Page 86 of My Favorite Lost Cause
My shoulders sag with relief. I suspected I’d made my feelings clear enough when I canceled our lunch in the Hamptons, but this confirms it. “Yeah, he probably would.”
“Look, Maren. I just have to say something. Based on his reputation, he doesn’t want any of the things you do, unless something’s changed.”
I swallow hard. That’s the ugly truth, isn’t it? The truth I have been reluctant to face. “No, nothing’s changed.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “And you know I’m interested, but that’s not why I’m saying what I’m about to: don’t let him waste too much of your time. I let Kristen waste far too much of mine, and it’s probably my greatest regret.”
Also true. Whether Charlie and I say it aloud or not, this is a waste. It will go nowhere.
“Thanks,” I reply. “I know. I’m fully aware that this…is ending.”
“When you’re ready to move on, I’m here,” he says.
I tell Charlie what Andrew said about the house andCharlie simply rolls his eyes. “I don’t see why he couldn’t have put it in an email,” he grouses, jealous of a phone call about the house my friend is helping him save forfree.
I can’t believe he’s the same guy who pretended to have an eleven PM Zoom meeting with Tokyo in order to get two girls out of his apartment.
The person he is with me—and to some extent, the person he’s alwaysbeenwith me—feels like the real one. But when we go back to New York…who will he be then?
Two days later, we get notified by the state that the house is no longer condemned. There’s not going to be an inspection at all.
We don’t need to be here, then. We’re completely off the hook. I wait for Charlie to suggest he should really get to San Antonio, should really go into the office, and he says neither.
But the end is coming, either way.
So I finally buckle down to read Margaret’s last few entries.
August 10, 1917
William was given several days’ leave before he ships out. He went to say goodbye to his mother but spent his final day here with me. He’ll sleep in the shack tonight, which seems insane, given that all the boys’ rooms are empty.
We had such a lovely day together. He kissed me again in the shadow of the house and told me not to see him off in the morning because it would be too hard. He said he’s marrying me the day he gets back, out in the gazebo if possible, though Mama will probably want a church wedding, and he gave me a ring that belonged to his grandmother. Just a tiny emerald ring, but I love it more than I’d ever thought I could love anything. Now he’s sleeping outalong the water, yards away, and…why are we wasting these last hours? I pray the war ends quickly, but there are no signs of it, and they say that a million boys were killed at Verdun. A million. How is such a number even possible? If the worst happens, how bitterly will I regret spending this night away from him? What am I trying to preserve when everything I have belongs to him?
August 11, 1917
I went to see William. He asked why I was there and I will say no more here, but I’m glad. No matter what happens, I’m glad I did it.
So she slept with him.She must have. I’d love this were it not for one thing: that previous owner of the home, the woman who left her mansion and died in the shack where my cottage now stands. Increasingly, I’ve suspected it was Margaret and now I’m nearly certain.
I scan ahead. She and William exchange letters. She writes him daily while his tend to come in batches of five or ten. They start off cheerfully enough—the biggest issue is lice, which is what she hears from her brothers as well.I want to believe all this, she writes,yet…a million boys dying in a single battle. So many lives lost. And that’s how it happens, isn’t it? A million boys writing home to their mothers and sisters and sweethearts, complaining of lice and rain and rations and then…they’re gone, as if they were never there at all. Five people I love are there. Plus all the boys I went to school with. What are the odds that they’ll all come home? That they won’t simply be taken in a single battle?
And then, it happens.
December 1, 1917
Sam is dead. We learned it weeks ago and I couldn’t bring myself to even write the words here until now. Sweet,sweet Sam is dead. I can’t imagine a world without him. Papa is so quiet now, so gray. Mama as well. Sam’s death has broken them, and I fear they can’t be put back together. Millie returned to her family in Columbia—a war widow when she barely got to be a bride. He’s buried somewhere in France, but Papa says we’ll give him a headstone here too, when Mama’s better.
Margaret decides she won’t leave for teacher’s college after all. Her parents need her close. There are more letters from William, less cheerful ones. His closest friend lost both legs, and William was inches away when it happened. He sleeps with Margaret’s photo next to his heart and says he wishes now they’d married, selfish though it would be, because very few of them will come out of this alive.
She receives word that his regiment is moving toward Belleau Wood, in the north of France, and then, it begins: day after day of Margaret asking, “Why hasn’t he written?” and consoling herself with reports of slow mail and batches of letters arriving months later than they should.
I turn the page. More questions. More suggestions that a mail boat was blown up, that the fighting is too heavy for news to leave at all, and then…the journal just stops. I flip through the blank pages and toward the back is tucked a small, folded letter, one that’s been read many times.
I unfold the letter—it’s dated just a few days before William left for the front.
Dearest Margaret,
I’m writing you now from the attic of my aunt’s home and will leave this in my mother’s care, only to be sent on to Riverbend if the worst has happened.
