Page 67 of My Favorite Lost Cause
Kit and Miller arrive mid-afternoon.She’s tan from Turks and Caicos and glowing with joy.
My mother makes a huge fuss over Miller and gushes over the ring and Kit seems to shrink a little, as if she can make herself small enough that the spotlight will no longer find her.
Miller’s hand wraps around her waist, tucking her into his side, shielding her. I wonder if they discussed the awkwardness of this situation on the way here.
This is, after all, the very place where Miller dumped me—apparently because he was in love with her. That I’d so thoroughly forgotten it until this second is proof that I’m over him, but no one is going to give me the opportunity to say this and wouldn’t believe me if I did.
Kit has Miller take their bags up to one of the bedrooms and then grabs me as soon as our mother’s back is turned to go sit on the back porch swing.
“This party is Mom’s worst idea,” she says, “and that includes the two years she failed to pay taxes.”
I laugh. “I can’t believe she implied to all the guests that they could sleep here.”
Kit groans, running a hand over her face. “See, I wasn’t even talking about Mom’s incredibly poor planning skills when I said that. I just meant…this is awkwardly timed. I’m sorry you’re being put through it.”
I squeeze her knee. “I’m fine. Seriously.”
She opens one eye and squints at me. “Youarefine. Actually, you’re better than fine. Why are you suddenly doing so well? You were miserable the last time you said you were leaving Harvey.”
I shrug. “Helping Charlie with the house has been nice. So much more peaceful than being at home and I’m just…happy.”
She studies me a moment too long. Kit, like Henry, is too smart for her own good. Smart enough not to believe, anyway, that some time out of the city would be all it took to solve my emotional turmoil. She’s kind enough to let it go, however.
“Thank you for helping Miller pick the ring,” she says, studying her hand. “God only knows what he would’ve picked if left to his own devices.”
“What you should be thanking me for is that,” I say, nodding toward the large, framed photo of Miller and Kit at Everest, which my mother plans to display. “Aren’t you glad I made you get your hair highlighted?”
“Henceforth, I will assume I’m about to be proposed to whenever you or Mom is insisting that I get my hair and nails done.”
“Mom insists that at least once a week. And I sort of hope this is the last time you’re going to be proposed to.”
She smiles with a quiet joy I can’t help but envy. “It will definitely be the last time. Or at least it will be the last time I ever say yes.”
That’s what I want. I want to get engaged to someone knowing I won’t regret it. I want to marry someone without a single impulse to run back down the aisle and hop into a cab instead.
I never got that, but not everyone does.
And while marrying someone like Andrew wouldn’t inspire the last-minute terror I felt on the day of my wedding to Harvey—the feeling ofoh my God, how did I get into this? How do I get out of this?—it won’t be a thrill.
It’ll feel a bit like settling.
We talk about Everest and the proposal, and eventually Kit goes upstairs to find Miller and I go to the hall bathroom to start getting ready for tonight. There’s an emptiness inside me when I look in the mirror as I admit the truth to myself: what has sustained me these past few weeks was not some kind of newfound maturity on my end. It wasn’t the peacefulness of Oak Bluff. It was Charlie. It was opening my eyes in the morning, excited to see him and the way my heart would hammer every time he shot me that lopsided grin. It was our meals together, in the humid summer heat of the back porch, and our bike rides, and watching him laugh as the puppies licked his face.
How much of all of that would have happened anyway, and how much of it is Margaret reenacting some piece of her past through me?
Not going back will break my heart. But how much harder will it be if I give myself another month with him only to wind up exactly where I am right now?
At seven PM,the party is in full swing, and I am in hell.
If I had a dollar for every time one of my mother’s friends had gently squeezed my arm or looked at me as if I was the grieving widow tonight…well, I wouldn’t be as rich as I am now, but I’d be well off.
I’m sure they all think it’s kind on their part, this sympathy for a situation that doesn’t bother me in the least. And the situation thatdoesbother me—the fact that I’m wildly infatuated with my stepbrother, a man who wants none of the things I want—is one I can’t breathe to a soul.
I’m in a beautiful yard, wearing a beautiful dress, surrounded by a group of women I know, yet I can’t escape thisfeeling that I’m very small and vulnerable, and especially that I’malone.
It’s a pretty familiar feeling, one I’ve had since those earliest memories of Henry saying, ‘I can’t believe I’m a father’ when he held Kit for the first time. And in all the time I’ve spent with Charlie, I didn’t feel it once.
Charlie wanted me there. Elijah did too.
