Page 52 of My Favorite Lost Cause (The Favorites #2)

MAREN

I drop the puppies off with Kit and head not to Barcelona, but to Paris, dropping my bags in a locker at Charles de Gaulle since I won’t be here long.

I looked up Belleau Wood online after I finished Margaret’s journal.

There were twenty thousand casualties total, half of them American—the biggest battle involving US soldiers since Appomattox.

The French renamed the area Bois de la Brigade de Marine —Wood of the Marine Brigade—in honor of the US Marines who fought there.

William’s regiment, the fifth, was later awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government.

Many of the soldiers are buried at the Aisne-Marne American cemetery nearby.

I’d like to see if he’s there. I’d like to finish the story.

The train to Belleau takes an hour, the Uber to the cemetery another ten minutes.

It’s so close. So easy to get from one place to the next.

If William had lived in another time, he could have reached Margaret in eight hours.

Or he could have been the coward he accused George of being and just never have gone to war at all.

But of course, he wasn’t a coward, and he didn’t live in another time, and everything I’m wishing for them is pointless. They’re both long gone.

I locate his name on the cemetery directory:

William Thomas Howard

Atlanta, Georgia

5th Regiment

It takes a while to find his grave. I set the bouquet of roses I bought beside it.

“I have no idea if you’re living on in Charlie or if this is all in my head,” I whisper.

“I have no idea if Margaret is living on in me. I sort of think so, but Charlie would call me Professor Trelawney right now if I said it, or explain that this is how hot girls are a menace.” I laugh and then choke back a sob.

“But if you are living on in him, I think he’ll wind up with a happier story, even if it’s one that I’m not a part of.

And my ending is happier than Margaret’s, even if it’s not the exact one I wanted. ”

The breeze blows my hair, and I look up at all the identical graves. Two thousand American boys whose stories all ended unhappily.

Two thousand boys who broke their parents’ hearts.

Maybe those Greek myths I read obsessively as a kid were trying to prepare me for the hardest truth in adulthood: most of our stories are sort of unhappy ones, in the end.

“I hope you were right about Hero and Leander,” I tell him. “Maybe you had to wait for another life. And I guess I’ll wait for the next one too.”

I wander the streets of Barcelona, which is every bit as lovely as I remembered, but I think I prefer a crumbling mansion, nearly obscured by live oaks. I think I prefer a place, any place, where Charlie’s smile is the first thing I see. And that isn’t happening here.

I wander the tiny alleyways of El Born for hours. An ambulance comes through, and I flatten myself to the wall so it can pass, then walk in back as it moves at a snail’s pace behind the crowd.

Maybe it will lead me somewhere, somewhere that makes sense of things.

I love Charlie. I’m so in love with Charlie.

If he’d ever once said, “Can’t you just be happy with what we have?” before I discovered I was pregnant, I’d probably have said, “ Yes .” But he didn’t say it then, and really…he never made it clear that he’d be in this for the long haul, even when he did say it, which was way too late.

A sign on the garage door of an art gallery says,

JUST IN CASE NO ONE

TOLD YOU TODAY:

HELLO!

GOOD MORNING.

YOU ARE DOING GREAT.

I BELIEVE IN YOU!!

GREAT BUTT

This faceless person behind a garage door is attempting to be kinder to me than I’m capable of being to myself. I don’t know why that makes my eyes sting.

God, I’ve fucked up so badly. I’ve gotten my fondest wish only to discover that I want something else just as much.

A couple months ago I’d have been overjoyed by this turn of events, and a part of me is overjoyed, but I’m also so sad at the same time.

Because I once only wanted one thing from the world: a baby.

And now I want two mutually exclusive things: this baby I might be carrying and its father, and I can’t have both.

I stumble upon an old church. You can barely turn a corner in Barcelona without bumping into a cathedral more magnificent than anything at home.

Inside, lining each wall, are these amazing tableaus for the saints.

Not paintings but actual carved and painted saints.

In front of one, a woman is on her knees weeping, clutching a candle.

You have no idea how much a child can break you, Maren.

Charlie was right. Perhaps this woman prays for a sibling or a spouse, but most likely it’s a child. My hand rests on my abdomen. I already love this baby enough to die for it.

Of course it will break me if something goes wrong down the line, if I lose her. Of course that’s terrifying. But doesn’t he understand that when you love someone that much, the terror is worth it?

