I looked up the staircase again, at the monstrous light fixture that hung down three floors. “Do you know that this chandelier weighs seventeen hundred pounds? That it’s held by a single bolt, which can only be accessed under the roof’s copper dome?” I asked. It made me prickly with excitement. Not that I would ever plan a building remotely like this. No, houses like this were beautiful, but they were impractical and inefficient at best. That was part of being an architect—creating structures that fit the times. This was from a decidedly different one.
Babs raised her eyebrows. “Are these architectural things I hear coming out of your mouth?”
I had spent the entire day before on the phone with guidance counselors, admissions, and even the dean of the NC State School of Architecture. I was bursting to tell someone. “Babs,” I said seriously. “I’m trying to go back to school.”
Babs gasped and put her hand on her heart. “I love seeing you impassioned again,” she said. “It makes me feel so hopeful and happy.”
I was hopeful and happy, too. But then there was that nagging tug of doubt. What if I went back and failed again? Or, worse yet, couldn’t go back at all? The dean had made it very clear that I was going to have to ask Professor Winchester’s permission if I wanted to resume my degree. I had to be prepared that the answer might not be the one I wanted.
My phone beeped with a text, breaking me from my thoughts.
I sighed and held my phone up to Babs. “Hayes again.”
When you get back, please give me a call. Really need to talk to you.
She shook her head. “Just call him, Julesy. Rip off the Band-Aid. You’re sure in your decision, and there’s nothing he can say to change your mind.” When I didn’t respond she repeated, more sternly, eyebrow raised, “There’s nothing he can say to change your mind.”
I laughed. “Yes. Right. Nothing. I have to admit, though,” I whispered—you never knew who could hear you—“that a small part of my moving on has to do with Conner. Well, no. Not Conner. The idea of Conner. I felt like it was too soon for me to start something new.”
She turned to me. “Sweetheart, take it from an eighty-year-old. There is no such thing as too soon.”
“I think I could have loved him,” I admitted. “But I just wasn’t sure it was the right time. I didn’t want to hurt Hayes. And I really do need to find my footing all on my own.”
Babs smiled at me. “Don’t we all, darling. Don’t we all.”
I raised my eyebrow at her. “Are you thinking of Miles?” I stretched his name out in a singsong voice. Last night, Mom had told me all about him and their awkward dinnertime meetup. She was less than thrilled about the idea of Babs moving forward with someone new. I understood Mom’s feelings, and I couldn’t imagine anyone ever trying to fill Pops’s shoes. But I also wanted my grandmother to be happy.
Babs shrugged but I saw the smile she tried to hide. “Your meddling mother… It is nothing, really. An old friend and I were dancing, and your mother and aunt nearly had a coronary. The first ambulance of the day was for the fifty-eight-year-olds. It seems a little wrong, doesn’t it?”
I wondered if Miles did the same thing to her heart that Conner did to mine, even at her age.
We stopped to admire the stunning indoor winter garden, one of my favorite places at Biltmore. The round, sunken room off the entrance hall, held up by columns, was filled with flowers and swathed in greenery.
“Babs, you don’t have to placate me. You can tell me the truth about Miles. I won’t say anything to Mom and Aunt Alice.”
She rolled her eyes, and I had to laugh at the role reversal, my interrogating her about her boyfriend. “Well, if you must know, he was a beau of mine in our early twenties. We adored each other, but he wasn’t the one. But now he’s come back, and I, like you, am torn as to what I should do about it.”
I tucked her hand in the crook of my arm.
“I think your new relationship is wonderful, Babs. I want you to find love again. As a very wise woman once told me, ‘Life is short, dear one. We must make the absolute most of it.’？”
“So you don’t feel as though I’m betraying your grandfather?”
I laughed. “Babs, what you and Pops had was… poetry. It was a love sonnet in motion. But just because you might not have poetry again doesn’t mean you can’t have frothy prose.”
Babs squeezed my arm and we smiled knowingly at each other. That mischievous glimmer—the one I hadn’t seen since Pops died—was back. And I had to think that maybe this Miles person had something to do with that.
I studied the motion and balance of the Boy Stealing Geese statue in the center of the winter garden. “The Karl Bitter statues have always been one of my favorite things about Biltmore. And surrounded with wedding flowers…”
Babs and I skipped the music room, hustled through the loggia, and stopped in the library, where we both gasped at the full, bustled gown worn by Helena Bonham Carter in Frankenstein. Every space, it seemed, had at least a costume or two from the fashion exhibit.
“That embroidery is breathtaking,” Babs said.
It was. But I was only interested in one wedding gown. “Ma’am?” I asked the uniformed Biltmore guide behind the velvet ropes. “Where is Cornelia Vanderbilt’s wedding outfit?”
She smiled. “Oh, all the Vanderbilt reproductions and heirlooms are on display at Antler Hill Village.”
That meant getting back in the car and driving, but Antler Hill—which originally housed Antler Hall, where all the estate families would gather for celebrations—was one of my favorite places on-site.
“Thank you!” I said, turning on my heels.
“Wait,” Babs said. “We aren’t going to finish the tour? I want to see the dresses!”
“After,” I said. “But the anticipation of seeing Cornelia’s is killing me!” I couldn’t wait to see that wedding veil.
Babs grumbled. “Fine. I will go. I will look at the veil. I will show you that it is strikingly different from our wedding veil. And then we will finish the tour and drink wine.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” I said.
“What I don’t understand,” Babs said, as we made our way back to the car, “is where this crazy notion came from in the first place. I think I brought you here a time too many when you were a little girl.”
I laughed, opening the car door. “Well, it looks exactly like our wedding veil. And our wedding veil was gifted to my great-grandmother—your mother—under odd circumstances. I mean, you just never know.”
Babs laughed. “Honey, that’s a bit of a stretch.”
“Fine,” I said. “Maybe it is. But I just have this feeling. Isn’t that enough?”
I drove us through the lush green mountainous miles to the village. Whereas Biltmore House was extravagant and gorgeous—and original—Antler Hill was fairly new, more of an ode to George Vanderbilt’s farming roots, so it had a very rustic-chic, barnyard-at-its-best kind of feel.
We made our way down the pebbled concrete path to the front door of the Biltmore Legacy building. With a stone foundation, wood accents, and a mansard roofline, it very much had the feel of a converted barn and silo. We paused at the pair of wooden front doors. “Are you ready?”