—
The back wheel splintered to pieces, and the platform lurched to the side. The schoolhouse tipped at a dangerous angle. Alex and Mr. Brookmeyer abandoned the oxen and ran. Eloise stood frozen in shock. No one knew what to do. She and Marie clutched each other, and the whole world seemed to freeze.
The platform’s front wheel collapsed next, and the school crashed into the dirt. The frame of the building caved in, windows shattered, and roof tiles smashed to the ground. Bricks came tumbling down, rolling over the embankment and burying the steamroller in rubble.
Alex didn’t know what to do. In an uncharacteristic move, he asked people to clear out of the tavern so he could speak freely with the town council and a handful of others whose opinion he needed. All he knew was that he had to come up with a plan to replace their equipment and get the move back on schedule.
Outside, a huge mound of bricks, broken boards, and shattered glass was all they had left of their schoolhouse. The chalky smell of mortar dust hung in the air. Their school was gone, their wagon smashed beyond repair, and he was personally on the hook for a twelve-thousand-dollar steamroller. He would probably go to his grave still owing on it.
At least the oxen were unharmed, but they would need to buy another wagon, platform, and bracing rails before any more buildings could be moved. It was going to destroy their budget and their schedule.
He braced his forehead in his hands, trying to rub away the tension. He couldn’t bear to look at Eloise, but he needed her guidance.
“How much money do we have left from the bond?”
“Some, but it’s all been allocated for building the roads up at the new place.”
“And the reserves?” He held his breath, clinging to that last hope.
“It won’t be enough to buy a new steamroller. Your only hope is if Bruce somehow forgives the debt and loans you more equipment. I don’t think he will.”
The words were gently spoken but a body blow nevertheless. A quarter of the town was safely moved, but six hundred people and their homes remained stuck in the valley. He’d already spent their money and had no way to get their houses out. The easiest thing would be to run away and start over somewhere else. He’d done it once before, but he couldn’t leave these people to face the wreckage he’d created.
“Perhaps if I approached him?” Marie asked, her voice timid. Alex swiveled to look at her. Marie Trudeau was as dainty and delicate as a hummingbird, and just as persuasive. Unless she had some connection with Garrett he didn’t know about.
“Were you once his teacher?”
“I’m not that old,” Marie said. “I think you need a neutral party to make the appeal.”
Eloise shook her head. “I’m your best shot at getting mercy. Bruce respects my opinion. Since I was the bond’s auditor, it will look bad if the town goes under. He might be willing to intervene to spare me from that.”
This made Alex feel even worse. He hadn’t even considered what this catastrophe might do to Eloise, but it seemed his destruction knew no end. Everyone he cared about in the world was getting sucked down into this quagmire.
Marie wouldn’t give up. She laid her thin hand atop his. “Forgive me, Alex, but I think everyone knows that Mr. Garrett took your . . . your youthful indiscretion with his ward badly. If Eloise appeals for debt forgiveness, he will assume she is asking on your behalf, not for the good of the town. I don’t think she should go.”
Reverend Carmichael spoke up. “I would be willing to do it.” He sounded like a frightened man facing a firing squad. “As a man of the cloth, my endorsement might carry sway.”
Eloise stood. “I’m the best person to do this. Of course he’s going to be angry. And of course he’ll assume I am asking on Alex’s behalf—he’s not stupid. He’s going to be furious, but he appreciates direct dealing. I’m the best person to make the appeal.”
Alex’s headache intensified. Everything she said was correct, and being forced to depend on her help was agonizing. But he needed her, and if she failed, this town was doomed.
Eloise headed up to Bruce’s house first thing the following morning. It was the morning of Christmas Eve, but Bruce hadn’t eased up on his schedule and was already at the quarry when she arrived.
“Can you send someone to fetch him?” she asked the housekeeper. “It’s important.”
This wasn’t going to be easy. If she had the money from her mother’s estate, she could simply buy a steamroller for Alex, but it could be years before that money came through. She waited in Bruce’s study, where a massive desk dominated most of the space and a stone wall housed a fireplace. She plopped onto the hearth and waited. When she was growing up, this was where she always sat whenever anything of importance needed to be discussed. Sometimes it was when she begged not to be sent away to boarding school, or when she fruitlessly pleaded to visit her parents. It didn’t matter that they didn’t wan
t her; she had simply been so lonely during those years.
