Page 90 of The Queen of Roses

She nodded, grateful that the other woman had not said “I’m sorry,” or “My condolences.” Such sentiments were well-meant, but she had never liked them.

“He died of cancer. It was… it was horrible.”

Miss Pearce’s lips thinned. “Cancer is a terrible thing.”

She nodded. “My mother shut down. After caring for him for so long, it was almost as though she didn’t know what to do with herself. I was too young to do more than help around the house and cook, so my uncle Wally, Dad’s brother, had to step in. He found out that Dad had made some bad decisions before he got sick.”

“Debt?” asked Miss Pearce.

Theresa nodded again. “Uncle Wally helped Mom sell the house. That paid off most of it, and Dad’s life insurance took care of the rest. It changed Mom—not just the grief but the debt, too. She became fixated on the idea that I should get married as soon as possible so that someone would take care of me.”

“But you took a different route,” said Miss Pearce.

“I got a scholarship to go to college, and I worked while I was in school and during the summers. Mom still doesn’t understand why I would want to do that. She thinks I should live in a little house in suburban DC with a husband like Eddie Foreman bringing home a steady paycheck.”

“Eddie Foreman?” asked Miss Pearce.

Theresa blushed. “My high school boyfriend. He proposed the day after graduation.”

“And you said no?”

“I told him my bags were already packed for New York.”

Miss Pearce lifted her proud chin a fraction. “I cannot fault you for wanting something different, Miss Johnson. Not the littlest bit. I only wish I had shown one modicum of your strength when I was your age.”

chapter thirty-three ADELE

December 1906

Adele?”

Adele lifted her head at the sound of Margot’s tentative voice.

“Yes?” she asked with a sigh. Her cousin had spent the past three weeks tiptoeing around her, whispering as though Adele were broken.

It had to stop.

“Would you like help with your correspondence? Or your mother’s?” Margot pointed to the stacks of letters on the morning room’s desk.

Adele glared at the pile of condolence cards and all it represented.

“There is no point in paying rent on such a large house if it is only your mother living there,” Guy had said in a quiet moment late one evening just a week after her father’s funeral.

“What about the lease?” she’d shot back, knowing what was coming.

“Mrs. Barnes will not begrudge your mother wishing to live here at the Gables with us given the circumstances. It will be easier this way.”

“Nothing about my mother living here will make life easy, Guy.”

He fixed her with a hard stare. “Would you rather she live at Rosewood House?”

After that, Adele did not say another word on the subject. After all, Guy controlled the purse strings and so long as he provided Mama a place to live, he was not in violation of their marriage settlement.

Adele suspected Mama resented the move as much as she did, but her mother did not condescend to speak on the matter—or her decision to bury Papa in a graveyard in Altadena rather than return his body home to England. Mama instead kept to her room in the Gables, ignoring the growing pile of cards and letters of condolence that piled up on Adele’s desk. It fell to Adele to take her gold letter opener and begin slicing through envelope after envelope to extract the contents and then pick up her pen to begin the arduous process of answering every one.

Why was it always the responsibility of women to perform the work of grief? It seemed so unfair that, despite his professions of sadness and regret at her father’s passing, with the exception of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Guy had risen every morning, dressed, donned a black armband in silent recognition of his father-in-law’s passing, and gone to his office at the Andalusian as usual. He did not have to remain cooped up in the house, curtains drawn and plunged into a perpetual state of dimness. He was not staring down a prolonged withdrawal from society—in fact, just one week after Papa died, he’d attended a dinner party because three investors were due to be there.

“It is for the good of the hotels,” he had said, and all she could do was nod.