Page 32 of My Favorite Lost Cause (The Favorites #2)

I thought I was going to have to feign interest in this man, but now it’s entirely genuine. Maybe he can tell me how it all turned out. I want to know if they were happy. If all those kids had kids of their own and brought them back to play croquet on that lawn while their parents looked on.

“Yes, my stepbrother Charlie is the new owner, but I’m so curious about the Ames family. Did you know them?”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t really. The parents died when I was very young, and then it was just old Miss Ames.

We were terrified of her.” He laughs. “Poor woman probably was no older than I am now, but we assumed she had to be a witch, out in that big mansion by herself. My mom used to visit her.”

My heart sinks. “So she never married?”

He shakes his head. “I have no idea, to be honest. Like I said, I was really young back then. She probably did. Most women married in those days.” His gaze drops to my bare ring finger as if it’s a deformity.

“Well, we just love it here,” I tell him, since he clearly has no answers about Margaret Ames. “I’m sure you’ve heard we’re having some issues with the inspections, but we’re working as hard as we can to get the house in shape.”

There’s suddenly something guarded and distant in his eyes. “I’m certain you don’t actually plan to stay .”

I tilt my head. “Why else would we be doing so much work on the house?”

“Negotiating tactic,” he says. “You convince the developer it’s your dream home just to drive up the price.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Charlie leading the pretty girl toward the dance floor.

“It’s not a tactic,” I reply, my voice harder. For the first time in my life I sound like Kit, as if I’m eager to go to battle. “It was Charlie’s mother’s dying wish that he keep the house, so he’s keeping the house.”

I’m not sure what’s gotten into me but it’s all…wrong. The night’s just wrong .

DeChen’s eyes widen slightly. “Well, I certainly wish you luck in that endeavor,” he says, but his tone implies the opposite—as if we’re up against an insurmountable force and he’s glad it will prevail.

So he’s probably getting kickbacks from the developer, as is everyone else, and all this effort was completely wasted.

I was so hopeful when I was getting ready, too and I have no idea why.

It was that giddy, besotted feeling I remember from adolescence, which is not typically associated with… meeting the town’s mayor.

All I want now is to go home and probably have a good cry. I excuse myself, searching the room for Charlie, but he’s on the dance floor with the inappropriately dressed girl.

She’s lovely and probably a decade younger than me. She has her whole life, all her reproductive years, ahead of her—not that the latter would be an asset in Charlie’s book.

Except I think he’s full of shit. He says he doesn’t want kids, but one day, when he’s fucked every single female in Manhattan and several in Oak Bluff, he’ll tire of the thrill.

That’s when he’ll marry some girl decades younger and he’ll have kids under duress only to discover, just as he has with the puppies, how much he enjoys them.

My father didn’t want children either. I’m not entirely sure why he bothered to marry my mother, under the circumstances, except that she was beautiful, and he was smitten.

But anyway, he was one of those guys, like Charlie, who think children are a fate worse than death, and when she got pregnant, he left.

And what’s really annoying about it all is the fact that he later changed his mind.

It took fifteen years, but eventually he married some student of his, barely any older than me, and they had two children of their own, two children who appear with him in magazines, his “proudest accomplishment.”

Perhaps that’s why, when Charlie insists that he never wants children, I doubt him. Because the day will come when his incredibly young wife, for whom he will do anything, insists, and he’ll be happy he gave in.

I’m done with this entire endeavor. I stalk out, near tears, and stand on the porch, which is dark aside from the light shining through the windows.

My feet are killing me, so walking home is out of the question. I take a seat on the swing, hoping to pull myself together.

Charlie’s porch could use a swing like this once it’s finished. Yes, Maren, rush-order that swing the way you rush-ordered your dress, just to have Charlie enjoy it with someone else.

Inside, a new song is beginning and Charlie’s probably dancing to it. I’m never fucking get out of here. Frustrated, I dig into my purse for my phone.

If you can take a break from hitting on the brunette, I need the car keys. I can come back to get you if you need a ride, though it appears you aren’t planning to come home.

I reread the text before I hit send. It’s too bitter, too jealous. I erase it and start over.

I’m tired and ready to head home. You can stay, but can I get the car keys when you have a minute? I’ll come back to pick you up whenever you’re ready.

“Mare,” says a quiet voice coming up behind me. I turn and there is Charlie with a quizzical smile on his face. “I was looking for you. Why aren’t you inside?”

Because I saw you with someone else. Because I’m so jealous that I’m sick over it. “I don’t know.”

“You were so excited to dance,” he says. “But I didn’t see you on the floor once.”

I shrug. “Unlike you, I’m not really interested in hitting on someone half my age. ”

His laughter is quiet. “Ouch.”

“Speaking of which, where is your new friend?”

“She isn’t my friend . She’s the daughter of the property developer. I was trying to get some intel, but she seems to know even less than I do, so I told her I needed to look for you.”

Do I believe him? I’m not sure.

Does it matter? Probably not. I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. “You can go back to her,” I reply. “I can’t dance anyway. These shoes are killing me.”

He extends a hand. “Take them off, Maren.”

“I can’t. Once I take them off, I’ll?—”

He reaches down and plucks one off before the sentence is complete. I sigh in relief and the other one is removed too. He tosses both toward the porch railing.

“Come on,” he says. “We’re dancing.”