Bruce entered the study ten minutes later, a look of mild annoyance on his face. He wore a rugged canvas coat with work gloves. While some rich men managed their investments from an office, Bruce supervised from the field. He still carried his gloves in one hand, impatient to get back to work.
“Eloise,” he said as he closed the door. “What can I do for you?”
“There was an accident during the move yesterday. An axle broke on the transport platform, and a building tumbled over.”
Bruce froze. “Was anyone hurt?”
“No. I suppose we were lucky, all things considered. But the schoolhouse is a complete loss, and I’m afraid the rubble buried your steamroller. It’s ruined.”
Aside from the clenching of a muscle in his jaw, she could detect no change in his expression. He opened a desk drawer, took out a cigar, and clipped off the tip. She quaked inside but waited patiently as he prepared the cigar. When it was lit, he took several puffs, then leaned back in his chair to scrutinize her through narrowed eyes.
“I suppose you’re here to appeal on Duval’s behalf for me to go easy on him.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes.”
“That was a twelve-thousand-dollar steamroller.”
“Yes. And we need to get another. Either buy one or borrow one. I know you’ve placed a lien on his property until all the equipment is safely returned. If you forgive the debt, Alex can apply the money from his orchard toward more equipment, but only if you withdraw the lien.”
She held her breath as she awaited his answer. She didn’t have long to wait.
“If I forgive the debt, it will be throwing him a lifeline,” Bruce said, not without compassion. “It might save him today, but what about the next disaster? The next long-shot investment? The faster you distance yourself from this entire scheme, the better off you’ll be.”
She clasped her hands, trying not to remember Alex’s dejected face in the tavern last night. If she had to return to town and tell him of Bruce’s refusal to help, she knew exactly what Alex would do. He would pretend it didn’t hurt, send her a reassuring smile, and make a joke, but inside he would be in agony.
“I love him,” she said softly. Bruce flinched but didn’t seem all that surprised by her declaration, so she continued. “You don’t need to fear that I’ll throw my lot in with Alex Duval forever. I know I don’t belong here, but I can’t walk away just yet. It ended badly before, and this time I want to leave on my own terms. This is the greatest, hardest, and the most remarkable thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve learned what it is to test my heart and mind and muscles against an epic challenge. But in the end, I know I’ll go back to my normal world. That was always the plan.”
Memories of her apartment back home triggered a surge of longing. A long, hot bath whenever she wanted one. Electric lights and an indoor job where her boots weren’t caked with mud and melting snow didn’t leak down her neck. Where expectations were clearly set out, and snooping neighbors didn’t know her business.
But she couldn’t leave while Alex and the town still needed her. “I’m staying until the town is moved. I have to see this through, even if it breaks my heart all over again.”
Bruce set down his cigar. “For an intelligent girl, you seem reluctant to learn from experience. Don’t expect me to support you in this madness.”
“So you won’t help us?”
“I will help you, but never him,” Bruce said. “Alex Duval showed me who he is when he was eighteen years old.”
There wasn’t a trace of sympathy in Bruce’s expression. This was a man who had indulged in at least one extramarital affair, yet he had never showed her the slightest indication that he understood what it meant to be in love. Suddenly it became vitally important to know if he could understand how she felt about Alex.
“Were you ever in love?” she asked. “You betrayed your wife with my mother, but when she returned to Thomas Drake, I never saw any gnashing of teeth from you.”
He shrugged. “You were still in the womb, so that would have been unlikely.”
True, but she’d once stolen a peek at her mother’s diary and knew about the circumstances of her conception. Feeling neglected, her mother had indulged in a foolish affair while her husband was on a six-month business trip to Europe. Thomas returned home to a pregnant wife who had no possibility of passing the child off as his. Her mother wept and confessed everything. Thomas took his wife back, and in return she was slavishly loyal to him for the rest of her life, even going so far as to banish the redheaded child who clearly did not resemble her husband.
“But why did you do it?” she asked. “You risked your marriage, even your own business, to dally with a married woman. Why?”
“Because I could,” Bruce said bluntly. “Alex Duval took liberties with you because he could. That’s the way men are.”
She dropped her head. Bruce always tried to paint her summers with Alex in a tawdry fashion, but it didn’t feel that way to her. Not anymore.
