Rochester; Winter 1931/32
Just a small setting drabble.
It never fails to surprise patients or coworker's of Carlisle's when they find out he, his wife, and her younger brother are living on the far outskirts of town and not in the 19th Ward. They chose a location far removed with large tracks of land around it for many reasons. A better accessibility to open space and less prying eyes. One where they can all go about doing as they please relatively.
Especially Esme, who spends her early months changing all but the foundation of the house, and Edward, who stalks down the days until he can exchanged his patience with sunglasses for a more serious challenge. Carlisle, per his normal, saw to them both and his new hospital. The latter with a newly regained balance that Edward can rarely not notice Esme watching in him. They were, if neither easily and quickly nor slowly and painfully, peaceable again.
But even as an island unto themselves, they cannot miss entirely what goes on in the world around them. The socialite city was not in disrepair but desolate grew it's times and people. The grand swath of the unemployed loitered streets far more. The general tone of the city, rambling ever in his head, did not help Edward's first few months back.
Everywhere from the hospital to shopping stores are under threat. Seldom few places made it by without the air of fear and desperation sticking to them. The King Bank, where they'd good naturaledly had to open accounts early in their stay, of course, had managed to eke by unaffected with the help of the NCC and RFC. As did anything else King, Sr. had his hands and business interests in.
Nothing touched the King family, who seemed, with the socialites around them, to exist as though The Great Depression were nothing more than a rumor from the wrong side of a lower streets. It would not be such a point of contention, if calling cards and invitations did not keep arriving from them.
The Cullen's beauty made them unable to go unnoticed.
But their reclusive nature combined with it made them sensational.