“Cornelia, why would you do that to me?” Jack had asked after her mother and Judge Adams left, the day she’d announced her decision to take the boys to England. He rarely called her by her full name, so she knew he was upset. “That was a conversation we should have had alone, something we should have decided together.”
She obviously knew that. But she felt that he was less likely to make a scene in front of the others and, thus, she’d have a better chance of getting what she wanted.
“You’re the one who wanted the boys to go off to school!” she protested, knowing in her heart that Jack wasn’t disagreeing with that part of the plan.
“Yes, fine. Great,” he said. “But my wife moving to England was never quite a part of it.”
“But won’t it make you feel better if I’m close to them? If I can get to them at a moment’s notice?”
Jack looked dubious.
“I just need to disappear for a while,” she continued.
“Disappear?” he asked.
She nodded. “I need to be somewhere where the press doesn’t know me, where I can be alone.”
“There’s a lot to do here,” he said. “But I can make a trip happen. I can go with you.”
This was the hard part. How could she make him understand that she was on a personal spiritual journey and the road she was walking she had to walk alone? Well, maybe he had been understanding of that. He had been understanding when she had fallen apart after every editor she heard back from told her her book wasn’t fit for publication. And he had been understanding when she had said she needed to study art again, to find a way to express her emotions in a way that wasn’t writing. Writing was so… constricting. She was free with her brush in her hand.
“I know you have most of the power here,” Jack said. “I’m not stupid. But, Nelly, we have to make these decisions together. I can’t be told what the rest of my life will be like. I can’t be told I can’t see my children.”
Something broke inside Cornelia when he said that, the idea of actually being separated from her children searing through her. But this was just a test run, she reasoned. And she believed with all her heart that she had been given every advantage on earth, and she should pass every advantage along to her children. People intheir world sent their sons to the finest schools. She could certainly afford to do it. And she would.
That was what she told herself. But somewhere, deep down, she knew she simply needed to be free from all the trappings and stresses of her life. She needed to be alone.
“I will not take them away from you, Jack. I promise. You are a wonderful father. They need you. But we’ve talked about this before. I know you must agree that they deserve the best.”
He nodded and, for a few moments, was silent. “Nelly, I get that you’re going through something here, and I have tried to help. I really have. But if you are leaving me, could you please just tell me?”
Something caught in Cornelia’s throat.Leaving him. That was what she was doing, wasn’t it? She had realized she was leaving the United States. She had realized she was leaving her family home and all it had meant to her. She had hoped that, by being away, she could escape from the mounting and unrelenting pressure of keeping up this boulder of a house that had turned her life into a daily avalanche. But had she really meant to leave Jack? She gazed at his handsome face, his groomed mustache, his spotless suit. There was no doubt Jack was part of a past Cornelia was moving away from. He didn’t fit into the world she imagined for herself, the world of freedom and happiness, art and humanity. But leaving him was a big decision. “Jack, I’m not leaving you. I’m leaving me.” Concern passed across his face, but she liked the way it sounded.
“I have worked too hard here. Your mother and I have,” he said. “I cannot leave Biltmore for good. I won’t.”
“No one would ever ask you to leave Biltmore,” she said.
Jack and her mother. Were they the solution? Or had they beenthe problem? Had they kept her locked tight in this massive cage originally constructed by her father? She would find out, she guessed. That was what this journey was all about.
Her pink hair matted against the train seat,Leaving me, leaving mebounced around in her head as she closed her eyes. She could see why Jack would be concerned, but Cornelia didn’t want to die. No. Quite the contrary. She wanted to live.
The seat jostled, and she opened her eyes hesitantly to see a rather unfashionable woman sit down in the seat across from her. “This sure is a full train,” she said.
Her irritation immediately turned to joy at having someone to share the journey with. Sharing this earthly journey. Wasn’t that what she was trying to do?
“Hello,” she said, “I’m Nilcha.” Cornelia’s numerologist had long tried to persuade her to change her name, but it hadn’t felt right until this exact moment. At home, she was Cornelia of Biltmore. On this train, she was Nilcha of Nowhere.
“I’m Gladys,” the woman replied. “How do you do?”
Cornelia smiled kindly.
“Are you getting married?”
Cornelia looked down at her lap and realized she was petting the yards and yards of crumpled tulle like a lapdog. “No,” she said. “Far from it. I got married long ago.” She couldn’t say why she had brought the veil, why, out of the few possessions she had gathered for this trip, she’d packed something so useless. But it was a symbol of her mother and grandmother, her aunts, the feminine divine from which she had come. She wanted to hold that close, had needed its power to walk out the door, to find her truth, to create a path and a way forward that hadn’t been available to the other women in her family.
“My sweetheart proposed,” Gladys said conspiratorially. “But I just don’t know what to say. I can’t say no. It would break his heart. But can I say yes?”
“I’m not sure,” Cornelia said. “Is he your truth?”
