The Wedding Veil(65)

When I couldn’t answer, he said, “I’m sorry. I think I must have felt things that you didn’t.”

I should have left it at that. It was the proper thing to do. But I shook my head and, looking down at my hands, said softly, “I felt them too, Miles.”

I looked up at him then.

“So marry me,” he said. “Make a life with me.”

I couldn’t tell him then because I didn’t understand what I was feeling. But Miles had big dreams that I knew would fling him far and wide. I had seen my parents chase dreams and take chances, buy things they could barely afford, go on trips on a whim, disregard responsibility. They were happy. But I felt untethered. I needed to feel secure. At that time in my life, I couldn’t bear the thought of moving away, of pursuing a different path outside my hometown. I needed my future children to know what their lives were going to look like, my mother there to help me raise them. I needed to know what my life was going to look like. I had said yes to Reid because I knew he would be a wonderful husband, a great father. He would take over his father’s business and we would live on the beach not ten minutes from where I grew up. He was settled, stable, sure. Safe. Miles, on the other hand, was not.

“I can’t stop thinking about you, Barbara. And I have to think that if you could stop thinking about me, you wouldn’t have met me today. You wouldn’t have returned my letters these past few months. You know we have something special.”

I did know. I knew exactly. It was the reason I had cried to my mother over Christmas break, when I should have been celebrating my engagement. I had seen Miles only twice since our summer at camp. And each time, I had promised myself it would be to say goodbye. Only I couldn’t. Once Reid proposed, I finally told Miles I couldn’t see him anymore. But we still wrote letters. What harm could letters do?

“How can I love two men at once?” I had sobbed to my mother.

I remember the way she’d wrapped me in her arms on the couch, smelling of Shalimar and cigarette smoke, the way her rouge had left a stain on my wet cheek. “My Barbara,” she had said. “I have been at this same place. I was terribly unsure about marrying your father. But the night he proposed, when that perfect stranger handed me a wedding veil on a train, I knew. I had been looking for a sign and that was the most obvious one I could imagine.” She had looked me straight in the eye. “What you need is a sign.”

A sign. Four months later, I couldn’t deny that I had most certainly received mine. If I had been searching for a concrete reason to marry Reid over Miles, I had found it. My sign was permanent, steadfast, and unwavering.

As I sat under Davie Poplar in front of a wounded and pleading Miles, I knew there was no backing out of my wedding even if I wanted to. My future was set, my story written. There was a small part of me that wished I could call the whole thing off, to see what a different future looked like. But I didn’t have that choice.

I couldn’t tell him then. I couldn’t explain. I looked down at my feet. “Miles, I adore you,” I’d said. “I truly do. And in another time, in another place, maybe it could have been you and me. But I am marrying Reid.” I looked up at him again. “I will never forget you, Miles. I will maybe even always wonder what could have been. But this is how it has to be.”

His face fell. “If you’re sure, Barbara, then I know I cannot change your mind. But I wish it had been me.” Despite his sadness, he still took my hand. I let him this time. He placed something precious, something meaningful, something he could only give once, into it.

“To remember me by,” he had said.

And I had. I had remembered.

Now, on my porch, it was finally time to make amends. “There were so many times after that night that I wanted to write to you, that I wanted to explain,” I said softly.

He smiled. “So you weren’t placating me? I truly meant something to you?”

“Of course you did, Miles.”

“And I still do?” The fear in his eyes gave away how hard this was for him.

Miles was not a man of subtlety. He was a man of action, of wearing his heart on his sleeve, consequences be damned. I touched his hand gently. Was I letting him down for myself? Or for the girls? Did it matter?

“Miles, you have been such a surprise. You have been alone for so many years now, but Reid hasn’t even been gone a year and a half. I have so much to think about.”

He nodded sadly and squeezed my hand. “I understand.”

My heart felt heavy with pain and longing. But it was too hard; it was too complicated. I was too old to start over again. I was letting him down easy. It was kinder this way.

“Barbara,” Miles said, not even turning to look at me. “All those years ago, you said that maybe in another time, in another place, it could have been you and me. Maybe that time and place is here and now.” And then he was gone, as if our conversation had never even happened. And I was left, my heart beating through my chest, remembering, feeling, wondering if maybe he was right.

I never would have imagined that I would be standing face-to-face with the difficult and confusing inner workings of love again at my age—and certainly not with a man who had vanished from my life only to reappear decades later. But here we were. I needed to step away from this, gain some perspective. Lucky for me, there was nothing like the crisp, cool mountain air of Asheville to help a woman feel like her largest problems could be carried away on a white cloud. As I dropped my bags into the open trunk of my car, I let my biggest fear sink in: Was I trying to use this new relationship to forget Reid?