Page 92 of The Wedding Veil
She shook her head. “You would have told me alone, not sent it to all my friends and family.”
Very softly and calmly I said, “Someone sent the video to Sarah, and we knew if we just showed it to you that you would reason that it didn’t matter. But I needed all the most importantwomen in your life fighting you on your decision, not just me. I couldn’t be solely responsible for your making a huge mistake.”
Julia nodded. She crossed her arms. “Who sent it to Sarah?”
I paused, deciding whether I wanted to keep something else from my granddaughter. But the truth was that Therese—Hayes’s mom—had sent it. She didn’t want to blow up her son’s life yet again, but she also couldn’t in good conscience let my granddaughter marry him without knowing who he was. She had sworn us to secrecy. I respected her for making what had to have been an impossible decision. And, from one mother to another, I decided, in that split second, that I couldn’t betray her trust. It wasn’t important now anyway.
“Oh, I have no idea,” I said. “Sarah didn’t know the person.” I could tell Julia was fuming, so I continued, trying to make it better. “But I wanted you to know how it was going to feel. That man wasn’t going to change and there was going to come a day in your life when he did something big and public and embarrassing and everyone around you was going to know about it.” I paused. “Maybe even your own children.”
I braced myself for what she would say.
“Babs, you ruined my wedding,” she said solemnly. Then she repeated, her tone changing, “Babs, youruinedmy wedding.”
Julia was quiet for a long moment, and my heart was racing. I had hoped that her anger and hurt might not feel so fresh, that she would be so relieved she hadn’t married Hayes she would feel grateful. I did what I had to do because I loved her. And, truly, I hadn’t known for sure she would even call the wedding off. But I had hoped…
Then, as if she had decided something, Julia burst out intofree, unquiet, non-sneaky laughter. She put her hand up, trying to compose herself. “Wait, do you mean to tell me that my tiny grandmother figured out how to group text everyone at my bridesmaids’ luncheon—including my fiancé—and ruin my wedding day?”
I let out an annoyed, breathy sigh. “I’m eighty-one. I’m not dead. It’s not that hard to send a group text. I’m a little offended that you would even suggest I couldn’t do it.” So, yes, maybe I had had Brian at the senior center practice with me over and over on something he called a burner phone, and he even helped me create a group so I didn’t have to add anyone and couldn’t mess it up. But Julia didn’t have to know that.
She reached over and wrapped me in a hug. “You really are one of a kind, Babs. You really are.”
“So you aren’t mad?”
“Mad! I’m impressed. I’m grateful. I’m going to have the single best story to tell at parties for the rest of my life. I’ve won the game of dinner party guest for all eternity. Mad? I’m thrilled!”
All that worry for months and it led to this. Maybe time really could heal all wounds. I thought of Reid, of my wound. Then again, maybe not all wounds could be healed completely. My only hope was that my granddaughter would find a love just like that.
“You’re sure you won’t want to wear the veil on your wedding day?” I asked. “Last chance to change your mind.”
She shook her head. “It’s too much for a boat in the BVIs.”
I raised my eyebrow questioningly, and she grinned from ear to ear. “Maybe it won’t be Conner,” she said, shrugging. She looked down at the steps. “But I kind of think it is. And I don’t need a wedding veil to tell me whether we’ll be happy forever.”
I laughed. “Well, three cheers for that.”
“We should go,” Julia whispered. “I think we’re tempting fate.”
I took her hand as we stared for a final moment down at a family heirloom that was no longer ours. We both blew kisses into the wind and said goodbye to the wedding veil. And, as we walked arm in arm back around to the side yard, I almost felt the women who had lived in this house, who had worn the veil before me. Brave women, strong women, trailblazers and leaders who fought against oppression and adversity, who bore unthinkable tragedy and disaster, and who came out on the other side better and stronger for it.
In our family, that wedding veil had been a sign of union, a symbol of bonding together. But it was only now that I realized that, maybe, it hadn’t been a talisman of good luck and strong marriages with faithful husbands. No, the wedding veil was never about the men. It wasn’t even about the marriages. It was about the women who wore it, the connection, the insatiable lust for life—for adventure, for meaning, foreverything. To some, it was just a little piece of lace. But to us, it was so much more.
I almost looked back, to see its glorious tulle blowing in the wind one last time. But the women who wore that veil? We weren’t the kind to look back. No. We kept moving forward, pressing into the future, into the unknown, into an endless night and a sky bursting with stars, full of nothing but possibility.
