Was she that transparent? “I just think fresh air and places to play are so good for them, Jack.”
“I understand. I’m not forcing you into anything. I’m only saying that appropriate schooling—and the connections they will make—are paramount, and our personal feelings shouldn’t stand in the way of what is best for their futures.”
“Well of course not. Our personal feelings shouldn’t matter. They’re onlyourchildren.”
Jack smiled good-naturedly. “We don’t have to decide now. They can finish out the term and we’ll see how their education is progressing.”
Cornelia had to admit that, if the boys were gone, she could focus quite a bit more on what her own future held. She was considering sending them off more than she let on.
William, George behind him, ran to Cornelia with his ice-cream cone, shouting, “Mama! Mama!” The conversation was over—for now.
She knelt to catch him in her arms. “Hello, my precious boy.” She pointed down at the old-timey milk tram at the bottom of the hill. “Do you want to know a secret?”
He nodded.
“Do you know why the horses that carry the milk tram are so quiet?”
He shook his head, staring at her, rapt with attention. “The horses wear rubber shoes instead of metal ones so they don’t wake people up when they’re clomping through town early in the morning.”
He smiled.
“What flavor did you get?” Cornelia asked, but she knew already. William always got strawberry. He pointed the cone in her direction, and she took a bite despite having already had her own ice cream, the sweet, smooth flavor and texture filling her mouth.It really was the most spectacular ice cream she’d ever had, and she smiled thinking of the women who spent their days slicing thousands of strawberries and peaches to add to this divine marriage of cream and sugar. What if they advertised more, got more customers? Could the dairy ever be enough to sustain Biltmore?
She asked Jack that very thing.
“Dearest, we’ve been through this. The tenant farmers are barely producing enough to cover their rents and feed their families, as is. Expansion seems unlikely.”
They had been through it all—Cornelia, Jack, Edith, and Judge Adams, sitting around the small family breakfast table, sharing numbers, projections. Even tourism at Biltmore was down as fewer people had two dollars to spare for admission.
She looked over at her husband, feeling resentful that they had become, so often, nothing short of business partners.
Cornelia sat down in the grass, pulling little William onto her lap, not even minding the sticky ice cream running down his arm and onto her. So often now she felt like giving up, throwing her hands up in the air, leaving Biltmore, never to return. She didn’t feel like she belonged here. So where did she belong?
“Mommy,” George said. “Can we live at Biltmore forever?” The boys always preferred life at Biltmore to that in Washington, but his question felt larger than usual, more laced with longing. She looked into his round eyes, the same eyes her father had had. How could she deny him anything?
“Of course. Biltmore will be yours one day. You can live here forever and ever.”
Then, to her husband, she sighed. “You know best, Jack. You always have.”
He squeezed his wife’s hand, and both noticed the distancethat had formed between them. Maybe it was the stress of the market crash, death and flooding, and the myriad problems they had faced together these past few years. Maybe it was because Cornelia’s absences were becoming lengthier and more frequent than they had been before, and Jack, longing to keep her close, was holding on too tight. Maybe it was that while Cornelia’s interests drew more and more toward her art and writing, Jack’s were more steadfastly rooted in how to turn the estate into a thriving business—for his own edification, for his sons. But, most of all, for his wife. If he could hold on to Biltmore, he could hold on to Cornelia.
“Have you ever felt like this, Jack? Like I do?” Cornelia asked.
He smiled up at his young sons as the pair of boys took off over the hill again. Jack leaned back on his hands, his legs out in front of him. “I suppose I should ask you how precisely you feel, but I think I know.”
Cornelia smiled. Then there was this. This man, these children, this life. It was what kept her here when she felt like she was drowning. She lay her head in his lap, enjoying the feel of the sun on her face.
“We all go through this, Connie,” he said, looking down at his bride. “I think we all go through a period in our lives where we feel restless, when we begin to question what our purpose is and whether we’ve made the right decisions.”
Yes.That. That was exactly how Cornelia felt. “I think I’m looking for meaning.” She paused. “So what did you do, Jack? When you felt like this, how did you solve the problem?”
“Well, darling, I married you and I moved to Biltmore. We had our sons. There is no doubt that my life changed completely and, much to my surprise, it felt like the perfect fit.”
She wished he had said something else because, truth be told, Cornelia had expected those things to solve her problems. Whenever she was feeling restless and searching in her early twenties, she had believed it was because she hadn’t found her partner. Then, when the itch struck again, she thought having George would fix it. Then William. It was only now that she was realizing her problem might be bigger than all that. Well, not her problem. Maybe her passion, the life she felt she was supposed to lead.
She was entranced and spellbound by the people she was meeting in New York, their alternative view on life, where art—not things—was what mattered, the study of numerology. It made sense to her; the numbers made the pieces of her life add up. But it was more than that. These people understood her art and her writing, they understood her need to do something different with her life. But, then again, it seemed that her dear husband did too. Cornelia smiled as William practically flung himself at George and the two giggled, falling to the ground. Her heart swelled with love and pride for those precious children. And she remembered that she had a place here too.
“Jack, do you ever wish we could just sell it all? Sell Biltmore and walk away? Can you even imagine a life where we aren’t weighed down by the constant struggle of keeping up this house, the grounds, the village? We would live like royalty anywhere else.”
