44. Ansley Autumn Breeze
ansley: autumn breeze
LIFE IS BUSY. IT’S FULL of hustle and bustle and work and cooking and cleaning. But every now and then, there are these moments, moments where you stand back, and you realize that you put together something really extraordinary. A family. A party. A work of art. And tonight, I had done all three.
The most gorgeous ivory tent was held aloft with dark bamboo poles, giving the whole thing this very vintage Peachtree look.
A dozen stunning chandeliers that I would later sell at Sloane Emerson lit the entire space, and graceful flower chains met in the center of the tent and extended out to the edges.
Food stations, servers, and open bars, which everyone seemed to be enjoying immensely, lined the perimeter.
The band and dance floor were in the center of the tent, and all around the dance floor were tables filled with flowers and flowers and more flowers.
It was a fairy wonderland, the most beautiful wedding I had ever seen, thanks to Caroline, who’d helped me plan most of it, and Jack, who, well, paid for the whole thing, bless his heart.
The irony that the wedding he paid for was for his only nonbiological daughter was not lost on me.
Famous movie star Chase Aarons—my new son-in-law? How did we get here?—had his arm around me, and we watched as Caroline shagged with Jack to “My Girl.” “How’d she learn to dance like that?” he asked.
“Cotillion,” I said. “She hated it. Didn’t want to go. But she can waltz and shag and tango and even merengue, so I feel like it was worth the fight.”
He nodded. “Totally.”
“And where did he learn to dance like that?”
I smiled up at Chase. “Me,” I said. “I taught him to dance on the beach the summer we turned sixteen.”
Chase sighed dreamily. “I wish I’d known Caroline when we were sixteen.”
He was so in love that I resisted the urge to point out that when he was sixteen, she was twenty-five, and that when she was sixteen, he was seven.
Not that I minded an age difference. Carter and I had had a big one, and we were more than happy, more than in love.
It wasn’t perfect, but we had done our best. And tonight, missing him was a shadow I could not escape.
I thought of him every day, of course, my love that left me too soon.
But when something big happened with the girls, his loss felt particularly present.
“Hey!” Chase said. “Ansley, I know how to dance. I mean, I’m one hell of a dancer.”
I laughed. “I know. I saw you in LA Lights.”
He smiled. “But I don’t know how to shag. Can you teach me?”
“Like, right now?”
He nodded. “I mean, the basics, I guess, but, like, I want to be able to do that spinny thing that Jack and Caroline are doing.”
I grinned. “I can even teach you a flip,” I said.
He gasped. “But you’ll have to do that with Caroline or Vivi,” I said. “My flip days have passed.”
“Vivi,” he said. “Caroline can’t flip in her—” He cleared his throat. “Dress. She can’t flip in her dress.”
I cut my eyes at him. Because that was not what he was going to say. Was she hurt? Was she sick? Was that why they had gotten married so fast? “Chase, is she okay?”
He laughed. “Oh my gosh, Ansley. Yes. I promise. But I’m trying to be a cool stepdad and get cool stepdad points, so this will help.”
“Okay then,” I said. I’d get to the bottom of that one later. Chase took my hand and led me out onto the dance floor, in the corner, not the center, where Caroline and Jack were having their moment.
“So, you’ll see other people hold right hand to left hand, but I’m a big fan of the right to right,” I said authoritatively, taking my right hand in his.
“Now,” I said, demonstrating, “the super-simple pattern is triple step, triple step, rock step.”
He mirrored my footwork perfectly on the first try. And much to my surprise, spun me. “You aren’t advanced enough for that yet,” I said, laughing.
We watched Jack and Caroline, and he said, “Let’s do that thing they’re doing.”
“That is the cuddle hold,” I said.
Chase burst out laughing. “Man, I wish I’d been born Southern. How have I lived my life without the cuddle hold?”
The music ended and the song switched to “Carolina Girls,” and the floor seemed to fill up in a split second.
“The music!” he said. “This is so good!”
“Just wait until I teach you the belly roll,” I said.
