I felt the unexpected heat of being so close to him rise in me.
“You’re so warm,” I whispered.
“Am I?” he whispered back, just inches from my face, leaning in to kiss me.
My entire body felt tingly. This was fun and exciting and, best of all,new. No backstories, no old wounds. Just an intensely passionate kiss on the back of a gorgeous yacht on a day drowsy with rum and full of expectation. I knew I would never see him again, but that was maybe what I liked best of all about this. I didn’t have to think or plan. I could just kiss.
I kissed Conner over candlelight on the stern of the boat eating shrimp and fillet. I kissed him on the crowded sandy dance floor of Foxy’s. I kissed him as I lay on his chest at 2 a.m. on the bow of the boat. I kissed him at 4:03 when I opened my eyes to see the Red Planet in plain view and again at seven when the sun was too bright to allow us more sleep.
And now, on the dock in front of my resort, I was kissing him again.
“I have to go,” I said flirtatiously as he grabbed my arm, pulling me back in.
“Just one more kiss,” he said.
The rum had long worn off, but I felt drunk on Conner, on fresh feelings, on butterflies in my stomach and a type of desire I hadn’t felt maybe ever.
“I need to go shower,” I protested.
“Here on the islands they strongly suggest showering with a friend to conserve water,” he said, his cheek on mine, his scruff feeling masculine and right.
I know I shocked him when I said, “Anything for Mother Nature.”
I turned and started walking. A few seconds later, I glanced back over my shoulder. “Well, are you coming or what?”
His face looked like I’d just told him he’d won a Pritzker, architecture’s most coveted prize. He caught up and took my hand, our arms swinging like we were children on the playground, the crushed shells crunching under our feet. What had been so light between us was now heavy with the promise of what would come next.
At the bottom of the stairs to my treehouse room, Conner folded me into his arms and kissed me again, and I could scarcely believe how natural it felt to be with him. I didn’t delude myself that this would be more than a onetime thing. But maybe I’d be able to take it for what it was: the fling that reminded me I could open my heart.
Conner put his hand on my back to let me go up the stairs first. I turned to smile at him halfway up. I was almost to the top when I stopped so abruptly that Conner ran into me.
My eyes went wide as the man sitting on my porch turned to look at me. “Hayes?” I whispered.
I had no reason to feel guilty, and yet, here I was, bathing in shame. Conner hooked his finger through the back belt loop of my jean shorts in a gesture that was oddly comforting. He could have run off. But he stayed. Maybe it would have been better if he had run. But knowing that he would be by my side as I faced the music soothed me. And I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe this was more than a vacation fling after all.
EDITHSwept AwayJuly 21, 1916
Five days later, it was official: Biltmore had been spared. But it was, perhaps, the only thing that had. The floodwaters had begun to recede in large part, but even still, they were up to Edith’s knees as she made the slow and deliberate walk from her home to her beloved Biltmore Village, which housed hundreds of the estate’s workers and most of the shops they frequented. She wanted to check on each and every building, but first she needed to make a stop at the hospital. It was all she could do not to sit down and positively weep. The time for that would come later, she knew. For now, there was too much to do.
Eighteen years ago, arriving at Biltmore had felt hopeful, charmed even. Edith had felt that all her worries were behind her, the struggles of the life her family had been leading swept away by George and his outrageous fortune.Swept away, Edith thought again as she sloshed through the water filling her boots.
After days of rain and two huge storms, the Swannanoa’sbanks could no longer hold the majestic river, and the dams at Kanuga and Osceola had burst. Walls of water had smashed into Biltmore Village and downtown Asheville, nearly fifteen feet high in some parts. The water at Biltmore’s gates had reached nine feet. But she had held it back.
Edith had just begun to believe that finally, two years after George’s death, things were starting to get back to normal. Edith and Cornelia spent the school year in Washington and long vacations and glorious summers at Biltmore, riding horses together, fishing in the streams, playing tennis. Cornelia had become the ultimate comfort for her mother, and staying strong for her daughter was what allowed Edith to move forward, to rebuild, to get creative about saving her beloved home.
But now this. The flood of the century. The paper had reported twenty-nine deaths just yesterday, all people Edith knew. Edith recalled four of them as she placed her hand on a huge maple tree, feeling a sense of sadness wash over her as she thought of those who’d clung to it days earlier, these limbs their only hope against the rushing floodwaters.
“I wouldn’t touch that, Mrs. Vanderbilt,” a man with a rake in his hand called. Edith assumed he’d come hoping to clean up, but the water hadn’t receded enough yet. “All those people who died. That there’s the death tree.”
“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 inits 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—thehouse, 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.
