Good for You: A Novel (15)

And she would never forgive herself for that choice.

But she wasn’t letting Wyatt off the hook, either. He was the one person who could’ve told Luke not to go out when a storm was approaching. Or he could’ve gone out with him; Luke would’ve had a better chance of surviving if someone else had been there. Why would Wyatt go all the way to Florida, only to not get on the damned boat?

“I don’t believe you,” she said weakly. Luke had no reason to leave the house to both of them. Though she’d only met Wyatt once, he and Luke had been close friends since college, and Luke talked about him all the time. Because of this, Aly knew he came from money—like, stupid money, even more than Seth’s family—and what’s more, he’d gone into banking, which made her think he was not just privileged, but also greedy. So he didn’t need this place. He didn’t need anything.

And what Aly needed was for him to leave.

“Who do you think has been paying the taxes, the electricity bill, the water?” he said.

“Luke,” she mumbled. “I figured . . .” She hadn’t really figured anything because she’d been avoiding it. “I guess I thought he’d left something in his will and Roger was handling it.”

Wyatt had the nerve to bark another laugh.

Aly could now clearly see how deeply she’d stuck her head in the sand when it came to her brother’s death. She couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer, but she could have at least handed the papers to Seth to look over, or maybe used one of those online legal services. Then she would’ve saved herself the trip to Michigan.

She was starting to freak out, and not just because Wyatt’s presence had ruined everything even more than it had already been ruined. Was her avoidance somehow connected to her memory loss, and maybe her passing out after she was scared by Wyatt, too? She’d heard about couples who died within a year of each other. Luke was her brother, not her partner, but he was still the person she loved more than anyone else in the world. Maybe her body decided to up and quit on her. If so, she could hardly blame it.

“You should drink some water,” said Wyatt, looking her over.

Goose bumps danced along her arms, even though it was nearly eighty out and Wyatt was apparently morally opposed to central air. Of course you’re freaked out, she assured herself. This was not what you were expecting. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing here or how long I’m staying?”

He shrugged again. “It’s your place, too. You can do whatever you want.”

This was the first reassuring thing he’d said to her. She might hate him for the part he played in her brother’s death, but he was a semi-reasonable person. Or at least he had the potential to impersonate one after he took a shower and shaved the rug off his face. There was no way a guy who grew up on Chicago’s Gold Coast wanted to live in this moderately sized house, no matter how beautiful the view. He was probably only here for a short while—just like her. So they would sit down like two rational adults and come to an agreement about putting it up for sale. Maybe he would ask to buy out her half, and that would be fine, too.

She just needed to get in, get out, and get back to her life.

Except while she was thinking all this, Wyatt had started strolling across the living room toward the French doors that let out onto the deck.

“Wyatt! We need to come up with a plan!” she called, but the sound of wind and waves, which were high this afternoon, drowned out her voice. Still, he’d paused outside the door momentarily, which told her that he’d heard her.

Yet he continued making his way down the sloping hill toward the beach . . . away from her.

And that’s the point at which Aly realized that fainting and forgetting were the least of her problems.





NINE


It wasn’t that Aly couldn’t imagine living in squalor. She could, because she had. Cindy’d cared far more about her next drink than the condition of her home, and Dan, her father, had believed that housework was for women. So unless Aly and Luke decided to clean their small bungalow—as they often did, though only when their parents were out, because to be in their presence was to inflame them—it was inevitably messy, grimy, and in various states of disrepair.

As adults, both Aly and Luke prioritized cleanliness. No matter how cramped their dorms, rented rooms, or apartments were, they were always organized and welcoming. In fact, one of the reasons Aly’s then-supervisor had promoted her from editorial assistant to associate editor after less than a year at the magazine was because her immaculate desk was “on brand” for All Good.

This was precisely why the state of Luke’s home—Aly knew she’d have to eventually stop calling it that, and she would, just as soon as someone else bought it—was so appalling to her. With his dirty clothes and wet towels and discarded food, Wyatt had defiled the place. He might as well have crapped all over her brother’s memory.

As Aly watched him amble down the beach, she realized that she’d have to make him either pull his act together or leave. Immediately. Because she had ten days to get the house spotless and sold.

She was starving, and though she hated to agree with Wyatt, she probably was dehydrated. So she quickly downed a glass of water and devoured the chalky protein bar she’d grabbed from the cupboard at Seth’s early that morning. Then she went to retrieve her suitcase from the rental car, so she could get settled.