He’s pulled me to my feet before I’ve had time to object and closes the distance between us, placing one arm around me while his right hand clasps my left.

I blush as I smile up at him. “Are we waltzing? I’m not sure I know how.”

“Me neither,” he grins. “But I bet we can fake it pretty well.”

I laugh. “I know you have a joke about Harvey in there somewhere.”

He begins to move me over the smooth, painted wood porch, but there’s no smirk as his eyes meet mine. “I’m not thinking about Harvey right now.”

My heart thunders in my chest. This version of Charlie—the one who only has eyes for me—feels like the real version.

And this version of me—the one who’d die happy if he was the only thing she could see—is the realest version of me.

I love my family. I love my friends. I love the dogs.

But none of them are precious to me the way he is.

We move to the song as if we intuitively know how to do this.

I close my eyes and stop thinking entirely, allowing myself to soak up everything about this moment: floating across this porch as if I’m weightless, my skirt swirling and airborne.

The heavy press of the honeysuckle climbing up the trellis.

The kiss of balmy air. Charlie’s hand on my back.

He and I could exist in any time, and it would still be exactly like this: inappropriate and yet entirely right.

I picture his hand around my jaw, the way he’d look just before he kissed me, and my eyes open to find that’s exactly the way he is looking at me, with his nostrils flaring and his eyes on my mouth, and?—

A door slams in the distance and we immediately stop dancing, as if that door was an alarm waking us from a dream we shouldn’t have been having.

His hands fall away, guilty, and he takes a single step back.

“There,” he says, running a hand through his hair, “at least you got one dance. Should we head home?”

“Yeah,” I reply breathlessly.

He hands me my shoes and I swing them off the tip of my index finger as I walk down the stairs. “Put them on, Maren. There might be broken glass.”

“I can’t. Once you take off shoes that were too small, your feet swell to twice their previous size. That’s just science.”

He grins. “I’m curious about what scientific rule you’re referring to.”

“I am too, since I was terrible at science.”

“Climb on,” he says, glancing over his shoulder as he steps one stair below me. “I’ll give you a piggyback.”

I wrap my legs around his waist. “Excellent. This is just the outcome I was hoping for.”

He laughs and starts walking toward the car, his hands banded around my calves to keep me in place, my voluminous dress spilling off to our sides.

I rest my head on his shoulder and smile wide.

Somehow it feels as if I got the night I wanted after all, the sort of night I’ll never get again if I wind up with someone like Andrew.

It’s only once I’m back in the cottage, alone, that I realize I just lived out Margaret’s exact dance with William. On the very same porch.

I don’t know if I’m really following in Margaret’s footsteps or not, but it’s probably time to find out what happened to her next.

June 24, 1916

William acted as if I was invisible all morning.

Perhaps he’s embarrassed about dancing with me last night, or perhaps it’s simply that I’m so much younger than he is.

Although Matthew Lessard is courting Ethel Brown and they’re nearly ten years apart, while William and I are only half that.

I was angry and went into town for the church social and let George walk me home.

I finally admitted something to myself when I got to my room, though: I don’t think I want to marry George.

He’s nice enough, but he has mentioned wanting to move upstate a few times now, and today he said he didn’t understand why I would need to go to teacher’s college since I’d just be having children.

And that’s true, but I’m not sure I want a husband who says it outright.

July 1, 1916

Tonight, at last, William came out to the gazebo.

I’ve come out here more and more this summer, though the mosquitoes are terrible, and I think it was simply to be nearer his cottage.

We talked about the book I was reading— A Room with a View by E.M.

Forster. I’m quite enjoying it, while William insists Forster’s new book is much better.

Either way, it was a lovely talk, which he ruined while walking me to the door .

“You can’t be serious about George,” he said, and even though I’ve had the same thought, he had no right to comment on who I’m serious about as if I’m a child.

I told him I was very serious about George and flounced inside, which I now regret.

I wish I’d been a bit more dignified. I wish he’d give me a reason to turn George down instead.

For the rest of July, her journal is nothing but her discussions with William.

They meet at the gazebo each night and discuss books, but he never indicates any interest in her at all.

I’m as confused by this as Margaret. “Grow a pair, William!” I shout as I flip through the entries. “Make your move!”

And, at last, he does.

August 10, 1916

This was William’s last night here. I was near tears all through dinner thinking I’d never see him again.

After dessert, Mama sent me down to the root cellar to get a jar of plums. He was on his way to his cottage for the night as I emerged, but he saw me and then marched back my way, as if he was furious with me.

And then he kissed me. He kissed me so hard that my back was pressed to the wall and I dropped the plums entirely but didn’t care, and then he said, “Wait for me, and don’t you dare marry George Graves,” and then he marched back to his cottage as if he was still furious.

But when I got to my room, I found the most glorious bouquet of roses beside Howard’s End , the Forster book William likes best.

The roses. That overwhelming scent of roses, fresh from the garden, before I dissolved in grief.

Whatever happened to Margaret and William, it wasn’t good.

I shut the journal again, because I really don’t want to know anymore.

Yes, Charlie and I danced. Yes, he rescued the puppies.

But he’s certainly not going to demand I don’t marry Andrew, nor would he ever kiss me the way William kissed Margaret, though I sort of wish he would.

Whatever parallels exist between my story and hers, I’m pretty sure they’ve reached their end. It leaves me sad for all four of us.