Just before the quake, all the horses left
the fields. The Winston’s employees had left them put to pasture but they had
no idea of knowing they would behave so strangely right before and after the
quake. They never came back and only a couple could be retrieved from other
farms. People were too busy attending to the wounded to worry about some
horses. The family had not had any casualties but their offices in the city had
been destroyed and that was devastating enough. They lived on their bank and
their bank was now destroyed. They had data and other offices but it would take
time to put everything in order again. Everything was in chaos though, and what
remained of the building had been looted once and again.
Jonathan and Peter, father and son, had decided
to leave for the city immediately, in order to focus on the retrieval of data
from their other offices in order to rebuild. So they left Regina and Vivian,
mother and daughter, alone with their staff. Only the lifetime gardener and one
maid had stayed with them. The rest had, comprehensibly, left their jobs to be
with their families. Every single family had at least one casualty so people
were just gathering and looking to be together, not to split or fight because
someone had been lost. The air was also contaminated with this worry, this
sentiment of grief and death. Many said that the city, once a thriving
metropolis, was now an enormous graveyard and that all efforts should be
concentrated on that, because they needed to go back to normal and that was
impossible with that feeling in the air.
The two women waited for days and later weeks.
But Jonathan and Peter wouldn’t come back. The last time they had heard of
them, they had said that it was better for them to go to their offices in Hong
Kong, where all back up was stored in order to put everything back into place
but the women had not heard anything from Hong Kong either. They had called
them there and the people at the office assured them that no one had come from
the main offices to retrieve anything. Regina just asked them to call if they
ever knew anything but they never did because her husband and her son would
never go there. She was alone with Vivian and they spent the days, wondering
and pacing.
Finally, on one rainy day almost a full month
after the quake, a man from the police came t tell them the bad news.
Apparently Jonathan and Peter had been caught up in a skirmish of victims
against security forces. The first ones were complaining because of the poor
medical attention that was being paid to the people. It was obvious many
officials and firemen were used to help the rich get their things back, so the
mobs went for everyone. Father and son were there when it all started and they
were two of first victims, only identifies until recently. Regina fainted as
was helped by the policeman and Vivian went very white and just couldn’t say a
word.
Now, the two women were all alone. They had
lived like queens but now their reign was over and they had to face the truth.
With the bank collapsing as it was, with former friends becoming their enemies,
money started to run out. The house couldn’t stay perfect, as it had always
been, forever. So they had to take the difficult decision to sell it, and use
part of the money to buy a country house, way smaller than their mansion, in a
town nearby. The gardener and the maid had to go too and the day they left, it
was the first and only day that the women treated them like family. Finally,
one day in autumn, the two women took all that they had not sold with the
house, and left their manor forever. Neither of them looked back not even for a
final glance at the grand house.
Regina still hoped they could get some of the
money back, or at least keep one of their many business. But when people heard
they had been left with nothing, they started to pull off from every single business
they had ever established. It all went to hell and the women finally realized
they had never had any friends but just people that saw them as a trampoline to
make their own lives better. They didn’t resent them however, because Regina
knew very well that was what her husband had done with many of them too. They
were just paying them with the same currency and she couldn’t blame them for
that, even at sight of their awful prospects in a house that had nothing on the
manor.
It wasn’t the poorest house in the world as
they had two floors, a kitchen, two bathrooms and a small patch to grow
vegetables. But that was not how they felt. Fortunate would not have been a
word either of them would choose to describe their situation. Vivian was
especially sensitive, as she had been courted by a very handsome and rich man
just weeks before the tragedy. And now, of course, he had disappeared in thin
air and she knew she would never again have such an opportunity to make her
life better. Now, no man with prospects would ever look at her and she would be
condemned to marry some nobody or to stay alone and bitter.
But they couldn’t just mourn and complain.
Because the money they had saved would run out soon if they didn’t find a way
to get things in order. So Regina decided to start growing several types of
vegetables in the garden and asked Vivian to go around town and look for a
proper job, something decent but with a handsome pay. Vivian complied but that
was an impossible task to fulfill. There was no work as many had left to the
city to rebuild. She walked all over town until she got to a bar and realized
they were looking for a new waitress. She knew that it wasn’t a great job or a
well paying one but it was the only thing she could find. Besides, she could
really use a drink or two.
When Vivian told her mother, Regina wasn’t
happy but she wasn’t sad either. She just sighed and realized that life is not
what would like it to be and that we just have to do what it’s necessary to
keep on moving. She started growing her veggies and in a short time she started
selling them to the shops in town. People recognized her and most shut their
door on her face, when they knew it was because her and her husband that many
of them had lost their life savings. That it was their home, their cursed
manor, and the one that had caused all of their misery along the years. No one
wanted to help the woman that had been there and did nothing and she felt
miserable because they weren’t wrong at all.
Tired and with her feet hurting, she tried one
last house and when they opened she realized whose house it was. Because it was
her former maid Rosie the one that had opened the door. She didn’t know what to
say and was about to run away but Rosie grabbed her hand and made her come in.
Regina didn’t know Rosie had a convenience store in her home, were she sold
flour, sugar, rice and many other things. She sold vegetables two and, without
any further talking, she decided to buy the vegetables Regina had brought with
her. The former rich woman could not believe her ears and she was even more
surprised when Rosie told her they would need veggies very often as many people
in town were being hosts of their city relatives who had lost it all.
The two women signed a contract and, before
parting, Regina hugged Rosie. She told her that she did not understood why she
was so kind with her after all those years together but she thanked her with
all of her soul. Rosie just answered that she had been a nice person to her and
that it wasn’t in her heart to let someone starve simply out of spite. Besides,
she had never invested in Jonathan’s bank, so she hadn’t lost any money. Regina
laughed at that and discovered on the way home that it was the first time in
many months that she laughed. The only people that could do that were her
family and now she only had Vivian.
They had never had the best mother-daughter
relationship, but now someone could have confused them with sisters or best
friends. Vivian would tell her mother everything she had seen or heard at the
bar and Regina would tell her daughter about all the anecdotes and jokes she
learned with Rosie when working with her, because Rosie had also realized that,
in their mutual benefit, they needed a larger patch of dirt to grow the goods,
so she was helping Regina to make that a reality. Vivian was doing great at
work and was respected and adored by her employer, an old man that had seen
more of life than he wanted and realized he only needed a glass of beer in one
hand and his wife Ellie in the other.
Eventually, mother and daughter lived a
respectable life, full of happiness and enjoyment. They once thought their
former life was the only thing that could make them happy but they realized
they had only being happy when Jonathan and Peter were there. They still
remembered them often and cried for them but not for long because now they had
reasons to live and that’s what they were going to do. Just live.
