The Wedding Veil(50)

Although, with Miles and me, hadn’t these feelings always been hidden away like a set of fine china that you only pulled out every now and again? Were we simply making the decision to start using the fine china every day?

I walked into my small garage, opened the door, and backed out my pink golf cart. Yes, pink. When in her life does a woman get to have a pink golf cart? Miles and I had decided—via text—that I would meet him at the clubhouse so as not to raise any eyebrows with my girls about how I’d gotten there should they want to ride back to the town house with me after dinner.

When I pulled up to the clubhouse where the valet took my cart, Miles was waiting for me in a seersucker suit holding a single pink rose, which he handed to me. I smiled. “What a lovely gesture,” I said.

“What a lovely woman,” he replied.

I waved him away, but I couldn’t have felt better.

The band was just cranking up, the dance floor empty, as we entered the building. I had forty minutes until the girls would arrive, and I planned to savor each of them in the arms of the man who made me feel so happy.

The first chords of “The Way You Look Tonight” began, and Miles took my hand, leading me to the dance floor. “But we’ll be the only ones dancing,” I whispered.

“Which is exactly how I want it,” he responded, a glimmer in his eye.

As he led me around the dance floor, I couldn’t help but feel like I had been transported back in time to the camp dance we’d gone to together all those years ago. It was nothing short of a miracle the way we still seemed to fit together.

“Has it really been sixty years since we’ve done this?” I asked in disbelief, as other couples followed our lead and joined us on the floor.

“Don’t age us,” Miles scolded.

We both laughed, and I realized I hadn’t felt this happy in quite some time.

“How can this be?” I asked Miles. “How can it be that I can fall right back into the same feelings?” For the briefest of moments, I felt embarrassed I had said that out loud.

But then Miles said, “I think this is how it works. When you see someone you once had a connection with, you might have aged, but the connection hasn’t. Some people simply belong together. As friends, or mentor and mentee, parent and child.” He paused. “Or great loves.”

I laughed. “Were we, Miles? Were we great loves?”

He smiled sadly. Miles and I had spent only that one summer together. Just three months as camp counselors. And, yes, we had written letters and had phone calls until I got engaged that winter. But I always knew we couldn’t truly be together.

“It nearly broke me that you married Reid,” Miles said after a moment of silence. “I think that’s great love.”

He squeezed my hand, and I sighed. “But marrying Reid was always the plan, Miles. I had dated him for years. I had feelings for you, sure—”

“But they weren’t as strong as your feelings for Reid?”

How to answer his very complicated question. I was so lost in his arms, in the music, in this dance, in the feeling of what used to be between us, that a shocked “Mother! What are you doing?” made me jump.

I wanted to pretend that sentence was directed at someone else. But, alas, I’d know that voice anywhere. I turned to see Meredith and Alice, looking every bit the identical twins they were, arms crossed, glaring at me—identically.

“Girls, I’d like you to meet my friend Miles,” I said sheepishly. “Miles, these are my daughters, Meredith and Alice.”

“Twins,” he said, shaking their hands warmly. “How delightful.”

“How do you do?” Alice asked. Meredith smiled icily.

“You’re early,” I said dumbly, bracing myself for the smart response that might follow.

But Meredith only said, “We wanted to meet with the staff for a bit, but now that we’re all here, we might as well eat.”

“All of us?” Alice questioned.

“Well, we have a reservation for three,” Meredith said stonily.

I could see Miles’s face fall.

“I guess I could see if they could accommodate an extra,” Meredith said in a tone that dared Miles to take her up on that.

“No, no,” he said. “I would never impose on a mother-daughter dinner. I know how important those are.”

I’m sorry, I mouthed to him.

He smiled bravely. That was just like him, always trying to bolster my spirits even if it meant crushing his. We hadn’t discussed any of this yet—meeting the family, what we were. For heaven’s sake, we hadn’t even had a proper kiss. I was making too big a thing of all this in my mind. But as I walked to the edge of the large room, to our table overlooking the ocean, I glanced back at Miles. I saw his pain and—what’s more—his fear. Maybe I was jumping in too quickly; maybe I was diving in too deep. But when I saw his face, I realized I wasn’t the only one.





JULIA A Professional





I woke up to my phone beeping beside me and, as I sat up quickly, almost hit my head on the ceiling. It took me a second to come out of my dream (where I was rebuilding the Empire State Building) and back into the reality of being here, in the BVIs. What the guest rooms had in spades—elegance, light, air-conditioning—the screened bunkhouses did not. If I redesigned them, I would remove the faux ceilings and expose the wooden rafters, take down the outdoor awnings that blocked the light from coming in, and replace the old, torn screens. Easy, inexpensive fixes would make the whole place more appealing.