“Or the life tree,” she said, thinking of the survivor she was going to visit. “It all depends on how you think about it.”
He tipped his hat.
Edith turned to look out over the vast, ruinous landscape. Biltmore Village had been George’s dream and hers. A place where people could come for work, for education, and to better their lives. George had presented that charming community to Edith in its completion as a birthday gift, a sign of happy times, an investment in the community they so desperately wanted to serve. The charming shops and cafés had become the central hub, providing everything the estate workers—most of whom lived in the village chateaus—needed.
Now, the village—like George—was gone. And all the good seemed to be gone right along with it. Homes had been replaced by piles of debris. The nursery—a major source of income for the Estate—was at least eighty-five percent destroyed, including Edith’s cherished herbarium, her collection of almost 500,000 preserved plant species. It broke Edith’s heart. But that was, perhaps, the least of it. People had drowned, and livestock too. Edith could not make peace with it, this senseless loss of life.
As she sloshed her way through what had only days earlier been a vibrant example of goodwill and even better ideas, her heart stopped. The remains of a house—the house, in fact, of the very girl she was going to see in the hospital—which had been no match for the raging waters. Another loss for a family that had already lost so much. Edith’s heart raced with panic. She felt sick, nauseous, and looked around frantically for a place where she could sit to reclaim her composure, but as everything was covered in water, she pressed on.
Edith allowed herself to feel the full weight of her self-pity. If Biltmore—that great and shining beacon that Edith had saved from financial ruin on more than one occasion as of late—had been destroyed, would it have been better?
But on his deathbed, George had proclaimed to her that Biltmore was his legacy, their legacy, a sign that his family, which had struggled so to find their rightful place amid American royalty, had persevered. And she would fight for it at all costs.
“Dear George, please help me,” she said as she opened the door to the village’s hospital, its red roof and stone fa?ade making it look more like a charming mountain home than a place for the sick and injured. The interior of the hospital was light, bright, and airy, with plenty of room between beds so patients didn’t feel cramped or crowded. She was grateful that this building, at least, had been spared.
A nurse in a white uniform—Mrs. Hartwell—stopped her bustling. “Mrs. Vanderbilt!” she exclaimed. “What a nice surprise!” Her perkiness astonished Edith, especially considering she was holding a tray of bloody gauze and instruments.
“I’m so sorry for the loss of Miss Foister and Miss Walker,” Edith said, thinking of two of the women—nurses in this very hospital—who had lost their lives after hours of clinging to that maple tree.
Mrs. Hartwell nodded sadly. “Any news on Captain Lipe?” she whispered.
Edith nodded gravely, suddenly immune to the uncomfortable wetness soaking through her riding boots. “I’m here to see Miss Lipe,” she said.
Mrs. Hartwell, understanding, led Edith into an open room of beds. She and Cornelia often spent days here talking and cross-stitching with patients, reading to them, offering a friendly smile. Edith spotted Kathleen Lipe right away. She was lying still on her back, serene, her short hair matted to her head. Even with her eyes closed, Edith could see the dark circles underneath them. What an ordeal she must have been through. What an ordeal she would continue to relive for the rest of her life. At eighteen, she was no longer a child, but Edith suspected that the daughter of Biltmore’s head carpenter and skilled-labor overseer would grow up today if she hadn’t already.
As Edith sat down on the stool beside her bed, she couldn’t bear to wake her. But Kathleen opened her large, round eyes to the light and blinked, perhaps in disbelief, to see who was sitting beside her.
“Mrs. Vanderbilt,” she whispered.
“Shhh,” Edith said. “Don’t feel like you need to talk, sweet Kathleen. I know this has been an unfathomable ordeal for you.”
“Papa,” she managed to eke out. “Have they found Papa?”
Edith’s stomach turned. She had declared that no expense would be spared to find Captain Lipe, one of George’s first hires on the property. She had wished and hoped that he would be found alive, clinging to a tree or a roof. But no. The fate of Captain Lipe was, unfortunately, what they all had feared.
“He was so brave, Mrs. Vanderbilt,” Kathleen said weakly. “Papa held me to that tree for hours. We kept climbing higher and higher as the water rose.”
Edith’s eyes were filled with tears, her stomach sick and knotted at the thought of those poor souls, those people clinging to the very tree she touched earlier.
“Lifeguards kept trying to rescue us, but they couldn’t reach us. After a while, his arms finally just… slipped away. The last thing I remember him saying is ‘Shucks! Shucks!’ Have you seen him, Mrs. Vanderbilt? Is he okay?”
The hope in her eyes broke Edith’s heart as she took Kathleen’s hand, which was wrapped in bandages. “Darling,” she said gently, “I’m afraid your brave and valiant father didn’t make it.” Captain Lipe’s body had been found less than half a mile from the gate of Biltmore Estate, a proud hero of a man reduced to a bloated, contorted shell. Edith hated being the one to share this news, but she had felt, somehow, that it should be her. The Lipe family was one of their own. They had celebrated Christmases and May Days together, sewn garments for the less fortunate, spent many a cold winter night talking around the fire. Mrs. Lipe had fled to higher ground with their disabled daughter and her aging mother when the rains came, and Edith felt she had enough on her plate without having to wade through floodwaters to deliver the terrible news to her child. Kathleen had lost a father, but by the sheer grace of God, she still had a family to go home to.
Kathleen started to weep. “If only we had evacuated with Mama!” She looked up at Edith earnestly. “But then who would have stayed behind to tie the chickens to the porch?”
Edith knew that that porch—and that house—no longer existed. But Kathleen had faced enough loss this week. The news about her destroyed home could wait.
“I lost my parents when I was a young girl,” she said, wondering if the child could even hear through her sobs. “And that sort of loss is terrible. But I am a parent, and I can tell you for certain that if your daddy had the choice of saving his life or yours—if he had to lose his life instead of face the world without you—he would make that sacrifice again and again.”
Kathleen wiped her eyes. “But what is to become of us now?” she asked. “What shall we do without Papa here to keep us safe?”
Edith stroked the girl’s bedraggled hair, wanting to soothe her, knowing that her arms and legs, torn and bruised from hours spent clinging to tree bark, were the least of her wounds now.
“We are Asheville women,” Edith said to Kathleen, putting on a brave face. “We are strong; we are resilient. We are smart and savvy. We will rebuild our town. We will get through this. Together.”