“There are not,” Babs said. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, what are they?” Mom asked at the same time.
I squinted to read the two sets I recognized. “EDV and CVC. Edith Dresser Vanderbilt and Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Babs said under her breath, looking over my shoulder. “What are the others?”
“NDB,” I said. Then I looked at Mom. “Someone needs to be googling Edith’s family!” My voice was much more high-pitched and frantic than I had meant it to be. I paused while my mom typed on her phone. “Natalie Dresser Brown!” she called.
“PDM,” I said. “Pauline Dresser Merrill,” Mom and Aunt Alice exclaimed simultaneously.
I looked up. “This is so fun! SDD.”
“Susan Dresser D’Osmoy!” Aunt Alice exclaimed, butchering her last name, I felt certain.
“SLD?” I asked questioningly.
We were all silent for a moment.
“Well, that would be Edith’s mother, right?” Mom picked up. “Her married last name would have been Dresser?”
I grinned at Babs, a shiver of excitement running through me. This was, in fact, the missing Vanderbilt veil!
“All right,” she said. “You don’t have to gloat so openly. Fine. We have the Vanderbilt veil.”
“Now what?” Alice asked.
“Lunch!” Babs said. “I am positively starving.”
Suddenly I was too. “You guys, we are in possession of a real piece of American history.”
Mom scrunched her nose. “It probably doesn’t belong under a bed in a storage box, huh?”
“Hmmm…” Aunt Alice added.
Babs crossed her arms.
I looked over at her. “It’s up to you, Babs. Your veil, your rules.”
She stood up. “I can’t possibly make a decision like this on an empty stomach.”
As we reached the entrance hall, Aunt Alice stopped. “Wait,” she said. “Mom, did you say the woman who gave Gran the veil was Russian?”
Babs nodded.
“Was her name by any chance Nilcha?”
I watched as a wave of recognition passed over Babs’s face. I didn’t know why that was significant, but even if it wasn’t, I was confident that we had solved the mystery of the wedding veil. And now we had to figure out what to do about it.
CORNELIAThe Feminine DivineMarch 30, 1934
On the train from Asheville to New York, Cornelia knew she looked positively mad holding her wedding veil on her lap. Her life-path number, twenty-two, indicated that insanity was likely a part of her journey. So maybe thiswasinsane. Fleeing her home for England with one trunk and one suitcase of personal belongings? It did give her pause.
But perhapsfleeingwasn’t the right word for it. Judge Adams had—much to her chagrin—come along to help her get the boys settled in school.As if I need his help, she’d fumed. But when choosing between Jack, her mother, and the judge, he seemed the easiest, least emotional choice. And it was nice that he had taken the boys to meet the conductor to show them the inner workings of the train. She missed them already. But luckily, she had the long boat journey from New York to London with them.
Even still, sending her off with a chaperone as though she wasn’t a proper mother was just one more piece of proof that Jackdidn’t understand her anymore. He didn’t understand why she needed to eat pink grapefruit every morning because it was her cleansing food. He didn’t understand that she needed to dance nude in the rain to regenerate her positive aura. He didn’t understand that shehadto dye her hair pink to balance her hormones, reset her internal clock, and get some sleep. Oh, dear sleep. Yes, she needed some of that.
Cornelia sighed, leaning her head back on the seat as the train stopped. Yes. It had been a hard few years, as Jack had said. But what he didn’t understand was that this was her life. Everywhere she went, people knew her, the press followed her. Asheville had been her only safe place. But now, all the speculation about why they had opened the house to the public, whether she’d lost all her money—whether it had been immoral to have so much to begin with—and, worst of all, whether her father’s dream was destroyed, was more than she could take.George Vanderbilt is dead. The dream is dust and ashes.Damn thatKansas City Star.
