The Wedding Veil(77)

Daddy’s life’s work and creation, she thought. But what is mine?

As she looked out into the faces of the crowd, Cornelia felt it was high time she figured out that very thing.





JULIA A Shock





Babs was in the kitchen of the mountain house prepping dinner and, as I finally unloaded our bags from our cars, my mind was in a million places. My parents had gone to retrieve my things from Hayes’s and take them to Sarah’s, where I would be going in a few days. We had always dreamed of living together, and even if I didn’t get into school, Raleigh would be an easy place for me to find a job. I knew we would get along, and sharing a place would save me from going too much deeper in the hole on my student loans. My stomach flipped. This was it. It was just me on my own two feet now. No Hayes to fall back on.

The fact that I hadn’t faced his texts—of which there were now at least ten—was clogging my consciousness. And then there was the wedding veil… This morning, Babs had been even more dismissive of my worries about it. And, well, she was probably right. I knew, when I really thought about it, that this was nothing more than a good way to get my mind off my real problems.

Even still, I had the urge to get in the car and drive to my parents’, get the veil, and drive back to Biltmore to compare the two. But the original had been missing for decades. A few more weeks wouldn’t hurt. I wondered if Mom had already had it preserved again in another one of the airtight sealed boxes it had been in when we first pulled it out after I got engaged. Suddenly, I was overcome with guilt. I had been engaged to Hayes, for heaven’s sake. I owed him a phone call. I set the bags by the front door and, noticing that I had cell service outside the house, decided to bite the bullet.

I tapped HAYES and, on the third ring, almost hung up, hoping I could ignore him for one more day. But he answered.

“Are you avoiding me?” he asked, a smile lacing his voice.

I laughed nervously. “No, of course not. I’ve just been busy.”

“Yoga teachers at island resorts are known for their busy schedules,” he said sarcastically.

I rolled my eyes. “Ha-ha. Well, with the traveling and everything, there hasn’t been a great time.”

I sat down on the wooden porch bench by Babs’s front door, the one that looked like it had been put together from raw tree branches. I was tempted to tell him I was in Asheville with Babs, but I didn’t want to risk his taking a leap of faith and coming here. I was in a good place. I was convinced I had done the right thing. I didn’t need him interfering with that.

“What’s up with you?” he said breezily.

Ugh. I just wanted to get this over with. “I decided to go back to school,” I said. “I’m going to finish.”

“You can be an architect now, Julia. You have a degree. I don’t get why you wouldn’t just take the test and start working.”

I was already irritated at him, and it had only been like thirty seconds. He was right. I had my bachelor’s degree; I had completed my supervised hours. “Because I need to finish what I started, Hayes.”

“Well, I have something I need to say…”

I steeled myself. At what point did I quit letting him down easy? At what point did I draw a hard line?

“Someone’s moving in with me.”

For a split second, I wondered why he felt it important to tell me that. Ben from work who had just gotten transferred? Alex from college who seemed destined for a life of couch surfing? Then, I felt all the blood rush to my head. “Someone?”

There was silence on the other line. “Another woman,” he said quietly. “I know it’s probably a shock. But I felt like I should tell you.”

Probably a shock? Probably a shock? No. A shock is a shaved head. A shock is quitting your job on a whim. “Hayes, you were with me in the islands like a hot minute ago. You were begging me to take you back. How could you possibly have met someone new and gotten serious that quickly?” There was silence again on the other end of the line and then all the pieces suddenly came together. “Oh my God. Chrissy Matthews is moving in with you.”

“Well…”

I couldn’t breathe. The sadness of being away from Hayes came in waves every day. I knew it would take a long time for my heart to really heal. But this was a new feeling: Rage. Distress. Proof. He had lied to me. I had almost agreed to spend the rest of my life with him.

I scoffed, anger rising in me. “Wow. That’s just. Wow.” I didn’t want him back, but I also couldn’t believe he would so flagrantly disrespect me. It was shocking.

“Look, Jules, I don’t want to dredge up old wounds—”

“Old wounds!” I spat. “Hayes, they’re wounds from like a week ago. They don’t even have scabs, for God’s sake!”

“Well, you didn’t seem to have too much trouble moving on,” he said.

I was so shocked it took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about. “You mean Conner? The guy I made out with in the islands and will probably never see again? Yeah. I’ll get you our Save the Date real soon.”

I opened the email app on my phone—an almost unconscious but terrible multitasking habit I knew I needed to break—as Hayes was saying something that no longer seemed that interesting or important. Something like, “I’m sorry if this hurts you, but I can’t stay stuck in the past.”