She lit a cigarette, rolled down the window and, though I didn’t look back to see, I was certain she had put her hand atop the yellow hat that matched her dress to keep it from blowing off. She added, “If we go over the side, someone grab the veil.”
The veil. The sign my mother had been looking for, the one that had convinced her to take my father up on his offer of marriage. It was a veil that, she dictated, would be passed on to countless future generations of our family, that she would encourage friends to wear, cousins, anyone she trusted, really. All who wore it, according to my mother, would have long marriages and happy lives. So far, only Mother, her two sisters, and my cousin had worn it, but so far, so good. I’d take all the luck I could get. Already, the veil had become a legend in our family. And I loved the idea of having something special to pass on to future generations—assuming the veil didn’t meet its demise in the French Broad now, of course.
My father laughed heartily from the driver’s seat. “Yes, Gladys. Forget Barbara, but for God’s sake save that precious veil.” He reached behind him and squeezed my mother’s knee, to which I squealed, “Daddy! Both hands on the wheel!”
“Barbara, have you ever been in any danger with me in the driver’s seat? How many times have I killed you in a car crash?”
I swallowed the nausea that was growing and said, “It only takes once.”
And then I saw it, the salvation my upset stomach couldn’t have been more grateful for: the Grove Park Inn. We had made it.
I closed my eyes and could see myself playing rounds of golf with my father, jumping into the pool with my cousins, hitting tennis balls with my mother. I imagined the taste of the inn’s famous French toast on my lips, the stone terrace high in the air, capturing the mountain breeze, cooling us to our cores after long days of sun and sweat.
This place had been my haven, my escape, for too many years to count. And now, in only three days, I’d make two more memories there. I would marry my Reid, the love of my life, the man who had changed everything. Then we’d stay for our honeymoon, to begin our lives as husband and wife. And, if the wedding veil had anything to say about it, we’d be happy forever.
And we were. It had worked. That heirloom that my mother had shared with me had done its job; Reid and I had had an undeniably successful marriage. Now, long after that happy day, my eighty-year-old self knew that life was full of questions, of uncertainties, of risks. Our veil was the one thing that had felt constant, safe; it had been something to cling to always, no matter what. Julia might think that, if she could indeed prove it was the Vanderbilts’， we should give it back. But I wasn’t going to let the wedding veil go without a fight.
CORNELIA Work and Creation
March 15, 1930
Cornelia yawned and stretched in her old bedroom at Biltmore House. Her eyes drew up to the brocade fabric of the canopy bed as her hands ran across the matching bedspread, thick and soft. She smiled at the pink molding that adorned the ceiling. She was in her childhood bedroom; she was safe. But was that a crack in the ceiling? Chipped paint on the molding? Was that dust congregating around the threadbare curtains?
It was only then that the sickness began to wash over her, the dread, the sadness that made her heart and her limbs feel stuck to this bed. Her bed.
This was the first night since their marriage—unless one of them was traveling—that Cornelia hadn’t slept with Jack. She longed to lean over, to place her head on his strong chest, to be wrapped in his arms. She had meant, by sleeping in her childhood room, to punish him for making her open the house for the first time today. Now she realized she was punishing herself. And of everyone, the fault for this belonged the least to dear Jack.
But still, this was a sure sign of the end of an era. Opening the house back up for parties, which Cornelia had done with overwhelming regularity since it became hers on her twenty-fifth birthday—this was the Jazz Age, after all—had given her a sense of normalcy. Midnight buffets in the Tapestry Gallery, celebration dinners in the banquet hall, brunches by the pool. They were using Biltmore House in the manner in which it was intended. She had invested the majority of her fortune into shares of the Biltmore Company in an attempt to save this place. It was hers. She was going to enjoy it. Until the stock market crash a few months ago, of course. After that, everything had to be put on pause.
But now this. She had failed her father. And, furthermore, it seemed she had put all her chips on a losing bet.
There was a soft tap on her door, and she, wishing she could be eight years old again, nearly expected a maid to waltz in with breakfast in bed. But that was a fantasy. The staff who had stayed on at Biltmore after her father died had continued to shrink over the years and was now at a bare minimum. Her mother had absorbed her lady’s maid and footman into her personal payroll to further reduce the cost to Biltmore. The few servants who remained had so many things to attend to that breakfast was now served buffet-style in the bachelors’ wing. Jack had taken to calling it Biltless, which he found terribly funny. Sometimes Cornelia did too. But not today. Instead of a maid with breakfast, it was Jack who came through the door.
The Lord himself knew Jack was only trying to help. And how ungrateful she was being.
“I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “I truly am.”
Anyone who knew Cornelia knew she was a force of nature. She believed it was what Jack loved most about her—the combination of her mother’s fire and her father’s wanderlust. Jack was the calm and steady breeze that righted her ship time and time again. And he was the most wonderful father, far better a father than she could have ever dreamed of being a mother. He truly savored spending time with their young sons in a way that eluded her. And she, in many, many moments, knew that he understood her.
He understood her when he met her that fateful night in Washington, D.C. He understood her when he gave up city life and politics to move to Asheville. He understood her when he spent nights awake with her mother plotting how to turn the barely profitable dairy into the kind of business that could sustain their massive home’s upkeep. He even understood her when she sat him down to explain numerology, to share her numbers and his, their compatibilities, strengths, and weaknesses as a couple.
“I know what great lengths you have gone to to save Biltmore for me, for our children. And if you think opening our home to the public is what we ought to do, it’s what we will do.”
He kissed her softly. “That’s my girl.”
Cornelia stepped into her bathroom and pulled her favorite skirt and blouse onto her lithe frame, draping an opera-length medallion necklace over her head and affixing a thick gold chain bracelet to her wrist. She sorted her short hair and took a deep breath. She was sad, yes. But she was American royalty. Her sons—who had both been born in the Louis XV suite, just as she had—would both be by her side to witness how their mother handled tough times. Rose and Cornelia’s other dear friends of Biltmore, including the ones who had been fixtures of this estate far longer than she had, would all be there today supporting her. She would feel them rallying around her. And, when she really thought about it, she was doing this for them just as much as she was doing it for her family. She wasn’t just saving her home. She was saving their livelihoods. That bolstered her spirits considerably, even made the smile she pinned on her face feel believable.