“No,” she said again. She would do her job, she would make some money, and she would use this experience as a stepping-stone to writing again. That was it.
She turned on the car. The brassy theme song forAll Things Consideredwas playing on the radio. She slapped at the dial and drove home to her mother’s in silence.
Whit walked into writing group that Tuesday like a man on a red carpet. He wasthisclose to shielding his eyes from imaginary camera flashes and waving magnanimously at imaginary fans. Because he had written. Or prewritten. Outlined, if he were splitting hairs. But that was semantics and beside the point: he hadsomethingto report, something to celebrate. He had madeprogress, and avisionhad begun to take shape, and if he opened his inbox today to a flurry of emails from Joan the agent and Shreya the editor, then his and Merritt’s skeleton of an outline would be enough to stand between him and despair like Gandalf on that tiny rock bridge in the dwarf caves.
See? He was even thinking in fantasy terms now. That was progress, and there was no other word for it.
“Well, you’re looking very smirky today,” Willa said as he settled down next to her.
“I should be. You are looking at someone whowrote.”
Her face opened up in a look of real surprise that he could have taken offense to. But he was too relieved at having put words down on paper to be hurt.
“Your own work,” Willa asked, “or Helen’s?”
“Helen’s.”
He grinned, really satisfied.
“That’s great,” Willa said in a relieved way just this side of patronizing. Still, Whit didn’t care. The Monumental Task was at least an inch less monumental.
Willa closed her laptop to give Whit her full attention. “What changed?”
Whit’s mouth hung open, and for a moment, he considered keeping Merritt a secret. The contract had stated that they would not publicize their arrangement, but this was his friend—his closest writerly confidant. And still...
“I asked someone for help,” he said, all vagueness.
“That’s very mature of you.”
“Well, when you’ve exhausted all your options—staring at the computer screen, deep-cleaning the house, et cetera.”
“As one does,” Willa said with a laugh. “Who’d you ask?”
Whit gripped the chair below him as he spoke, unable to name the reason for his timidity.
“Merritt Pryor. Kathleen—”
“Kathleen Pryor’s daughter?” Willa interrupted. Her son was a middle schooler at the Foothills School.
“Yeah. You know her?”
“No, but Kathleen always updates me on her when I volunteer in the library. I thought she was in Texas getting an MFA?”
Whit nodded. “She was.”
He hesitated. Dropping out was Merritt’s story to tell, and she hadn’t even toldhim. The silence was heavy, and it needed to be addressed, but after a moment of nodding and thinking, Willa spoke first.
“You know, her mother did say she was having a hard time last year. Some boyfriend she didn’t like the sound of. She was a little worried this would happen.”
Why did Whit feel nervous?
“What would happen?” he asked.
“That she would drop out.Isthat what happened?”
“I really don’t know the details...”
“She was at Barton, wasn’t she? The same school as Graydon Lyons? He has that new book coming out.”
