He shook his head.
I sighed. “If I do that—move to New York—I’m just relying on you to save me like I did Hayes. I have to see if I can make it on my own. I just broke up with my boyfriend of ten years. I don’t even know who I am without him.”
He nodded. “And you can’t run straight into another relationship or you won’t know who you are without me.”
“Is that okay?”
He laughed. “Jules, that’s more than okay. I knew it was a long shot.” He shrugged. “But a guy’s gotta ask.”
It was so supportive; it made me wonder if I would ever find anyone else that good.
He pulled me to him. “So maybe someday?”
I nodded. This conversation was the exact opposite of the last decade of my life with Hayes. Instead of guilting or manipulating, Conner understood I had to choose what was best for me. And what’s more, he respected that.
“One day,” he said, his eyes bright with laughter, “we’ll be walking down the street, and our paths will cross again.”
“My heart will race because it’s you—and I’ll be ready for this then,” I said back, putting my hand over my heart dramatically, continuing the game of writing our fairy tale.
He pulled away from me. “I won’t be able to take my eyes off you, not just because you’re so beautiful but because you’ll be so in your element. You’ll be so alive, living your purpose. And I’ll know that we were right to wait, that you couldn’t be with me until you really knew yourself.”
“Our eyes will lock,” I continued. “And I’ll wink.”
“And, without a word between us, that’s how I’ll know you’re ready.”
We both laughed, but, despite the corny exchange, I had the feeling that Conner did hope our paths crossed again. I hoped so too. I leaned over and kissed him. “Thank you for understanding.”
“Breakfast?” he said.
“Breakfast,” I agreed.
“And then,” he said, “let’s pretend that tomorrow doesn’t exist. Let’s make this last day as perfect as it can be and when we go our separate ways, we’ll always have this memory to hold on to.”
I nodded in agreement. “Until we meet again.”
“Until we meet again.”
CORNELIA Mistress of Biltmore
August 22, 1925
The sun had yet to rise, but Cornelia couldn’t sleep. On Friday, her 25th birthday, she had become the true and rightful owner of Biltmore House, and the weight of that felt so heavy yet so exciting that she couldn’t seem to shut off the chatter in her mind even two days after the event had taken place. And so, before the rest of the house woke up, she stood at a canvas in the wood-paneled room that had once been her father’s observatory, attempting to paint the way the sunrise hit the garden to the left of the house, one of her favorite spaces on the entire property. She was so engrossed in what she was doing she failed to notice that each time she dipped her brush, the lace trim on the sleeve of her pink silk robe picked up a speck of whatever hue she was using.
As the sun began to shine on Biltmore, she stood back to study the painting. She wasn’t Monet, but she was improving, slowly but surely. She felt certain of it. Cornelia stepped toward the small sink she had had installed in what was now her art studio to wash her hands.
The installation had been an unpopular choice. “You’ll ruin the wood, Connie,” Jack had protested.
“Your father picked this beautiful wood himself, darling,” her mother had chimed in.
But, in the end, Cornelia had made the winning argument: “What is the point of having this massive house if we aren’t allowed to use any of it?”
To that end, Cornelia turned toward the black, steel spiral staircase that led to the roof, losing herself in her memories as she made her way up and opened the door to the landing. She couldn’t have been more than four or five the first time her father brought her up here—far past her bedtime—to look for shooting stars.
He had been in a particularly contemplative mood that crisp, cloudless October night as he smoothed a blanket out and they lay on their backs, looking up into the night sky. They were high enough in the air that Cornelia felt as if she, too, were a part of the sky, just another celestial object floating through time and space. “No matter what,” her father had said as they gazed at the full moon, “no matter where we are, we’ll always be under the same moon, Nelly.”
He showed her the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and Orion’s Belt. “Astronomers use math to determine how much light the stars are emitting, their distance from each other. Writing and art are what we use to make sense of our lives. But it is science and math that truly govern them. The words might lead you astray, but the numbers are fixed, unchanging. It is the numbers that hold the stars’ places in the universe.”
Cornelia had never had much interest in numbers until that night.
Now, as she scrubbed the paint from underneath her fingernails, she realized something: Maybe it was her father’s proclamation that the numbers would never lead her astray that had so thoroughly enmeshed her in her fascination with numerology. The art she was creating wasn’t fixed or unchanging. But the numbers were. And twenty-five—her age now—was the number of introspection. So perhaps that was the reason why she had felt so contemplative and restless lately. But Cornelia knew that introspection often led to transformation. Was she ready for that? She had hoped that being in this place connected her to her father would help her find the answers she was looking for. But, instead, Cornelia felt she had only found more questions.
As the sun continued to rise, she made her way through the house, down the main house stairs, and up the bachelors’ wing steps to her room. She didn’t need to get dressed for this post-birthday ritual, but she did comb her hair at least. Then she opened the newspaper on top of the stack that was left for Jack each morning.
She didn’t have to read long before she felt the anger rising in her. She made her way downstairs to the banquet hall, still seething even when she saw her mother and husband already seated at the table, waiting for her. Cornelia slammed the newspaper down on the breakfast table.
“Cornelia Vanderbilt Gets $15,000,000,” the Evening News blared up at them.
She watched Edith and Jack share a glance.
“It’s very déclassé,” Edith said.
“It’s like when they printed that you didn’t get your fortune if we didn’t live at Biltmore,” Jack agreed. “Untrue and absurd.”
“Nelly,” Edith said. “Sit down, please. You love your birthday breakfast. Let’s not ruin it.”
Cornelia, remembering again that it was indeed her special weekend—not to mention that she would receive her fortune, even if it wasn’t all of $15,000,000—softened.
“Why is this a tradition again?” Jack asked.
“Ah, well,” Edith started, “the morning after Cornelia’s birthday party when she was growing up, breakfast would be served right here in the banquet hall even though the big table was usually reserved for large fetes and important guests.” She smiled. “At the request of the birthday girl, of course.”