The Wedding Veil(39)

“What are you doing here?” she called to her friend.

“Did you think I was going to let all of Asheville rally for our troops and our sick and simply stay at home on the sidelines?” Rose said, smiling.

Cornelia noticed the glimmer in her friend’s brown eyes. Rose had always had a quiet confidence about her. When Cornelia met her, on the first day of second grade, Rose had been standing by herself on the playground, singing as if no one could hear her. Cornelia wondered at the girl, at her ability to simply be herself. She wanted to know what that would feel like. And so, she went up beside Rose and joined in. “Oh! Susanna, don’t you cry for me!” Rose had smiled at her. She’d smiled back. They had been friends ever since.

Now, Rose stepped between Cornelia and Bunchy and linked arms with them. Three different women from three different upbringings united in the pursuit of a common goal. It was poetry in motion. It was what would make the world a better place. Cornelia felt sure of it.

What would you give your life for? rang through her mind.

And suddenly, that eternal restlessness inside of Cornelia settled. The sum of her life became clear: her father’s legacy, her mother’s spirit, and the preservation of a world with days just like this, full of beauty, filled with purpose and, for the moment, brimming with hope.





JULIA Two Halves of a Whole





One last night with Hayes might not have been the best idea. It felt sadder than I’d imagined. But, in some ways, it also felt right. People spent their whole lives chasing that elusive closure. Now, here we were, getting that very thing. We got to spend an entire dinner together, highlighting all the reasons why we didn’t belong with each other after all.

Sitting at a table under the stars by the beach, I asked, “Do you think something like this should become common practice after a breakup? Everyone should sit down with a bottle of wine and rehash what went wrong?”

Hayes laughed. “Or we could pretend it’s our first date.”

I smiled sadly. “I almost wish we were meeting for the first time so we could have a future, not a past.” But as I looked at this man I’d spent so many years with, I wondered how much we even had in common anymore; if this were a first date, it might also have been the last.

“Do you think my mother will ever forgive me?” I asked. The sound of the waves on the shore was romantic and lovely and, with a belly full of pineapple chicken and a glass of wine in my hand, I had been lulled into relaxation despite the awkwardness. No doubt about it, this would have been a perfect honeymoon—if I had married the guy, of course.

“I’ll talk to her,” Hayes said. “I’ll see if I can make her understand.”

“She has always liked you better than me.”

Hayes grinned at me with that megawatt smile that had been impossible to resist for most of my life. “Sorry, babe. Nothing I can do to turn off my inherent charms.”

“Are you going to date Chrissy Matthews?” I asked, casually, like I didn’t care. But I cared so much. Just because I didn’t want to marry Hayes didn’t mean I wanted someone else to. In fact, I think every girl secretly wishes for a man to pine for her and comforts herself in the knowledge that—maybe forever—he still loves her most.

“I’m not going to date anyone for a long, long time, Jules,” he said, wiping his mouth and setting down his fork. “In fact, I’m going to wait a while to make sure you don’t change your mind.”

“This is a weird breakup,” I said.

“We’ve been best friends for a decade. I can’t just slink off into the night and never see you again. We’re not getting married, but we’re still two halves of the same whole.”

Two halves of a whole. What a beautiful thought.

“My turn,” he said.

I nodded.

“Is it my fault you aren’t an architect?”

I wondered if I looked as surprised as I felt. “I’m the only person whose fault it is that I’m not an architect.” I was the one who hadn’t had the courage to stand up for myself. Hayes had simply been a safe place to run.

“I wish I had pushed you to finish school,” he said. “But it seemed like whatever happened made you change your mind about calling off the engagement, and I was scared that if I pushed you on it, you’d leave me again…”

God, I was pathetic. Hayes was right. I had finally gotten up the nerve to break up with him for what I thought was the final time. Then I’d hit a bump in the road, and I didn’t crawl back. I ran. Sprinted. To his house, his arms, and his protection. He’d asked me what happened, I didn’t want to talk about it, and that had been that.

I don’t care what you do as long as we’re together, he’d said. After that, I fast-tracked the process of becoming a yoga instructor and then taught enough to support my small student loan payment, shoe-buying, and Netflix, and he’d let me skate along. He never even complained. And if I ever mentioned it, he’d just say, You’re going to be my wife. I’ll worry about our bills, and you worry about what you want to do next.

“Do you want to talk about it now?” Hayes asked.

I shook my head.

“Well, for what it’s worth, if I had it to do over again, I would have been the man you deserve. I would have pushed you to finish, to face whatever was holding you back. I do feel somewhat responsible.”