tiptoes and kissed Jack’s cheek. “This has been the best week of my entire life, Jack Holland.”
For him, too.
What followed was a very old-fashioned courtship. Letters (not just emails, either). Long phone calls into the night. He sent her flowers and a snow globe of Manhattan. She sent him cookies and a scarf she knitted herself. After three weeks, he went down south to visit her.
Hadley lived in a sweet neighborhood, not too far from her parents and two older sisters. Her house was a tiny bungalow, the yard filled with flowers. When Jack knocked, she answered the door (wearing a dress and heels and smelling incredible), took his coat, hung it up in a closet and poured homemade iced tea into a tall glass filled with ice. She added a couple of mint leaves picked from her garden. She’d baked sugar cookies for him and served them on a porcelain plate, first inviting him to sit down and relax.
They had dinner with her entire family that night, and everyone seemed like wonderful, upbeat, intelligent people. Mr. Boudreau was a lawyer; Mrs. Boudreau had been a college English professor. Hadley had three sisters—Ruthie was a pediatric surgeon, and Rachel was a state representative. Both older sisters were married, and each had a son and a daughter. Hadley’s younger sister, Frances-Lynne, better known as Frankie, was a senior in college, wanted to be a veterinarian and was looking at Cornell, Jack’s own alma mater.
Clearly, the Boudreaus were a wonderful family, and, even more clearly, Hadley Belle would make an incredible wife.
That night, he took her back to the Bohemian Hotel, and they slept together for the first time.
Afterward, Hadley said that being with him had felt different, not that she was too experienced. But she knew it had been special. Meaningful.
He flew her to New York a few weeks later. It was a great time to visit Manningsport; the trees were in bloom, the weather clear and warm, and it was the weekend of the Black-and-White Ball, a fund-raiser his family supported every year. That year, it was held at McMurtry Vineyard, another operation on Keuka Lake. Hadley loved it, charmed everyone and practically shimmered in a white sequin gown.
“What do you think?” Jack asked Honor. “Isn’t she fantastic?”
“She’s very pretty,” she answered, and it was only later that Jack realized Honor had dodged the question.
Hadley loved Blue Heron, loved Jack’s family, loved the house he’d built high on Rose Ridge, tucked in the woods at the west end of the fields. “I can’t imagine anything nicer than sitting on this here deck and watching the sunrise,” she said.
Nine weeks after they’d met, Jack flew down to Savannah for the third time and knocked on the Boudreaus’ front door. Mr. Boudreau ushered him into his study, poured him a glass of an excellent smoky bourbon and another for himself. “I think I probably know what’s on your mind, son,” he said, sitting behind his desk.
“I’d like to ask Hadley to marry me, sir,” Jack answered. “And I wanted your blessing first.”
“And they say Yankees have no manners,” Mr. Boudreau said with a faint smile. He took a sip of his drink and considered Jack. “Well, now. I appreciate you coming to talk to me, I do. Let me ask you this, though, son. You sure you’ve thought this through?”
“I know it’s fast,” he said. “But yes, sir.”
“And you don’t think a little more time might be a good thing?”
Initially, Jack just thought Bill Boudreau was trying to keep his third daughter closer to home, or was just being protective, doing what fathers did. Later, it would make more sense.
“I think I know what I need to, sir. She’s everything I could ever ask for.”
Bill sighed. “She has her charms, doesn’t she?” He slapped the desk. “Well, all right, then. Best of luck to you, Jack. I think you’ll be good for her.”
Jack took Hadley to dinner that night at 700 Drayton in the Forsyth mansion, her favorite restaurant. Afterward, they walked through the park, and, in front of the fountain, Jack took her hand, knelt down and pulled a little turquoise box from his pocket. “Hadley, make me the happiest—”
“Yes! Yes, Jack, yes, let me see that ring! Oh, my land, it’s beautiful! Oh, Jack!” She let him slide it on her finger and practically danced in a circle around him she was so happy.
He’d definitely scored with the ring.
Originally, Jack was going to give her his mother’s engagement ring, which his dad had given to him years ago for just such a purpose. But something told him Hadley would want something that had been bought just for her, so he’d checked with Faith, then visited Tiffany’s and bought her an elaborate platinum-and-diamond ring that cost about as much as a new tractor.
He wanted to marry her fast and get her up to Manningsport, and she was all for it. Despite the rushed nature of the wedding, it was a huge affair. Hadley had an enormous binder she’d begun at age seven, complete with spreadsheets and thousands of pictures on her computer, organized by file—flower arrangements, bouquets, cakes, bridesmaid dresses, invitations, place settings. The only thing she didn’t need was a gown; she’d bought her wedding dress when she was twenty-one, she told him, which struck Jack as slightly terrifying. Then again, things were different in the South.
Jack learned that at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, Hadley viewed herself as an old maid. Most of her friends had gotten engaged (or lavaliered, whatever that was) in college. The summer after she’d graduated, Hadley had been in eight weddings, and she’d thought her day would never come. When he mentioned he had two unmarried sisters older than she was, she shrugged. “Southern women can’t wait to settle down and start a family. It’s more of a priority for us.”
She became a bit of a monster about the wedding, growing furious when the caterer didn’t have the right shade of ivory for the napkins. Her eyes narrowed at the mention of a cousin who’d “stolen” her idea for a bridal bouquet last summer—everyone knew that Hadley’s heart had always and forever been set on a bouquet of gardenias and bluebonnet, and then That Vanna had gone in and swooped up the idea, and now everyone would compare, and Hadley wanted to be completely unique yet traditional and have the most beautiful wedding ever held.
Jack was so, so glad to be a guy. But as he was one thousand miles away, he thought her bridezilla antics were kind of cute.
“Of course it’s going to be the most beautiful,” he said into the phone. “Because you’re the bride, baby.”
“Oh, Jack! You always know what to say! But dang it all, I’m going to just kill That Vanna when I see her at my bachelorette party!”
Speaking of parties, there were many. The traditional engagement party, for which Jack flew down with his father so the parents could meet, and so Jack could meet Hadley’s extended family. That had been very nice. Southerners really did know how to socialize, and Dad liked Mr. and Mrs. Boudreau very much. There were no fewer than three showers, and Hadley was a little hurt that Jack’s sisters didn’t come to each one. There was the bachelorette party, a party the night before the rehearsal dinner, the rehearsal dinner and a brunch for wedding guests the day after the wedding. Not to mention the wedding itself.
Finally, the big day came, which was a relief, because Jack just wanted to be married so Hadley could go back to being her sweet self and not some Martha Stewart–obsessed monster.
The wedding was held at her parents’ lovely home, in the vast backyard. Hadley had what seemed like thousands of bridesmaids—her three sisters, his three and his niece, her sorority sisters and many cousins, even That Vanna, all clad in pale pink. Jack had a couple of friends from college, Connor O’Rourke, a buddy from the navy, and his father as his best man, as well as Hadley’s brothers-in-law. Biggest wedding party he’d ever seen, frankly, and a little embarrassing that it was his.
But Hadley was radiant and happy, seeming to float on a huge, cloudlike dress. If she occasionally leveled a steely-eyed gaze at a bridesmaid who laughed