“I loved him then, and I love him now,” she said. “His fire, his vision, his unquenchable optimism. When I’m with him I feel limitless, like the sun will never set and we can live in Eden forever.”
“Oh, Eloise,” Bruce said in a voice aching with tenderness. “I would give my entire fortune if I could buy that for you, but the real world doesn’t work that way. Bills come due, accidents happen, and idealists fail to plan. I could forgive that debt, but it won’t solve the problem. It will only give him a shovel to dig himself further into a hole. I can’t do it.”
She left the mansion feeling like a failure. She dreaded telling Alex, but when she arrived at the lumberyard she was met with the strangest sight. The yard was a mess, with wheels, metal siding, and tools scattered everywhere. A blacksmith hammered a wheel onto what looked like the bottom of a railcar. Most odd was Alex, wearing a dress suit, vest, and tie, with an exuberant expression on his face.
He waved to her across the staging area. “Eloise! Come see our new flatcar trailer.”
It was huge, as large as any full-sized railway car, but it was only a metal bottom, with no sides. She looked at Alex with questions in her eyes.
“We should have done this from the beginning,” Alex said. “Trains use flatcar trailers to tow heavy loads, so they’re built to handle the weight. Solid steel! I hired a blacksmith from Kingston to overhaul the wheelbase of this one, but it can still be fitted on the railway for transporting up the hill.”
With its metal wheels and undercarriage, it certainly looked like a much better platform than the one that broke, but where had Alex gotten the money for this?
She pulled him aside. “How are you going to pay for it?”
“I’m diverting some of the money for roads,” he said. “We can pave the roads later, but we need this trailer now. Plus, the guy’s father runs an inn up in Kingston, and we’re going to supply them with free cider for the next year. I’m guessing you failed with Garrett?”
She nodded, stunned that his buoyant mood didn’t dim.
“No matter,” he said. “We’re still going to get this town moved. We’ll just have to go without paved roads for a while.”
“Why are you wearing such fancy clothes?” And he wasn’t the only one. Most of the villagers in the lumberyard also wore their Sunday best.
“Because it’s Christmas Eve, and tonight is Blessed Joy’s christening. Do you want to come?”
“Alex! How can you be so nonchalant about all this?”
His eyes watered as he smiled at her, but it was a genuine smile with only a little sorrow behind it. “Because I made a good deal on a solid steel platform, which means we’ll be back in action soon. And in an hour my beautiful niece is going to be baptized. Sally has baked a dozen spice cakes, and three Irish fiddlers are coming down from the Timberland camp to help us celebrate. How can I not be happy?”
This was what she’d always loved about Alex.
He had a bottomless well of optimism that let him walk between the raindrops without getting wet.
“You’re right!” she said, surprised at how quickly her own mood lifted. No matter how many problems loomed on the horizon, tonight was perfect. It was a blessing that should not be squandered.
The baby’s christening was unlike anything she’d ever seen. The ceremony took place in the bandstand, for the church had already been moved. Loving, tired, and joyous people welcomed the baby into their community on this most holy of evenings.
Afterward the celebration moved to the tavern, where the fiddlers played lively tunes that lit up the night. Eloise served the spice cake so Sally could enjoy the evening, and it was good to be needed. Alex sat huddled with a group of men indulging in animated conversation. Across the crowded tavern, he met her gaze and flashed her a wink before going back to the men.
Tomorrow was Christmas, and they would all share a day of rest, but after that would come an avalanche of bills, problems battling the snow, and deadlines to meet. But not tonight. Looking around the warm interior of the tavern, Eloise saw a hundred reasons to keep pushing through the exhaustion and bills and anxiety. She saw a community worth fighting for.
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Alex had never been an early bird, but in the next months, the hour before dawn became his favorite of the day. It was in that quiet hour when he and Eloise met to plan their work objectives for the day. They were the only two people in the hotel dining room as they prioritized a list of tasks and budgeted for supplies.
With the rising sun, they sweated alongside the others in the tough physical labor of moving the town. And in the evenings, they stole kisses and dreamed about the future. Maybe someday they would have the luxury of courting like normal people, with roses and moonlit serenades. Instead, he and Eloise had budget meetings, kitchen duty, pouring concrete, and turns cleaning the oxen pens. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.
A Desperate Hope Page 20