Page 12 of My Favorite Lost Cause (The Favorites #2)

MAREN

T he cottages are adorable. As much as I like the house, I can see why his mother would have preferred to sleep out here, if she was alone.

They’re cozy, first of all, but also set side by side into the hill, with an entire wall of windows facing the water, and each boasting a French door that leads to a small deck overlooking everything.

Charlie says I’m not allowed on the deck because the floorboards are sagging, but generously gives me the furnished cottage—which is the only one with its own bathroom—rather than the one that is currently so full of painting supplies and discarded lawn items that we can’t stand fully inside it.

“You can’t sleep in here,” I tell Charlie.

“I’ll empty it out,” he says. “It’ll be fine.”

My mouth opens to tell him he can just stay with me, but I suppose that might sound a little weird to Elijah. And Charlie isn’t exactly a shrinking violet. If he wanted to share a cottage with me, he’d have just told me he was going to.

Elijah leaves to go deal with permits and tells us to dump the stuff from the cottage on the grass and he’ll have a crew get it tomorrow. Charlie walks him out, and I finally get around to returning my mother’s call from the day before.

“How’s your diet going?” she asks. “I’ve got some juice for you to try. It’s lemon juice with cayenne pepper and agave syrup. We’ll get that weight right off you.”

My mother is, objectively, a terrible parent.

She tried to talk both Kit and me out of going to college and has suggested to us both that bulimia would be the perfect solution if it didn’t ruin your teeth (though, she added, veneers can fix that right up).

This—her efforts to help me lose the whole ten pounds I packed onto my five-foot-eleven-inch frame once my modeling days ended—is as close as she’s ever come to maternal.

“Oh, I actually, uh—” I look around me wildly. “I’m at a resort.”

“A weight-loss resort?” she asks hopefully.

I wish I could just tell her the truth, but even if she knew about Charlie’s mom’s death and the house, I would not.

She’d make it into a thing, probably a thing that would ruin the family entirely, a family I adore.

I love our get-togethers—me, Roger, my mom, Kit, Charlie, and Henry—who’s now best friends with Roger.

We are six wildly dysfunctional people who somehow become normal around each other, and I can’t imagine how depleted my life would feel without that.

“No, no weight loss,” I reply, because otherwise she’ll suggest joining me. “They’re more focused on meditation.”

The purr of an engine catches my attention. Charlie is, inexplicably, driving the rental car over the long grassy lawn. Why the hell he’s driving when we’re five minutes from the house is beyond me.

“Mom, I’ve got to go,” I tell her.

“I hear a motor,” she says. “Tell me you’re at least walking around the resort and not taking a golf cart. Those pounds creep up fast when you’re?—”

“Sorry, Mom, silent meditation. They’re taking the phone.

” I hang up before she can suggest ways I could lose weight while meditating too— walking meditation works just as well as sitting!

Fidgeting burns calories too!— and head down to where Charlie is now parking the rental—right on the narrow trail and perilously close to the marsh.

“What the hell, Charlie?” I ask. “You couldn’t walk?”

His shoulders are tense and he doesn’t quite meet my eye. “I want to get this shit out of here. I don’t want to wait for the crew.”

Oh.

That’s what’s behind the tension. I think it bothers him, seeing these remnants of his mother’s life disposed of, and he’d rather cut the emotion away than sit with it.

I get that. How many times have I thrown myself into decorating something at the start of my period to keep from weeping over the fact that my period arrived at all?

“Okay,” I reply, grabbing the keys from his hand and popping open the trunk, “but if that car slides into the marsh, you’re the one telling the rental company.”

“That’s fine,” he says. “Anyone who’s seen you drive will still assume it was you.”

It takes hours—and multiple trips to the dump—to get the little cottage emptied.

I try to suggest to Charlie that he might eventually want the rakes and the lawnmower and fifteen bags of potting soil, but he just says no in that hard voice, and I decide not to push.

As subpar as my relationship with my mother is, if she chose to die alone or never told me how hard her life had gotten, it would break my heart. And I think it’s breaking Charlie’s.

We stop in Oak Bluff on the final run to the dump.

I grab some groceries and cleaning supplies while Charlie heads to the liquor store down the street.

I guess our little talk this morning about his drinking didn’t do a lot of good.

I head to the only register in the whole store, staffed by Martha, the friendly woman who rang us up yesterday.

“You were in here last night,” she comments, scanning the chicken broth.

I give her an awkward smile. “Yeah, forgot to get cleaning supplies.”

“You know why I remember you?” she asks, and I brace myself. “I’ve never seen someone so muted. It’s as if there are all these colors inside you, but they’re covered by this dark cloak.”

That’s not where I’d thought she was going—people tend to either recognize me or suggest I look a lot like that model from the 90s , by which they mean my mother—and I have no idea how to respond.

“I’ve been told that I don’t look great in black,” I tell her with a small laugh, glancing at my T-shirt. “I guess I should’ve listened.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not your clothes. It’s your aura . Who or what is it that’s cast this pall over you?”

