“...but, oh, well, I hate to ask this, but could you do me a favor in return?”
Whit waited, cringing.
“It’s just that I need someone to cover carpool duty next week. Greg and I are taking the boys to the Poconos to ski, and well...”
There were flights nearly every hour, from Boston to New York. Whit knew that. He could wait for a Lyft and get to Logan in two hours. He could take a train, rent a car, there was a shuttle—except every nerve, every synapse within him pulsed with longing. He needed to find and speak to Merritt. He needed to do this reckless, stupid thing, no matter the mental cost.
“Fine, Noel, I will help you with carpool duty.”
The man’s face lit up like a bottle rocket.
“Wonderful. Thentotheairportwegooo.”
Noel spoke in a singsong voice that almost made Whit back out. But his Tesla was parked right next to the blue jeep, and within a minute Whit had set out on the hour-plus drive to the airport, with only Noel and several Imagine Dragons–heavy playlists for company.
Whit had gone through security, boarded the plane, and finally buckled his seat belt before he came to his senses. He did not know why Merritt had left Whelk Harbor. He did not know what she was doing now that she was in New York—which, he told himself as the plane began to taxi, was, you know, kind of a big place—and he didn’t know how he intended to find her. He didn’t even know if she’d be willing to speak to him. And still, he had spent the last eighty-five minutes in a car with Noel Pendergrass, who vacillated between talking about his and his husband’s most recent renovation of their cabin in the Poconos (“We call it ‘the cabin’ affectionately, but it’s very much a house”), describing the various leadership roles Whit could take on with the carpool team (“Social Chair Whit Longacre has a nice ring to it”), and, worst of all, singing along to every Imagine Dragons song he’d ever heard and several he certainly had not.
“Should we play Two Truths and a Lie?” Noel had asked around the time the Boston skyline first became visible, but Whit chose that time to make a phone call to Willa to update her.
Now the plane was making its ascent, and Whit felt like a helium balloon that had whizzed away with force, enthusiasm, and whimsy until it had suddenly become snagged on the top of a chain-link fence.
Oh God. This was a mistake. More than that, it was a supremely embarrassing and misguided grand gesture. Most grand gestures involved some degree of certainty. When Harry sprints across the city to spill his guts to Sally, he knows exactly where her New Year’s Eve party is. When Meg Ryan decides to leave Bill Pullman and shoot her shot with Tom Hanks, she knows there’s at least a possibility he’ll be at the top of the Empire State Building. Flying to New York without a plan wasn’t romantic or exciting. It was just stupid.
He had left on such a whim and arrived at the airport so close to his departure time (a personal nightmare) that he did not have a book and had been far too stressed to stop at a Hudson News to get one. It was lunchtime, more or less, and his stomach was rumbling. And he had a middle seat.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He tried reading the in-flight magazine, but it reminded him of the writing he used to do before his first book deal. So instead he turned his attention to his fellow passengers. The suited man in the aisle seat was clearly traveling for business. As Whit watched him poring over spreadsheets and Microsoft Teams messages on his laptop, he did think, for a moment,Well, things could be worse for me. He turned to the woman in the window seat, who was poring over an e-reader. She seemed to be in her early twenties and wore large noise-canceling headphones over a beanie he suspected was homemade. This woman looked entirely content, enjoying a book in her own world, and Whit felt a kind of affection for her that only grew when he noticed the black line tattoo peeking out of the bottom of her sleeve.
He must have been gawking, because the woman suddenly pulled away from him and slipped off her headphones.
“Can I help you?” she said, clearly on the defensive.
Whit shook himself from his stare and laughed apologetically.
“No, I’m sorry, I just... I noticed your tattoo of the kestrel and spoon. The Sign of the Scout.”
The woman glanced down at her upper arm, touching it with the fingers of the opposite hand.
“Oh,” she said, more mildly, “are you a fan?”
Normally, Whit would have just said, “Yes.” In the past, in moments like this one, he had occasionally said, “My wife’s a big fan,” which had always made him laugh.
Today he told the truth.
“My wife wrote those books.”
The woman started. Whit could feel her really looking at him.
“That sounds made up, I know,” he said, “but Helen Albright Longacre was my wife.”
He wasn’t sure why he did it, but he pulled out his phone and swiped quickly back to a picture of him with Helen and Annie. They were crouching together by a snowman, laughing.
“Oh my God.” The woman spoke in a gentle tone that contrasted with her powerful words. Then she remembered.
“Oh,” she said, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Her hand moved from the armrest to touch the back of Whit’s hand, for less than a second.
