“I have to say,” Ian said, setting his drink down before lowering his body into his seat, “I was surprised to get your text after that very serious cease-and-desist letter from the French lawyer.”
“French Canadian,” she corrected.
“Ah,” he said. “Well, and then after the text, I was beginning to doubt you’d ever agree to actually meet.”
Merritt attempted a warm smile, remembering that this man had very nearly asked her on a date the last time she saw him. She did not care how Ian felt about her, but she was conscious of his power in this situation. She needed to belikable—gross—but she was determined to be strong and self-possessed as well.
“No one likes talking about their bad exes,” she said, lifting her glass, “especially in print. But I think this will help. Should we drink to Graydon Lyons and his little book?”
Ian’s eyes widened, delighted, and a wicked grin spread across his face. He clearly thought he was going to enjoy this.
“Here, here,” he said, clinking his glass against hers. After a sip, he pulled a notepad and his phone out of the front pocket on his shirt. “Do you mind if I record?”
“Sure, but there’s just one thing.”
This was the first step of the plan, and it was a crucial one.
“Yes?”
“Can I speak off the record? For a minute or so, tops?”
Ian waited, holding his phone a few inches from his chest and looking a little caught off guard. Merritt reminded herself he was not quite a real journalist. This might be his first off-the-record experience.
“Fine,” he said, putting his phone face down on the table. “Yes, sure.”
Merritt smiled. She sipped her martini, then put it carefully back on the table before folding her hands together and taking a big breath.
“All right,” she said, slowly, firmly, likably. “If I’m going to do this, I’m going to need one thing from you.”
“Scheming and making deals, Merritt Pryor, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“You don’t know me at all.”
Ian’s eyebrows went up, but one coy smile seemed to bring them back to their resting state.
“Oh,” he smirked, “how very mysterious.”
“Yes. And I will remain a mystery to you unless I have your word about what I’m about to ask you. Are we clear?”
Ian thought for a long moment. He leaned back in his seat dramatically and took a sip of his Manhattan before putting his glass firmly on the table with aclack.
“Okay,” he said, once he’d made her wait what must have been a pleasurably long amount of time for him. “What is it you have to ask me?”
When Merritt left his house, Whit had put his energy into anything he could come up with that didn’t require thought or feeling. He took a shower first, then trimmed his beard. He cut his fingernails and toenails. He cleaned the house, paid some bills, and ordered the Valentines Annie wanted to give her classmates next month.
He picked up Annie, using all the energy he had to be chipper and interested, asking her questions about the day and playing the music she requested in the car, and they had pizza in the living room while watching a movie, and when Annie went to bed, he went to his bedroom, turned on the lamp on his bedside table, and pulled out a stack of papers.
The Fairy in the High Tower.How had she decided on that title?
It didn’t matter. None of this mattered. And yet—well, here he was.
He decided to start at the beginning.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Annie was annoyed with him. They were running late, and it was his fault. He had slept in, like a teenager who’d stayed up playing video games, except he was a thirty-seven-year-old man who had stayed up reading a book he had mostly cowritten. A crazy thing had happened to him as he read: he found that he could not put the book down. Never,neverhad he felt something like this rereading one of his own books. This creation of his and Merritt’s was lightning in a bottle. It was clearly written for younger readers, and yet it called to him and moved him. He loved it.
And then Merritt’s ending—the bits she’d written herself—God, they were good. He found himself crying during the death scene and grinning goofily, unselfconsciously, as he reached the book’s resolution. It was magical, joyful, and touching, the polar opposite of cheesy or didactic, and yet it actually said something about what it meant to be a human, to be loved, to do good in the world.
