How Can I Remember?

59 1 0
                                    

Once upon a time, on the North Shore of Long Island, not far from New York, there was a very, very large mansion— almost a castle —where there lived a family by the name of Yeager.

There were servants inside the mansion and servants outside the mansion: boatmen to tend the boats and six crews of gardeners— two for the solarium, the rest for the grounds. And a tree surgeon on retainer. There were specialists for the indoor tennis courts and the outdoor tennis courts, the outdoor swimming pool, and the indoor swimming pool.

And over the garage, there lived a chauffeur by the name of Fairchild, imported from England years ago, together with a Rolls-Royce and a daughter. You.

<>

In the moonlight... when the shadows play...

They were playing that song again.

When the thought of what could happen takes your breath away...

It seemed to happen every night like this. On a summer's eve, when the sky fell dark, but the lights of the Yeager estate stayed blinking like pale stars, that song was always sure to appear. The chauffeur's daughter could smell the gaiety in the air, and it was a welcome distraction from automobile fumes.

She turned, transfixed, abandoning her polishing rag, to leave her father staring after her knowingly. The lights reflected in the dark lacquer of Mister Zeke's Bentley would never measure up to the lights of the Yeager party, just beyond the wooded wall— the lights that signalled Eren's presence.

Sighs and whispers... Quiet laughter in the air...

The party was giggling girls, spilt champagne, and the gentle lilt of jazz. It was evening-gowns, tuxedos, and crystal glasses piled high. A world away from the childish frizz of her hair and the smudge of engine grease on her pinafore. So the chauffeur's daughter hid in the trees, content to be a yearning observer.

Can make it seem that love is everywhere...

Among other things, the Yeagers were noted for the parties they gave. Few people anymore give parties the way they did. The bubble of freshly poured champagne. The brush of silken gloves against skin.

Make it relatively easy...

It never rained on the night of a Yeager party. The Yeagers wouldn't have stood for it.

In the half-light... came the velvet voice of the singer made drunk and easy by the sigh of the pianoforte. Can we trust...

There was Carla Yeager, who inherited the Yeager corporation when her husband died on the thirteenth hole at Pebble Beach. The husband who inherited it from all the primness and propriety of Dina, his first wife, now long laid to rest, though her memory persisted.

It was quite the scandal in the old days... before the boys came of age. But then again, what isn't scandalous about money in this excess?

"Sweetheart, go talk to Colonel Morgan," she heard Carla chastise a young lady in a blue evening gown. "He looks bored." Oh heaven forbid, thought the girl in the tree. "Senator! Have I got somebody I want you to meet!" And she disappeared into the crowd with one of America's most influential on her arm.

Carla was on the cover of Fortune.

There was Zeke, the elder son, who graduated from Yale at nineteen, and took his stepmother and the company for a ride on the fibre-optic highway— turning a hundred million dollar family business into some serious money. He was at the outskirts of all this indulgence, mobile phone to the ear, dull eyes set into the dark.

Listen and Save! [AoT X Sabrina Fair]Where stories live. Discover now