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@beatingheart-bride
One week.
Seven days. Until Susannah Pace would leave New Orleans behind forever, and start a new life with her husband and friends in California. It was a wait that was simultaneously exhilarating and agonizing all at once.
She'd been doing a lot of preparations leading up to the big day: Not just doing wedding preparations (tailoring her mother's wedding dress to make it a better fit for herself, as well as making her own veil), but packing in preparation for the move. Everything was carefully tucked away: The china set and Irish flag her mother brought from her homeland, the homemade blankets and afghans made by her paternal grandmother Augustine, her books, Knox (as if she'd leave him behind!), all of it was safely stowed away in a steamer trunk.
But in-between the preparations, in-between work, in-between the long walks with Philippe, Doreen, and Edward, mercifully distracting her from her melancholy, Susannah found herself oftentimes just...wandering the house, taking everything in, soaking in the memories its walls held, so as to never forget them. She stood in the living room, where her parents would sing and read aloud to her, only those stormy Louisiana nights. She sat in the kitchen, recalling all the mornings she and her father had breakfast there, preparing for a long day ahead. She sat on the steps of the back porch, and looking out at her father's garden, the one he so lovingly tended to from the time she was a tot. She laid in her bed in her bedroom and stared up at the ceiling, resigning herself to the notion that she would never see it again.
But above all else, she was preparing for a final goodbye.
She'd been spending a lot of time in the graveyard lately-more than she usually did. She regularly visited, tended to the headstones of her parents and grandparents, oftentimes sitting between Wilhelmina and August's, on that distant hilltop overlooking the town. She'd leave flowers, and talk aloud to the air, hoping someone would hear her on the other side. Lately, she seemed to be visiting every chance she got, trying to soak up as much time as she could there.
She already had to say goodbye before.
She hated that she would have to say it again.
Philippe's emotions, all considered, were split.
On one hand, he was thrilled! He felt the most free he'd ever felt in his entire life, planning to marry and start a life of his own with his loved ones across the country. He'd be able to live the live he'd always dreamed of: no familial honor to uphold, no being forced into an unloving marriage solely to produce and heir for his parents' sakes. No constantly having to keep up his status of being the golden boy of New Orleans, being heavily scrutinized for the slightest misstep. No more being forced to only fraternize with those of his own status and wealth, people he'd never been able to truly connect with ever since he was a boy. His life would no longer be ruled by obligation and materialism.
No, instead it would be ruled by love and freedom. He'd marry the woman he loved and start a family, with their closest friends just a short walk away. He'd be free to delve into his true hobbies, the ones he had to hide in New Orleans, to avoid society's disapproval: he'd sing, he'd dance. Perhaps, as he and Susannah had discussed months ago, he would try out for a local ballet when he wasn't busy helping get Susannah's new haberdashery off the ground.
But on the other hand, there was melancholy, and even a sense of guilt. This was where he'd been born, and for most of his life, where he'd assumed he'd die. New Orleans was the only home he'd ever known, for better or worse, and for all of its imperfections, he loved it. He knew a piece of his heart would remain in Louisiana, even once he and his loved ones had set off for California.
And for all of their wrongs, even though he couldn't quite see eye-to-eye with his parents, he still loved them. His heart ached when he imagined never seeing them again, and he detested that he had to pull the wool over their eyes. But it had to be done: he only had one life, and he could either live it the way his parents wanted, or live his truth. In the end, he was choosing happiness.