“Can you go to the Soggy Dollar Bar in your bikini?” he asked. “I believe that’s the dress code.”
He reached out to take my hand and led me to an open table where he plopped down in a plastic chair. I wished I had brought a towel, but it probably would have gotten drenched too. I looked at the chair warily.
As I sat down, a goat—an actual goat—jumped up on top of the low table and peered at me curiously.
I burst out laughing. “I only take you to the finest places,” Conner said.
But this was what I had really imagined when I dreamed of the islands—laid-back bars, random livestock, colorful, open-air settings.
Conner pulled the goat by the collar he was wearing—which, I noted, bore the insignia of my rival university, UNC—but he stood firm, bleating sorrowfully at him.
We both dissolved into hysterics. “He wins,” Conner said, sitting back down.
“A goat isn’t the worst dining companion I’ve ever had,” I said.
At that moment, I had the most distinct urge to write a letter to my grandmother—something I did very, very often. I wanted to tell her that I was having so much fun that I had forgotten all about the wedding drama and home and work. Everything, really, except for Conner and this magical day. And I knew I would do it all over again if he asked me.
EDITH Higher Ground
July 16, 1916
Edith could barely see, the rain was coming down so hard. She was soaked through her clothes, her poor horse so wet that she could hardly balance atop his saturated skin. Dear Lord, please let it stop, she prayed. The storm the week before had caused Asheville’s French Broad River to rise considerably. But after just four dry days, here they were again, drowning in rain just as fierce. Noble, who’d insisted on riding beside Edith, called over the noise of the driving rain, “The paper said yesterday brought more rain to the Blue Ridge than had ever been reported in a single twenty-four-hour period in all of the United States! Can you believe that?”
As the drops pelted Edith’s face, she called back, with a hint of irony, “Well, Noble, I really can.”
No one knew what would come next. But what they could say with certainty was that the water was rising. In addition to Edith and Noble, more than a dozen men on the estate had ridden out on horseback to help relocate families away from potential flooding.
Cornelia, the head housekeeper, and Edith’s lady’s maid, had stayed at the house to get organized, much to Cornelia’s consternation.
“I need to get Rose!” Cornelia had protested when Edith had told her she was to stay home. She was very concerned about her closest friend from the village.
“Her family is coming, my dear. I talked to them yesterday. You need to be here as families come in search of higher ground.”
Cornelia hadn’t been thrilled but she had relented and, with the house staff, was now rushing about gathering cots, making pallets, and utilizing all available beds to house as many estate workers—who mostly resided in Biltmore Village—as possible. Women and children in some rooms, men in others.
Edith and Noble had already spent two days riding from house to house, knocking on doors, sending those with no place to go—including Rose and her family—to Biltmore. Edith was exhausted, proud, devastated, and terrified all at once. She couldn’t bear to think of those who refused to leave their homes. What would become of them?
She stayed atop her horse as Noble banged furiously on the last door on their route. Once. Twice. Three times. “I think we’ve done all we can,” Edith called to him when they received no answer. “Let’s go home!”
He nodded and mounted his horse again, following Edith. She felt terribly unsettled as she made her way back to the main house. If the skies closed and the floodwaters receded, they might be okay. But if not… Well, Edith was no stranger to tragedy.
Emma met Edith at the front door of Biltmore. “Hurry, ma’am,” she said. “Let’s get you out of these wet clothes and into a warm bath before you catch your death of cold.”
The thought made Edith shiver. Cornelia had already lost one parent. Edith really must be more careful. But she knew that her presence made some of the more reluctant families relent and come to stay in what was, she hoped and prayed, the safest structure in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The sounds of activity from the dozens of Biltmore’s guests made Edith smile despite her fear. Children’s feet, little voices, adults talking, planning, strategizing—there was an electric hum in the air, a vibration of nerves and anxiety. But, also, the mere fact of everyone being together made them all a little stronger.
Edith took a deep breath. She must be brave. For her people.
“Mama!” Cornelia called, bursting into her room. “Emma wants to know if there’s anything we want to take up top with us.”
What could she not replace? “Daddy’s reading journals and my wedding veil!” Edith said suddenly.
She finished dressing as her daughter took off like a shot.
She and Cornelia took up their post in the observatory. Not only did Edith decide it was the safest place in Biltmore for her daughter, as it was the highest point, but it also had a view of the entire property. The French Broad was one of the most beautiful parts of the Asheville landscape, but beauty could be a fickle friend, and, in this instance, a dangerous one. Biltmore’s distance from the river would keep them safe. It had to.
Every few minutes Cornelia peered out the window. “The water is over the front step,” she reported. Then, “It’s almost to the base of the lions,” she said a few hours later, referring to the Italian rose marble beasts that protected the house.
Maybe it was the knowledge that she had helped as many people as possible stay safe, but Edith felt eerily calm in spite of looming disaster.
“Nothing to do now but wait, darling,” she said. “And no matter what, I have you, you have me, and it will all be okay.”
Cornelia nodded bravely. The sound of the rain pounding on the roof was almost deafening as she and her mother perched side by side on George’s sofa. Edith looked at her veil, draped over a chair, thinking of not only her wedding day but also of her mother and sisters, the strong women who had also worn this veil, the women who had made her who she was.
She gathered the yards of lace and tulle in her arms and sat back down. “Have I ever showed you the secret inside the Juliet cap?”
Her daughter shook her head, wide-eyed.
“You see this piece of silk?” she asked, pulling it up. “Underneath are the initials of all the women who have worn this veil.”
“Wow,” Cornelia said, tracing her fingers over her ancestry, her birthright. “Will my initials go in there one day?”
Edith nodded. “One day when you’re quite grown up and find the perfect man who adores you for all the magnificent things you are, then you can wear the veil too.” It wouldn’t be long now, Edith knew, looking at her beautiful nearly sixteen-year-old who was growing more quickly by the day.
Running a length of tulle through her fingers, Cornelia asked, “Is that how it was between you and Daddy?”
“Oh, yes,” Edith said without hesitation. But she knew it was all more complicated than that. While certainly they had married out of family obligation, she had come to love him so truly. “I miss him every day,” she said.