The Wedding Veil(81)
So why was it that now, all these years later, leaving was all she could think about?
Jack appeared at the crest of the hill then, and her heart surged with love for him, for the boys that looked so much like him. She was very blessed indeed, if only she’d take the time to remember it. Jack kissed her cheek, and Cornelia wrapped her arms around herself. They stood in silence for a minute or two before she said, “The boys love it here so much, don’t they?”
Jack raised his eyebrow suspiciously. The proper schooling of their children was a primary concern these days. Jack had been sent off to school as a small boy, and he wanted the same thing for his own sons—something Cornelia was strictly opposed to. “Are you reminding me so that I don’t bring up their going off to school again?”
Was she that transparent? “I just think fresh air and places to play are so good for them, Jack.”
“I understand. I’m not forcing you into anything. I’m only saying that appropriate schooling—and the connections they will make—are paramount, and our personal feelings shouldn’t stand in the way of what is best for their futures.”
“Well of course not. Our personal feelings shouldn’t matter. They’re only our children.”
Jack smiled good-naturedly. “We don’t have to decide now. They can finish out the term and we’ll see how their education is progressing.”
Cornelia had to admit that, if the boys were gone, she could focus quite a bit more on what her own future held. She was considering sending them off more than she let on.
William, George behind him, ran to Cornelia with his ice-cream cone, shouting, “Mama! Mama!” The conversation was over—for now.
She knelt to catch him in her arms. “Hello, my precious boy.” She pointed down at the old-timey milk tram at the bottom of the hill. “Do you want to know a secret?”
He nodded.
“Do you know why the horses that carry the milk tram are so quiet?”
He shook his head, staring at her, rapt with attention. “The horses wear rubber shoes instead of metal ones so they don’t wake people up when they’re clomping through town early in the morning.”
He smiled.
“What flavor did you get?” Cornelia asked, but she knew already. William always got strawberry. He pointed the cone in her direction, and she took a bite despite having already had her own ice cream, the sweet, smooth flavor and texture filling her mouth. It really was the most spectacular ice cream she’d ever had, and she smiled thinking of the women who spent their days slicing thousands of strawberries and peaches to add to this divine marriage of cream and sugar. What if they advertised more, got more customers? Could the dairy ever be enough to sustain Biltmore?
She asked Jack that very thing.
“Dearest, we’ve been through this. The tenant farmers are barely producing enough to cover their rents and feed their families, as is. Expansion seems unlikely.”
They had been through it all—Cornelia, Jack, Edith, and Judge Adams, sitting around the small family breakfast table, sharing numbers, projections. Even tourism at Biltmore was down as fewer people had two dollars to spare for admission.
She looked over at her husband, feeling resentful that they had become, so often, nothing short of business partners.
Cornelia sat down in the grass, pulling little William onto her lap, not even minding the sticky ice cream running down his arm and onto her. So often now she felt like giving up, throwing her hands up in the air, leaving Biltmore, never to return. She didn’t feel like she belonged here. So where did she belong?
“Mommy,” George said. “Can we live at Biltmore forever?” The boys always preferred life at Biltmore to that in Washington, but his question felt larger than usual, more laced with longing. She looked into his round eyes, the same eyes her father had had. How could she deny him anything?
“Of course. Biltmore will be yours one day. You can live here forever and ever.”
Then, to her husband, she sighed. “You know best, Jack. You always have.”
He squeezed his wife’s hand, and both noticed the distance that had formed between them. Maybe it was the stress of the market crash, death and flooding, and the myriad problems they had faced together these past few years. Maybe it was because Cornelia’s absences were becoming lengthier and more frequent than they had been before, and Jack, longing to keep her close, was holding on too tight. Maybe it was that while Cornelia’s interests drew more and more toward her art and writing, Jack’s were more steadfastly rooted in how to turn the estate into a thriving business—for his own edification, for his sons. But, most of all, for his wife. If he could hold on to Biltmore, he could hold on to Cornelia.
“Have you ever felt like this, Jack? Like I do?” Cornelia asked.
He smiled up at his young sons as the pair of boys took off over the hill again. Jack leaned back on his hands, his legs out in front of him. “I suppose I should ask you how precisely you feel, but I think I know.”
Cornelia smiled. Then there was this. This man, these children, this life. It was what kept her here when she felt like she was drowning. She lay her head in his lap, enjoying the feel of the sun on her face.
“We all go through this, Connie,” he said, looking down at his bride. “I think we all go through a period in our lives where we feel restless, when we begin to question what our purpose is and whether we’ve made the right decisions.”