“I think you’re right,” he said, smiling again. “I think you’re exactly right.”
Whit’s first stop in the city was to grab food at a Pret, a sad, soggy premade chicken salad sandwich that he ate while wandering around the Upper West Side. He was there, ostensibly, because that was where Evie and Édouard lived, and where he’d probably be sleeping that night. If it happened to be where the main characters ofYou’ve Got Mailalso lived, and if he happened to know that Merritt loved that movie, well, that was incidental. He did feel near to her there, which made him feel dumb. But he felt it nonetheless.
His conversation on the plane had left him feeling buoyed, but now, as he walked into Riverside Park in the late afternoon, he was weighed down once again by the magnitude of his powerlessness. Whit felt more than just moronic now. Aware of how pathetic and pitiful this had all been, Whit was startled when, at last, his phone rang and he glanced at the caller ID.
“Merritt?”
“Whit, goodness. Are you okay? Why do I have seven missed calls from you?”
“Um.” Whit felt suddenly sheepish. “Why weren’t you answering?”
He braced himself for her to remind him that she did not actually have to answer.
“I lost my phone for a bit,” she said instead. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Where are you?”
“What?”
“You’re in New York, aren’t you?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
“How did you know that?”
Whit was approaching the 91st Street Garden now. Behind its black name placard and wrought-iron fence, the flowerbeds were in a muted winter state. It had snowed in New York the previous week, and the plants looked like they were still recovering, trying to poke out from beneath the remaining layer of dirty gray slush.
“I came looking for you,” Whit explained, leaning with his free hand on the fence. He pulled away immediately, wishing he’d thought to grab gloves from his car back in Whelk Harbor. “I thought you might be subbing for your mom, but she told me you were here, and so I just—”
He paused, realizing what he had just revealed.
“Sorry,” Merritt said on the phone, “did you sayhere? As in you’reinNew York?”
He took a breath.
“Yes. I’m at Riverside Park.”
“Oh, Whit,” Merritt said, and her tone made him cringe at his foolhardiness.
“I know. I don’t know what to say.”
“No, Whit,” she said, with an apology in her tone, “I just got back to Whelk Harbor.”
Whit’s voice stopped midway up his throat, until he forced out words.
“You what?”
Chapter Thirty-Four
About Eight Hours Earlier
Merritt stared at the building, feeling like a slightly lost ingenue at the beginning of a Golden Age movie musical. Willa had assured her that this was the right place. She had also mandated that Merritt not mention her name at any point during this reckless mission, but Merritt tried not to think about that now.
When she had arrived in New York the previous evening, she’d gone to pull out her phone, only to realize that she’d left it in the seat pocket on the airplane. She felt a brief moment of panic, but then remembered her mother’s insistence when she dropped Merritt off in the departures lane that she tell her Evie and Édouard’s address, just in case. After visiting the customer service desk to file a claim for her phone, she used the landline to call her mother, who told her the address and as much as said, without saying it,Aren’t you glad you have a mother who takes such prudent precautions?
Two weeks ago, she had planned to tell Ian Hoult some of the truth and to jump-start her own writing career in the process, but this second step was a spur-of-the-moment move. When the pieces clicked into place in her mind, she had called Willa and Evie in quick succession. Both had expressed skepticism about her plan but had nonetheless agreed to maintain silence on the matter should they speak to Whit within the next forty-eighthours.
This morning, following a cozy dinner with Evie and Édouardand a night of restless sleep, Merritt joined her hosts for breakfast. Evie took one look at Merritt’s proposed outfit of black jeans and black sweater and gasped.