My mouth falls open, but I’ve got no jokes, no response. “I don’t know.”

She shakes her head. “I bet you do. When you allow yourself to answer the question, you’ll realize you already knew. That’s always how it is.”

I say nothing. And I’d like to dismiss what she says as crazy, but as I leave the store, I’ve got the uncomfortable feeling that she might be right. I already know.

We clean both cottages as best we can. It’s slow going, as I’d never used a mop before, so I didn’t realize I’d need a bucket too, though I probably should have.

When we’re finally done, Charlie goes to the main house to shower and I go to the cottage, grateful to strip out of my sticky clothes and stand under the spray while I try to pinpoint the source of my good mood.

I have a spectacular home in Manhattan and my life is easy: I don’t have to clean; I don’t change my own sheets.

I don’t even wash my own clothes. I take care of the dogs, I see my family, I help plan various seasonal fundraisers.

When I express any discontent with my life, when I mention being tired of the routine, Harvey tells me I’m a spoiled brat and he’s probably right, but…

I was happy today. Even though I’ve got blisters from carrying paint cans and my sneakers got trashed when I stepped into the marsh, the hours were full.

I felt productive, useful. Maybe the problem at home isn’t that my life is jam-packed, but that it’s jam-packed with things that don’t matter.

I emerge from the cottage bare-faced, with my wet hair twisted atop my head, feeling like a new version of myself. Or maybe an old version of myself, the girl I said goodbye to a long time ago.

Charlie, sitting on the back veranda, watches me approach with a small smile on his face and raises a bottle of wine. “Pizza is on the way. Celebratory drink in the meantime?”

I silence the voice that wants to say pizza has a high glycemic index .

“I don’t drink,” I reply, “and what would we be celebrating?”

“You’ve successfully talked me into spending all my money, in addition to money I don’t have. It’s quite a feat. And since when don’t you drink? It’s not as if you’re already pregnant.”

He didn’t mean anything by it, but the reminder hurts.

I’ve tried. I’ve tried and tried. I’ve employed every scientific way to induce fertility and every non-scientific way.

I’ve eaten yams, I’ve worn a fertility goddess charm, I’ve remained in bed after sex with my legs straight up in the air…

all to no avail while all around me, my friends are having their second kids and an accidental third.

He looks at me and I get pregnant , they’ll laughingly complain, resting a hand on their swollen stomachs.

I smile the widest of anyone so they don’t know I’m bothered, my jaw grinding hard the whole time.

I hitch a shoulder. “I’m just trying to stay healthy, so I’m in good shape if IVF works.”

“Maren,” he sighs. “Not to sound like the bad kid in an afterschool special, but a little bit of wine isn’t going to make a difference. You know that, right?”

He isn’t wrong. But when I don’t get pregnant, I will look back at each individual failure—taking this trip, the glass of wine he’s talked me into—and have to assume I brought it on myself. “I guess.”

“Give me a percentage. What percent chance is there that having half a glass of wine will somehow be bad for a baby you’re not even carrying yet?”

“If it was arsenic-laced, it would be.”

He laughs. “Sorry, I didn’t realize I had to exclude the very real possibility that I’d poison you, which I now wish I’d thought of because it would have saved me money. Presuming the wine is totally normal, what percent chance?”

I sigh. “Extremely small.”

“And,” he continues, “what is the chance that being more relaxed will actually help you get pregnant?”

I see where he’s going, and I wish I had an argument, but I don’t. “Also small, but less small.”

“By that logic, then, you are actively harming your chances of getting pregnant by not enjoying a glass of wine with me.”

“While I’m positive this is incorrect, fine, whatever. I’ll have half a glass.”

He pours me an entire cup and I take a sip. “God, that’s so good,” I admit.

He laughs under his breath. “Welcome back to the dark side, Maren. There’s so much in store for you here.”

A pleasant shiver runs over my arms and there’s a clench in my core once again. If I wasn’t married and he wasn’t my stepbrother…

I dismiss the thought before it can keep playing out in my head. I’ve actually had to discard this thought so many times I barely notice I’m doing it anymore.

The pizza arrives. Charlie carries it to the table on the back porch, and we wash it down with wine out of plastic cups as the light dies out over the water. Harvey and I honeymooned in Germany. We stayed at five-star hotels and dined at the best restaurants…but I like this more.

I wasn’t happy there, something I wish I’d admitted sooner. And I’m happy here, which is something I sort of wish I could forget.

Once we’ve cleaned up all our trash, Charlie walks me to my cottage and brushes his teeth at my sink before he goes to the door.

“Lock this when I leave,” he warns, “just in case some weirdo saw you in town. And do not go on the deck.”

For someone who acts as if he doesn’t care about anything at all, he seems to spend a lot of time worrying about me.

When I climb into bed, I kind of miss having him a foot or two away.