“More tea?” he asked after another half hour. His body had begun to ache in embarrassing ways, and he needed to stand for a bit.
“Sure,” she said. “Let me just finish this one thing.”
In the kitchen on his own, Whit found himself grinning, really grinning, and he was so taken aback that he actually touched his mouth with his fingers like he did after getting numbed at the dentist.
What was going on?
He knew what was going on: they were writing. He and Merritt were actually writing, and it was going really well, and when he’d thought about the Task over the last few days, he hardly even used the word “Monumental” because they were sharing the load and it was, unbelievably, quite bearable. That was why he was grinning.
Except.
Except that he and Merritt weresharing the load. The phrase lingered in his brain. Had this been what Helen had in mind when she left the book to him? Who knew? A surge of frustration welled up in him, a streak of defensiveness toward Helen and her enigmatic, secretive ways. What else was he supposed to do? Whit had been so painfully out of his depth before Merritt came along. He had needed someone to save him from the weight of inaction, and it was starting to look like Merritt had been the perfect choice. He should not feel like he needed to apologize for doing the savvy thing required to save the Greenwood Castle series.
Still, when he’d felt his mouth turned up in that unrelenting grin, guilt had shot through him, intermixed with worry. Would Helen have hated this? Would she have hated to see Whit givingaway even a piece of her book to another person, a fan whom he’d hardly known at first? Inviting her into their home, sharing their thoughts and theories? Sharing the load?
Helen had been a writer. That was a dumb thing to think, because of course she had been a writer. What he meant, as he riffled through the cabinet for a tea option he wasn’t bored with, was that surely Helen would get it. Writing was so difficult at times, and if he’d asked Helen to produce one of the Sister Marguerite mysteries for him, he was sure that she, too, would have needed help.
That was one of the things about being with another writer. They got it. Most of the time.
When Merritt came in, the kettle was boiling, and he was still thinking about writers being with writers. Whit was fairly certain that Merritt had some experience in this. This was the moment he could ask her about Graydon Lyons and the book and the real reason she’d left grad school.
He had seriously considered it when he was talking to Willa in the coffee shop.I’ll just ask her, he had thought, because it seemed the respectful thing to do, rather than nursing this possibly false idea of Merritt, which felt strangely sexist (“the scorned ex”) as well as oddly voyeuristic.
But glancing at her now as she looked through the windows over the sink, taking in the little meadow with the firepit and the rows of hydrangeas and the tree line beyond, he realized he’d been wrong. How would he even begin?So, have any critically acclaimed books of literary fiction been written about you lately?
“It’s beautiful out there,” she said, shooting him a smile before returning her eyes to the window. “How long have you lived here?”
“A little over eight years. We bought it with the advance of the second book.”
Whit had not grown up around rich people. His parents’ divorce was partially prompted by a series of bad investments onhis father’s part, and he’d grown up with a mother who worked for the local botanical garden. He always felt a little embarrassed driving the Range Rover around town or accidentally letting a comment slip about “having land.” The parents at Annie’s school talked constantly about remodels and second homes, and Whit and Helen had pledged, early on, to never become like that. Still, the house existed. It had been remodeled. Before Helen’s sickness, they’d talked about a lake house and a New York apartment. But living that way was not his norm, and for some reason he wanted Merritt to know that.
“It was kind of weird honestly. All this.”
He pointed around vaguely.
She leaned against the counter while she sipped her tea. “What do you mean?”
Whit thought for a moment. “Neither of us came from money. She had a rich great-aunt, but that was it. Our parents were middle-class and making it, and I’d say mine werejustmaking it. And then she got a lot of cash all at once, more than I ever will, which is itself weird...”
“Because she’s a woman and you’re a man?”
Whit rolled his eyes. “No. I don’t care about that.”
“Really?” she said, more curious than skeptical. “You never cared she was making more money than you?”
“Fine, I cared, but not because she was a woman, and not because she was my wife. It was because it made my own writing feel... sort of small. Insignificant by comparison.”
Whit had never said that out loud before. He looked at his tea.
“But that’s not true,” Merritt said, using her mug to point at him in a way that drew his eyes back up. “Lots of people read your books.”
“Do you?”
He meant it as a joke, but it felt like a cheap shot as it left his mouth.
Except Merritt didn’t seem all that vulnerable to cheap shots.
“No,” she said immediately, unapologetically, “but I’ve been seriously considering it. I think it might help me understand you better, write with you better. What?”
