Great Big Beautiful Life(95)

They walked through the orange grove, and while that was sizable, it wasn’t enough. They wandered through the other rows of fruit trees, and then circled the tennis courts. They wandered past the Roman-inspired outdoor pool, and down to one of the lakes. They ambled through the rose garden, the greenhouses, the chapel, the various follies.

At one point they’d wound up at the very edge of the land, where they could look down over the cliffs to the water below, watch it sparkle under the sunset—because the sun was setting by then.

“Would you like to go to dinner with me?” he asked, and she would. She would like to go to dinner, dessert, bed, breakfast, lunch, and dinner again with him.

But she wanted to speak with Laura first.

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed.

When he’d left, she found Laura in her bedroom. For once she was writing at her desk, instead of reading. She smiled as Margaret approached.

“So the rumors are true.” Laura looked tired, and she’d lost a lot of weight since Gerald’s passing, but her smile—her smile made Margaret believe that maybe, someday, everything would be okay again.

Playing along, Margaret rolled her eyes and flopped herself dramatically backward onto Laura’s grandiose, hand-carved bed. “And what rumors would those be?”

“You’re in love,” Laura sang at her, then, on a giggle, “with Cosmo Sinclair.”

“Says who?” Margaret rolled over and propped herself up on her forearms.

“David,” she replied.

“David? Who’s David?” Margaret sat up the rest of the way.

“My friend David,” Laura said. “Dr. David Ryan Atwood.”

“Dr. David?” Margaret said. What she thought was, That quack? “Since when are you friends with him?”

“Since I wrote to him five months ago, and he wrote back.” She set her pen aside. “We’ve been corresponding. And talking on the telephone, sometimes.” She added, “I had to hear about what happened at the Governors Ball from him.”

“Nothing happened at the Governors Ball,” Margaret said.

“I spoke with David earlier. He told me all about it.”

Margaret felt a pinch of guilt. “I won’t see him again.”

“Peggy.” Laura stood and came toward her, dropping onto the side of the bed and taking her older sister’s hands in her own. “You can’t watch me every second of every day.”

“Who says I’m doing that?” She’d meant it rhetorically, but from the odd look that passed over Laura’s face, Margaret realized there was a literal answer. “Dr. David?” she guessed.

Laura squeezed her hands. “You need to live your life. Go out and fall in love. Or travel, or do whatever else it is you’re not doing while you’re sitting here with me.”

Margaret’s throat twisted, her voice splintering. “I don’t know how to be without you.”

“You won’t,” Laura promised. “You won’t ever be without me. There will just be a little more…space. It’s a good thing.”

“What will you do?” Margaret asked.

“What I always do,” Laura said. “I’ll read and I’ll write and I’ll go for long, marvelous walks.”

Her smile dazzled Margaret. It made her feel like an ember in her chest had been gusted into a raging flame. It made her feel braver. She hugged her sister and didn’t let go for a long time.

The next night, Cosmo picked her up for dinner. He drove them himself in a nondescript black car rather than his dark blue Ferrari Spyder, and he wore a chauffeur’s cap as a half-assed disguise. Margaret had dressed for dinner out, somewhere they’d be seen and photographed, but instead he took her to the house he was renting, and they walked down to a dark stretch of private beach with a picnic basket, a blanket, and a six-pack of beer he’d gotten from his trunk.

They ate, they drank, they laughed. They took off their clothes and ran into the dark waves, and afterward made slow, patient love on the blanket.

“What is it about you?” he’d asked quietly, reverently, pushing her wet hair away from her face as they lay together afterward.

“I don’t know,” she murmured back. “Could it be my family’s millions?”

“I’d marry you, Peggy Ives, if all you had to your name was a gunnysack and a can of corn.”

“Are you proposing to me, Cosmo?” she teased him, but his face remained serious.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

She laughed in disbelief, swatted his chest. “You’re not serious.”

“I am,” he said. “Marry me.”

“No,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because I don’t know you,” she said.

“What do you want to know?” he returned. “I’ll tell you anything, and then we can get married.”

“That’s not how this works,” she said.

“Honey, there’s never been a me or a you before,” he replied. “This works however we say it works.”

“I say that two people should know each other’s middle names at least,” she joked.

“Andrew,” he said. “What’s yours?”