Page 32 of My Favorite Lost Cause
His smile falters. “I’m not sure my mom ever saw me happy and fulfilled.”
“Maybe she’s watching to see it happen now.”
A low laugh rumbles out of his chest. “I know you’re trying to console me, but if I thought my mom was watching twenty-four hours a day from beyond the grave, it would put a real damper on my private life.”
I sort of think his private life couldusea bit of a damper, but I’ll keep that to myself.
“She had more faith in you than you have in yourself,” I say, pressing my lips to his cheek and enjoying the tickle of his scruff against my mouth more than I should. “That’s the real reason she asked you to come.”
He smiles. “What she should have had faith in is that you’d convince me to do the right thing. But I’m glad you did. I think I’m going to stay.”
My head lifts from his shoulder.Stay?For entirely selfish reasons, I hope I’ve misheard him. “Wait. What?”
He stares at his lap. “If someone had asked me how I was a couple weeks ago, I’d have told them things are great. I’d have rated my life a seven, at least. But…I’m happier here. I wouldn’t rate this a ten either, though. Nowhere close. Which means in New York, I was maybe at a three or a four and lying to myself. I think maybe my mom knew it, and that’s why she wanted me down here. So I’m gonna stay for a bit. Until the inspection, anyway, but probably longer. I don’t have to be in Texas until mid-summer.”
Mid-summer?I’d barely see him over the next month anyway—only at a family dinner or something to celebrate Kit’s engagement. There’s no reason at all to feel as if the ground is swallowing me whole.
So maybe it’s for the best that I’m leaving in a few days after all.
18
CHARLIE
Elijah saunters into the kitchen and takes a seat at the table.
Maren pours him some of her awful juice. I don’t know why that annoys me. I guess I just thought it was sort ofourthing.
Annoyance over the green juice aside, I made the right decision in hiring him. He’s just as hard-working and upfront as he was when we were teenagers. If I’m forced to leave before this place is done—and I absolutely will be—I’ll know it’s in good hands.
He goes over the schedule for today and then turns to Maren. “How’s the wallpaper coming?” he asks. “You got started on the second floor, right?”
My gaze shoots to hers. She didn’t go upstairs yesterday. I didn’t want her up there and I still don’t, because what the fuck was that? Even now there’s something worried in her eyes, something she’s not telling me about.
“I don’t want her up there,” I announce. “Not until the HVAC is in. It’ll be sweltering by noon.”
Elijah tips back in his chair, observing me for a longmoment. Maybe he knows this excuse is bullshit since he’s up there all the time. “She’ll be fine as long as she keeps the windows open. This house was built before A/C existed, so it’s got good airflow.”
“I’ll be fine, Charlie,” she says.
We exchange another glance. I’ve got no arguments left.
She sort of looks like she wishes I had another one, though.
“Bunch of furniture in the attic,”Elijah says a few hours later, when I emerge from the basement. “You want to take a look? Otherwise, I can just get it carted to the dump.”
I wish he hadn’t asked. If it belonged to the original owners, I’ll have no emotional attachment to it and therefore I won’t want it. If it belonged to my mother, it’s still going to the dump, but I’ll feel guilty as hell about it.
I set my toolbelt on the kitchen counter and shrug. “Ditch it,” I tell him, heading for the sink. And then I think of Maren. Maren, with her stories about a family playing croquet, having a billion children. Last night she was talking about the cotillion they might have hosted here.
I suspect her stories are an amalgam of everything she knows about the South after the war and every movie she’s ever seen about the 1920s. So basically, it’s post-warGone with the WindmeetsThe Great Gatsby, but knowing Maren, it’d only be the good parts of those books: it’d be the croquet they played on the lawn dressed in head-to-toe white, earnest couples courting, wild parties where everyone sloshed champagne across a ballroom floor while waving cigarettes in long holders.
No one’s going off to war or running someone over with their car.
“Actually, let me check,” I reply, wiping off my hands. It’ll give me an excuse to go make sure Maren’s okay anyhow.
He just nods, but I sense, once again, what he’s thinking as he walks away, which is that sometimes Maren and I sound more like husband and wife than we do stepsiblings.
I go upstairs. A peek in the first bedroom to the right shows Maren’s been hard at work: it’s buried in shredded wallpaper.
