Page 27 of My Favorite Lost Cause (The Favorites #2)

George still hasn’t returned Mama’s broach. I’m worried he means to keep it. She’ll never forgive me if she finds out.

May 27, 1916

Well, a day that began catastrophically has ended all right.

It was my worst fear come true: Mama asked for her broach, but it was still with George, and I couldn’t exactly walk up to his door and demand it, could I?

So I told Mama I would go upstairs to get it and then went down by the water and cried instead.

That’s how William found me: curled up in the gazebo near his cottage, crying my eyes out.

He asked what was wrong, and I have no idea why I told him the truth.

He laughed and I was so angry, but an hour later, he returned—I was inside by then, on the cusp of telling Mama the truth, and he slipped it into my pocket.

When I felt its weight there, I could barely believe it.

I’m not sure what he said to George, and I don’t even care. Maybe William isn’t so awful after all.

Oddly, William makes me think of Charlie: Charlie, doing push-ups in the grass, Charlie rushing back to New York to retrieve the puppies.

I shut the journal and go upstairs to Margaret’s room, staring at myself hard in the mirror hanging there.

It feels as if my life and Margaret’s are combining, somehow. As if I’m now half me and half her. It’s got to be her influence, making me think of Charlie in the way I have been.

“Stop, Margaret,” I warn. “I’m my own person. You don’t get to decide who I like.”

For once, the room is silent. There’s no euphoria and no grief.

There’s only me, admitting that it’s possible Margaret has nothing to do with it, and that these feelings for Charlie may have been there all along.

Charlie and Elijah are stuck in the basement for most of the day, fixing some new area that’s letting water in.

I begin stripping wallpaper in the rooms that must have belonged to Leo and Ray, but I can’t stop thinking about the journal.

..despite the fact that I’m not sure it’s in my best interest to keep reading.

I look up the house online, but find very little aside from the fact that it was “built by a wealthy judge for his wife and five children.” The father’s name was Richard Ames, but even when I go into ancestry databases, I find nothing.

There are plenty of Richard Ameses, but none who fit the profile—and how is that possible?

He had five kids. How can there not be a million family trees emanating from this branch?

Perhaps Charlie’s joke about untimely deaths wasn’t so funny after all.

Charlie doesn’t need the car that afternoon. I drive into Oak Bluff and ask Martha where I might find historical info about the town. Oak Bluff is too small for a library, she says, but there’s a little history section in the town’s administrative office.

I follow the directions she’s given me down the street and the receptionist points toward a small shelf to the left. It mostly seems to hold awards for things like “best small-town parade,” but there are also a handful of books.

“Look for A History of Oak Bluff by HM Fletcher,” she says. “But I can’t let you borrow it since it’s our only copy.”

I find the book easily and take a seat in the lobby as I begin to thumb through.

The author seems more enamored of the pre-Civil War history than the post-Civil War history. There’s an entire chapter about the town’s winter ball in 1860, but the decade following the war’s end is summed up in a single sentence: Devastated by the war’s toll, Oak Bluff fell into despair.

It picks up again in the late 1800s, when families began moving here from Charlotte. A school was built in 1890, and “ banker Edmund Graves moved here, to great acclaim, with other well-off families taking a cue from him .”

The father of George, the broach thief, I imagine.

The only mention of Riverbend is again a discussion of Richard, the patriarch—a successful lawyer back in Charlotte before he was elected a judge in Oak Bluff.

Obviously, his daughter wouldn’t have been encouraged to take up a career, but it’s a little surprising that none of the sons are referenced.

And I don’t think anyone was murdered in the house, either.

If “Mary Leavitt’s famed blueberry pie” warrants a full page in this book, a murder would at least get a mention.

But then, what the hell happened to them all?

I return the book to its shelves and walk to the receptionist’s desk. “Does the town have a graveyard?” I ask. “Like…with older graves?” Knowing when they all died might answer some of my questions, if not all of them.

She nods. “There’s one in back of the church on Magnolia Street, although any family with a property the size of yours was buried on the grounds. That’s typically the way it was done.”

Except do I even want to know if that’s the case? A grave is always bad news, always sad, even if Margaret’s tells me she died a proud widow and a mother of ten. I think I’d rather try my luck with the journal instead.

June 2, 1916

Today was the last day of school. The boys are all home, which means the house is very lively but also very full.

Sam has been offered a job in Greenville, and I hope he doesn’t take it.

Greenville is very far away. We’ll never see him.

And what happens if he goes? William is working for Papa, but he’s here as Sam’s friend. He might decide to go as well.

June 3, 1916

Today, the President issued a new act doubling the size of the army, and now all the boys are talking about joining up. George said he’s not going to fight if we end up in the war, and William called him a coward. I hate to say it, but I rather agree with William.

June 5, 1916

Sam is not taking the job in Greenville. Mama put her foot down. I’ve never been so glad.

June 9, 191 6

I was walking home from town today when the skies opened up and you will never believe who pulled up beside me in his Model T.

William Howard. He offered me a ride, and I was on the cusp of refusing when lightning cracked directly overhead and he shouted at me to get in the car using words I am too much of a lady to repeat.