I’ve only been aware of her existence for a handful of days, and already the terror is worth it. I just wish I wasn’t going to be bringing her up alone.

I go to a restaurant, determined to ignore the sense that I have failed my child already.

Trying to ignore this paralyzing loneliness.

If I act as if I don’t care, then maybe I won’t.

Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?

I’ll experience all the pleasures of the city in order to let it fill that empty space inside of me, then return to New York slightly less broken?

“Uno, por favor,” I tell the hostess.

She says something too quickly for me to understand, but I’m fairly certain it was no husband? Apparently, New York isn’t the only place where they will treat you like a pariah for dining alone.

I shake my head. “No. Uno.”

She leads me to a table out on the street, and though I want to enjoy this meal, I sort of feel as if the damage is done—I now feel heartbreakingly, conspicuously alone, which is ridiculous.

How many people have come here for business and had to dine alone?

I certainly cannot be the first. Will it be lonely for my daughter or son, though? Will it be enough to only have me ?

Or would she be better off with a father of some sort? A kind man, like Andrew, who will smile when she speaks, and admire her crayon drawings, and give her away at her wedding?

I don’t even have to ask the question. Of course that would be better for her.

And Andrew might even be okay with it.

The food, when it arrives, is probably delicious, but I taste nothing as I weigh the possible solutions in my head.

Andrew is kind. He’ll be a good dad and a decent husband.

He’ll make my child’s life better, and he’ll let Charlie off the hook, so he really solves every problem aside from one: I’m head over heels in love with someone else, and I think that’s never going away.

I walk back to the hotel slowly, struggling not to cry.

This entire trip was a fucking failure, some misplaced gambit to have my own Eat, Pray, Love experience in which the necessary life lessons are delivered in a timely fashion, and I go home happy with my choices.

But all I’ve learned is that food tastes like nothing when you’re sad, even if it’s good food, and that sometimes acting in someone’s best interest will break your heart.

I check the time. It’s noon at home. As good an hour as any to ask a man who’s never even kissed you how he feels about raising your stepbrother’s kid.

I step through the lobby doors, bracing myself to call Andrew. The worst he can say is no, I guess, and for my daughter’s sake, I’ll sink a lot lower than this. I’ll just ? —

A man steps into my path. A large, livid man with circles under his eyes.

A man I’ve longed for desperately for the past forty-eight hours and never expected to see.

“Charlie?”

He looks past my shoulder as if expecting someone else and swallows, his jaw set hard.

“How did you know where I was?” I ask.

“You’ve been sharing your location with me for months,” he bites out. “And it took flying to three fucking cities to catch you, so let’s have a chat.”

I nod, wide-eyed as I look around me—at the subdued staff dressed in head-to-toe black, the vibrant palm wallpaper behind them. “Here?”

“In your room , Maren,” he growls.

I don’t know why he’s so angry with me. Is it the way I left? I only did it because I wouldn’t get through a drawn-out goodbye without crying.

He wraps a hand over my elbow, steering me toward the glass elevator.

“Floor,” he barks. I hit five and, in spite of what a dick he’s being, I press my face to his chest. Because this is all I’ve wanted since I took that pregnancy test, all I’ve wanted since I arrived, all I wanted when I saw the woman clutching the candle, all I wanted while I ate alone.

I wanted my face pressed to Charlie’s chest and his arms wrapping around me the way they are right now.

Even when he’s furious, he still wants to comfort me.

“Why’d you leave like that?” he whispers. “Just tell me the fucking truth.”

Am I really going to continue lying about this? I wanted to spare him. I have no idea what to say. “I needed to think.”

“About Andrew ?” he asks. There’s no mistaking the accusation in his tone.

I nearly laugh. He thinks I left because of Andrew ? He must have no idea how crazy I am about him to even suggest it. Yet…we both know Andrew offers something he does not. So maybe he’s got a reason to be jealous.

“No,” I reply. “Not really.”

He stiffens but says nothing as we exit onto my floor. Inside the suite, he scowls at the broad terrace, at the glass cake plate stacked high with macarons. “Little nicer than Riverbend,” he grumbles .

Is it? It never occurred to me. The entire time I’ve been here, all I’ve longed for is a cottage with insufficient air conditioning and noisy dogs sleeping nearby while I curl up against Charlie.