Caroline and Jack came over just in time to see Chase breaking it down on the dance floor. “That is not it,” I said, “but I really love that.”
Jack swept me into his arms as Chase said to Caroline, “And I really love you!” I took a moment to watch my daughter, the glow on her face, the way her laugh lit up her whole body. This was a different version of Caroline, and I was so happy it was her forever.
Kyle came and swept me away and said, “If Chase gets to dance with Ansley, so do I!”
This son-in-law I knew so well. “You know,” I said, as he led me around the floor, “when you first brought me coffee ten years ago, I really never imagined we’d wind up here.”
He laughed. “Me neither, Ans. Can you believe I finally got her down the aisle?”
I smiled, thinking about that, my headstrong daughter who claimed she never wanted to be married. “You wore her down,” I said. “Pure force of will.”
“I’m going to take really good care of her,” he said.
I nodded because I knew that. Emerson was bold, brave, and confident, but, sometimes, she could be so emotional, so in her own head that she couldn’t move forward.
Kyle knew how to temper that in her, how to handle it, in a way that Mark never really did.
I looked over at Chase and Caroline, at Jack dancing with Emerson, even at Vivi and Tyler, and thought of Sloane and Adam, a few miles away, and I realized how close we had all come to missing our fate.
Or, maybe, our fate was always meant to find us.
Sometimes it just took a roundabout way to get there.
The song turned slow, and Jack took me back from Kyle, holding me close, our cheeks touching. I was so overcome by all he had done for me today, for my daughters. I was antsy and itching to go check on Sloane, but I willed myself to make it just a little longer. “I need to text Adam,” I said.
“I’m leaving right after this dance,” Jack said. “You stay. Enjoy the wedding. The girls need you. And I’ll make sure you get there before the baby comes.”
I pulled back to look at him, as handsome as he’d ever been, as loving as the day I’d met him.
For the first time in weeks, I felt myself truly melt into him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been really selfish with you.
You have done so much for me, for the girls.
Moving to Chicago for you is really the least I can do.
And, no, I technically don’t want to leave Peachtree, but I want to be without you even less. ”
He pulled me close and said the sweetest words I’d ever heard. “You were right. I should have listened to you from the beginning. We aren’t moving to Chicago.”
I had resigned myself to making this sacrifice, but, wow, how everything inside of me lit up. I was nothing short of elated. Even still, I said, “Are you sure?”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
“What do you mean that I was right?” I looked over at my brother John, who was holding a glass of something brown and talking to Emerson’s friend Margot, who appeared to be drunk and disinterested. I knew instantly this had something to do with him.
“You know what,” Jack said, “tonight is a perfect night. We are going to let tonight be perfect, and we will talk about this tomorrow.”
He kissed me and said, “For now, I love you, but I’m leaving.”
I nodded. I understood. I was torn. I wanted to go, but I wanted to stay. And that, in a nutshell, was the crux of being a mother of three, a grandmother of five—almost six. I always wanted to be more than one place at the same time. I felt like Jack was starting to understand that now, too.
“Kiss her for me?”
Jack nodded. He looked over at the girls, who were both surrounded by people. “Kiss them for me?”
I grabbed a glass of champagne off the tray of a server walking by and took a sip, watching the man I loved leave.
The music and the autumn breeze wrapped around me, bubbles dancing in my mouth as I took my first sip of champagne.
I walked outside the tent, into the dark night, the stars dancing above me, and took a deep breath.
I thought of my mom, my dad, and, of course, Carter.
I felt an arm on my shoulders and looked up to see my brother Scott, my tumbleweed sibling who spent his life as a travel writer, never staying in one place too long, but who, no matter what, always seemed to be there when I needed him.
He, too, had a glass in his hand. He raised it and said, “To loves, those we’ve lost, those we’ve found, and those yet to be.”
I clinked my glass with his, leaning into him. My brother. One of my loves. I thought, for a moment, that I would respond. But, instead, I let his words hang there, heavy in the dark night, suspended in the thick air. Sometimes, there was really nothing more to say.