I told him a gentleman would not have used words like that in front of a lady and he replied that I wasn’t a lady until I had enough sense not to walk home during a lightning storm.

We said nothing to each other for the duration of the ride, although when I was shivering, he reached in the back and got a blanket for me, which I guess was sort of nice.

I thanked him when we got to the house and he said “thank me by being more careful” so I slammed the door as hard as I could and ran inside.

I don’t know why he has to be so awful even when he’s being nice.

June 13, 1916

George asked me to go for a walk last night and William said he would walk with us.

My jaw dropped. He stayed with us the entire time, just to be a pest. And what’s worse is that somehow everything George said sounded a bit dim with William there, listening in.

I wish William had never come to Riverbend. He’s ruining my entire summer.

“Obviously, she’s falling for William Howard and doesn’t have a clue,” I tell Charlie as we make dinner side-by-side.

I’m making a red wine reduction while Charlie’s handling the potatoes on his own—which should be interesting.

“I bet they got married, but why didn’t their children save this place? ”

“You do realize you’re not reading some book with a vampire on the cover?” he asks, shaking some salt into the potatoes. “These are real people, so it’s possible they won’t follow your little rules for their story. ”

“Of course they will, Charles. By the way, I might need you to take me grave hunting at some point.”

He gives me a side-eye. “Is that your idea or Casper’s?”

I scoop a taste of Charlie’s potatoes on my finger, and he taps my hand with a spoon.

“More salt,” I tell him. “I’m still trying to figure out why there’s not a trace of information about any of them. The woman in town said they were probably buried on the property, though I’m also not sure I want to know.”

“It floods here a lot, so they tend to bury people high. If they’re anywhere, they’re probably on the bluff about a half mile down the cove.

And I think you’re messing that sauce up.

” He sticks his finger into the pot, and I attempt to tap his hand with the spoon, the way he did mine, but just end up splattering sauce all over my T-shirt.

“More salt,” he says, just to be annoying.

I grab the salt and add it to his potatoes before I return to my sauce. But when I reach over and dip my finger into the potatoes again, he grabs my wrist and wraps his mouth around my index finger. He meant it to be silly, a way to get me back, but there’s a rush of heat at the contact.

My gaze meets his, and for a half second…there’s something more going on. His eyes are molten. My nipples are pinched so tight they hurt.

I wrench my finger away from his warm tongue as fast as I possibly can. “Charlie, gross,” I say, marching to the sink to wash my hands as if those two seconds of contact haven’t left me soaked.

He shrugs as if I’m being ridiculous, but I don’t miss the odd way his left hand clenches before he continues with the potatoes.

We eat dinner and clean up. He brushes his teeth in my bathroom and tells me to lock the door behind him, the way he always does. I climb into the shower, desperately trying to think of anything but his tongue against my finger and it doesn’t work. It’s all I’ve thought of since it happened.

Think about Margaret and William. Think about anything else. Please.

When I climb into bed, I grab my phone and type the name Margaret Howard into ancestry websites, but none are the correct Margaret Howard. Fortunately, there are no Margaret Graves either.

I pick up the diary again when I slide between my sheets, and even though, as Charlie pointed out, these are real people who might not live out the romance I’ve created for them in my head.

I’ll take their disappointing romance over the things my brain wants to make of that incident in the kitchen any day.

June 17, 1916

Today, I went to the second ball of the season.

William was talking to all the girls but particularly to Melanie’s older sister, Rose, who’s just back from the teacher’s college.

Everyone says Rose has hair like spun silk.

No one’s ever said that about mine. George and I danced three times and he said I was the prettiest girl there, but somehow it wasn’t as thrilling as it was the first time.

George is a very nice boy, but I do worry sometimes that nice boys don’t make the most interesting husbands.

June 23, 1916

The dance was at George’s home, but George was off taking his second set of entrance exams. Everett Meyer spilled punch on my dress and William was talking to Rose again and I was so dispirited that I just went out to the porch rather than endure another second of it.

I’d barely sat for a minute before William came out after me and asked why I wasn’t dancing.

I said I was tired and he said, “I guess that means I’m not getting a dance. ”

“Why would you want a dance?” I asked. “You don’t even like me.”

And he pulled me to my feet! My heart hammered in the queerest way. It’s doing it now too. And then he spun me around the porch as if I were a queen, and I swear, for a moment, he intended to kiss me. I don’t know what to make of it, but I haven’t been able to think of anything but him since.

My eyes fall closed as I picture this unfolding. William’s nostrils flaring as he grabs my wrist and puts my finger against his hot tongue and?—

My eyes fly open.

Ever since I started reading, I’ve been picturing myself as this unnamed girl falling hard for William Howard. That makes sense.

But I didn’t realize until now that it was Charlie I was picturing as the hero.

It was Charlie’s tongue against the pad of my finger, and it was Charlie’s nostrils that flared for a half second, like a predator scenting prey—and I guess those things did happen, but they’re getting so confused in my head.

Am I falling for William Howard? Am I falling for Charlie?

Falling for either of them is definitely a lost cause.