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It’s these last comments that inflame her, and she stomps out of her bathroom wearing just a towel around her body and one wrapped around her head, holding her phone slightly away from her so that she can read the fine print with her reading glasses on.
“Cobb!” she calls out, walking down the hall in just her towel. Normally she would have taken a minute to dress, but most of the free world has already seen her in a bikini, so her ex seeing her in a towel isn’t something that ruffles her feathers.
“In here,” Cobb says, opening the door to the guest room. He’s standing there in a pair of faded 501s and a gray t-shirt, his hair damp from a shower. Marigold stops short when she sees him, admiring for the millionth time since she met the man just how handsome he is in even the simplest things. There’s something about Cobb’s rakish grin and British charm—if not specifically in his looks—that has always reminded Marigold of Hugh Grant. He smirks at her towel and opens the door wider. “Come in.”
“Listen,” Marigold says, ignoring the slight quirk of his eyebrow as she yanks off her reading glasses and looks at him. “How do you feel about your surgery and recovery being public?”
“Can’t really help it,” Cobb says with a shrug. “I’m used to people knowing my business. It’s been going on for most of my life.”
“So then are you fine with me posting updates? Maybe a photo here and there? You can approve everything before I do, I’m just tired of people coming at me from all directions and telling me that it’s my job to be updating the world on how you are. No one even knows you’re staying here, do they?”
Again, Cobb shrugs, this time turning his palms to the ceiling. “Dunno, love. Don’t much care, either. Do you?” He frowns.
“That you’re here? Of course not. We’re adults and we can do whatever we damn well please.”
“Well, then post away, my darling,” Cobb says generously, sitting on the edge of his unmade bed. It’s always driven Marigold insane the way he can live in clutter, sleep in an unmade bed, and plunk a lightly used teabag right back into a mug of hot water after finding it dried up on the counter. “And if it helps you to sell copies of the book you’re writing, then even better.”
“It’s not that, Cobb,” Marigold says, folding her reading glasses closed and holding them in one hand. But is it? She’s been engaging with fans and followers for a couple of years this way, and without any sort of endgame in mind. At first she’d done it because she could, then she’d carried on because her voice felt like the only one out there sticking up for women and aging and the respect that both things deserve, but now she’s trying to be more self-aware: is she, in fact, on a mission to pen and sell some sort of memoir or best seller? She’s not even sure, but Cobb isn’t totally wrong. “Okay, it might be that a little. In order to find your audience, you have to give away a bit of yourself in the process—“
“Preaching to the choir, sunshine,” Cobb says, holding up a hand to let her know she doesn’t need to say any more than that.
“You’re right,” Marigold says, chewing on her lower lip. Just then, Elijah walks by, pausing when he finds his parents together in the bedroom.
“Oh my god!” Elijah says in mock horror, covering his eyes like a little kid who has seen too much. “Mum!”
Marigold looks down at her towel-clad body; she’s forgotten that she’s not dressed. “Sorry, buddy. I had an idea—something I wanted to talk to Dad about—and I just rushed in here.”
“Not to shock you, but I’ve seen your mum in the all-in-all before,” Cobb says, smirking again.
Elijah pretends to gag. “Gah, Dad. Gross. So disgusting.” He shakes his head and walks back to the kitchen, leaving Cobb and Marigold giggling. “Come help me make the cranberry sauce once you're decent, Mum."
Marigold and Cobb exchange a final look of amusement before she goes back to her room and puts on a pair of black overalls over a long-sleeved white t-shirt. She's barefoot with damp hair when she emerges again, ready to work in the kitchen with Elijah.
"You know," she says to him, washing her hands at the sink. "There was a time when you weren't such a sass. You were a very obedient young lad." She's teasing, of course, as Elijah is a dream of a boy, even at thirty.
"Yeah, yeah," he says, smiling at her as he brings over a colander full of freshly washed cranberries. "It's too late to send me back though, so I think you're stuck with me."
"Hey," Marigold says, changing the subject as Cobb sets an album on the turntable in the front room. She hears the unmistakable scratch of the needle falling into the grooves, and then the opening licks of The Beach Boys singing "Little Saint Nick," the first track ofThe Beach Boys' Christmas Album. "What do you think of me documenting Dad's recovery while he's here? Like, posting it on Instagram or writing about it in my book?"
Elijah rubs his ear against his shoulder to scratch it, as his hands are covered in dough and flour. "I think that's up to Dad to say," he offers diplomatically. "Did you ask?"
"He's fine with it," she says, leaning against the counter and ignoring the cranberries for the time being. Elijah has asked for her help, although he knows that his mother's strong suit is not so much the cooking, but the actual setting of a scene. Maybe it was all the years she spent on different sets and photo shoots, but she can look at a room and envision exactly what it needs to be magical: the color scheme, the right combination of fabrics and patterns, the lighting. So while she'll roll up her sleeves in the kitchen if he truly wants her to, they both know that at some point Marigold will drift out to the dining room and set the table, light the candles, and leave a shiny Christmas cracker on each place setting.
"Of course he's fine with it," Elijah says mildly. "Since when has Dad ever said no to you?" Marigold watches her grown son as he works smoothly in the kitchen, completing one task before picking up the next. She doesn't respond, and her silence prompts Elijah to glance at her. "Okay," he says in a quieter voice. "He didn't actually saynowhen you asked him to get sober, Mum. That's not fair."
"I didn't say anything." Marigold raises both hands in surrender.
"But it's what you were thinking." Elijah stares at her, and in his eyes she can see how much Cobb's addictions have hurt him, too. They may not have divorced until Elijah was twenty, but he'd spent the majority of his life with a mother who was always trying to compensate for his dad's inability to be there, to be present, and to be drug and alcohol free.
Marigold feels guilty now, because itwaswhat she was thinking. She walks by Elijah, stopping behind him to put her hands on both of his shoulders and to plant a kiss on his cheek. "I'll be back for the cranberries," she says, "I'm gonna make sure Dad is settled in the front room."
Sure enough, Cobb is sitting on the floor by the tree with the record spinning on the turntable, writing something in his leather-bound notebook.
"Hey, kid," Marigold says, sinking to the floor next to him. "You busy?"
Cobb puts his pencil between the pages and closes the book. He looks at her with soft, serious eyes. "Not terribly. Just busy writing a Grammy winning song here."
Marigold laughs. "I should leave you to it then," she says, prepared to stand up and find something else to do while Cobb works. When he gets busy writing song lyrics, she tries to steer clear, because interrupting a genius at work means you might be depriving the rest of the world of ever hearing something magical.
