Celine didn’t need to say it, but she wanted the South she felt was denied to her. She wanted the taste of gumbo thick with meat, crab cakes buttery and rich, slow-roasted barbecue tender enough to fall from the bone. Her childhood had been one of saltines soaked in milk for breakfast, mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch, Vienna sausages wrapped in American cheese for dinner if she was lucky. Food she could make because her father never cooked. Pantry-staple food, salty and never satiating.

Celine wanted cotillion balls. To shimmy a white dress up over her hips. To slide her hands through white lace gloves. To have the dangle of pearls from her neck. She wanted a gentleman’s hand holding hers. To breathe the magnolia-scented air as he kissed her under the moonlight-drenched sky. She wanted all the romance and gentility she believed made up their world. Longed for it then, and Mira saw she wanted it still.

“Is that why you invited them?” Mira asked, not hiding her accusing tone. “You wanted to make them jealous? You think they’ll accept you now because you have more than they do? This is why the wedding is here too, isn’t it? Because of them. They used to treat us like shit and it’s like that doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Can’t people change? You’re judging them for who they were, but maybe if you gave them a chance, you’d see you’re wrong. They’re not so bad.”

“Yet because of them you’re having your wedding here. At a plantation, Celine.”

“It hasn’t been a plantation for over a hundred years, and it’s not like my family owned slaves.”

“What about its history? The suffering that built it. That’s never forgotten. It’s always there. Isn’t it always there?”

“If this is how you felt you shouldn’t have come.”

Mira could see the discussion was going nowhere and it was getting late. She stood up to go. Celine did not move from the bed as Mira walked to the door. Mira hovered as she contemplated what to say before leaving. This would be the last time they’d talk. Tomorrow was the wedding, and after—after, who knew if she’d get another chance to talk to Celine. A gulf stood between the two of them. They were strangers, tied together solely because of obligation for what used to be, out of an allegiance to what was.

If this was it, if they were to never see each other again, she wanted to offer her one last truth, one she knew none of the other girls would give. “You know you don’t have to go through with any of this, right? Who cares about any of them? The Celine I know wouldn’t. You can still change your mind. Tell them all to go to hell. Don’t do this if it’s not what you want.”