Page 60 of My Favorite Lost Cause
“That’s one hell of a dress,” he says, his voice gravelly.
I fight a blush. “Anything for the cause.”
“What cause was that again?” he asks, reaching for me as I come down the last two stairs.
I forget. It’s something. It’s the house or the developer…I’m not sure why I’m struggling to remember the answer.
He drives us to Oak Haven, the mansion where the ball is being held. Broad porches surround the house on both the first and second floors. Every light is on, and classical music spills through the windows.
It feels oddly familiar, but maybe it’s just that I’ve seen too many movies about the old South.
We walk up the stairs side by side. As excited as I am to attend this thing, a part of me suddenly dreads having to share Charlie’s time and attention.
“You do look nice,” he says as we step through the door. “You look really nice.”
He’s so genuine sometimes, in moments like this. I don’t know what to make of it. “So do you.”
“Actually,” he says, spinning me toward him in the nearly empty foyer, under the glow of a massive chandelier, “you look?—”
“Maren!” calls a voice and we turn to find Kara, the membership director, sprinting toward us, hampered by her long gown.Wow, her timing is so bad.
“You must be Maren’s brother,” she gushes.
“Stepbrother,” he amends smoothly.
Her blink is apologetic, as if the error was hers whenI’mthe one who said he was my brother. I’m not sure why I keep doing that. It’s not as if Charlie feels like a sibling…He entered our lives far too late. It’s possible that I’m just trying to remind myself that he’s off limits, though it’s not as if I could forget it, could I?
She introduces us to the wife of the club’s president, who deftly steers Charlie away before I’ve even had a chance to shake her hand. “Let me introduce you to everyone,” says Kara, leading me in the opposite direction. I take one glance over my shoulder, hoping to catch Charlie’s eye, but he’s now surrounded by a cluster of beautiful women and has likely forgotten I exist.
I’m introduced to the president of the board, and then—more interestingly—the widow of one of the club’s founding members. “Welcome to Oak Haven,” she says grandly, “the former home of George Graves, who led Oak Bluff’s renaissance in the 1890s.”
A shiver runs up my arms.Thisis where the ball was held, the one where Margaret and William danced together. I knew it felt familiar.
“Did you know any of the family?” I ask, and she shakes her head.
“I didn’t grow up here. I met my husband at USC in the fifties and he brought me down. We bought the place in the seventies, long after the Graves’ descendants had moved on.”
She’s still talking about her husband while my gaze is on Charlie, who’s currently focusing all his charm on a pretty girl in a sleeveless, body-con floral dress. It hardly suits theBridgertontheme, but suddenly I feel old-fashioned and dowdy in the red satin I was so pleased with an hour before.
“Back then, going to college was considered a waste to most men,” the widow continues. “You’re so lucky to be young when you are.”
I’m not that young. Not like the girl in the body-con dress. But I’m guessing that youth, like old age, is entirely relative—to a child, anyone over the age of forty is old and to an octogenarian, anyone under the age of sixty is young.
“I didn’t actually go to college,” I tell her. “Well, I started, but then I left.”
She nods. “You’re the model. That’s right.” She pats my hand as if to console me. “No matter how things change, a pretty face matters more than smarts if you’re female.”
I’d like to be that rarest of things, a woman who’s considered equal parts lovely and intelligent. Like Kit. Charlie’s one of the few men who’s ever made me feel as if I was.
But now he’s off with some kid in an inappropriate dress. So maybe he just never found me all that lovely in the first place.
For the next hour, I’m led around to older board members, most of them male, who want to hear about my mother, and all the while Charlie is with that same girl, so I guess I know how tonight is ending—with me in my bed, listening to the rhythmic thump of a headboard next door while this girl shouts, “Oh Charlie, oh, fuck” again and again and again.
It was aggravating the night I stayed in his apartment. Now, it would be enraging.
“Maren, allow me to introduce you to Steve DeChen, Oak Bluff’s mayor,” says Kara and I somehow shirk off my sad thoughts and replace them with my broadest smile. Because even if tonight has been an absolute waste, having a friend on the town council can’t hurt and having that friend be the head of the town councildefinitelycan’t hurt.
“Kara tells me you’re living out at Riverbend, the old Ames place,” he says.
