“What?” Whit asked.
She wavered a moment longer before explaining, “Technically, I didhalfof an MFA.”
They paused, and Whit tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. “Half?” he said at last.
“Half.” Then, after another, shorter pause: “Bad breakup.”
Whit forced himself to nod, as if unfazed, though he regretted pushing her into revealing this information.
“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling like that was insufficient, and she nodded, too.
“It happens. Does that change your opinion of me?”
“No,” Whit said, with what felt like too much speed. Then, as if more talking would somehow make things better, he added, “You got in, didn’t you?”
“And I got out.”
Whit laughed. “Right, well... MFAs aren’t... they’re not theonly way to... I don’t think it matters one way or another. I know you can write.”
Mercifully, the waitress returned with their food—a Romaine salad with goat cheese, almonds, and strawberries to split, roast chicken for him, and a brie and apple panini for her—and then Whit waited.
“And,” he said finally, after they’d each had a few silent bites, “on top of all that, there’s just...”
He stopped himself. He had explicitly decidednotto say this, and now he was saying it. Could not, it turned out,stopsaying things.
“There’s just something about you,” he said, moving his fork in the air in an abstract circle.
Merritt paused, her panini floating above her plate. She chewed her last bite, slowly again, as she thought. Then she spoke.
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
Merritt shrugged, then waved her panini in one hand before holding it up as he had earlier with the beer. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“You’ll do it?”
“Yes, Whit,” she said, almost irritably, and the way she said his name sent a bubble through his lungs that emerged in a laugh.
“And you know I’m going to pay you, right?”
“Oh,” she said, through a mouthful of panini, her face almost incredulous. “Obviously. I want a contract, an advance, a royalties agreement, the whole shebang.”
“Of course,” Whit said, looking down to cut his chicken. “We’ll get it all down on paper.”
When he looked up again, Merritt was looking around the space, smiling to herself, and Whit found that he couldn’t help doing the same.
Chapter Seven
Merritt opened the front door to the yellow Victorian on the outer rim of town to find her mother in her natural state: curled up in the oversized easy chair in the corner of the living room–turned–personal library. Stepping into the space felt like stepping into the branches of a lit Christmas tree, with its little fireplace and scattered lamps illumining a small forest of houseplants, all hanging from wall-to-wall bookshelves. And there was Kathleen, like a favorite family ornament. She was in what Merritt thought of as her nighttime uniform: a tan sweatsuit from her alma mater, with her copious gray-brown hair twisted into a sloppy bun. Tonight she was wrapped in a quilt Merritt’s grandmother had made, with her reading glasses perched at the tip of her nose, just inches above what looked to be one of Anthony Trollope’s Palliser novels. Verdi played from a speaker hidden somewhere on the shelves.
“Hi, Mom. What are you reading?”
“Oh,Can You Forgive Her?And I have to say, at this point, I’m not sure I can.”
Kathleen looked up.
“Well, look at you.”
