The woman laughed, enjoying Merritt’s forthrightness.
“It’s been a year. And anyway, it’s not like that.”
At a stoplight, Diana gave her a look. “It is not gross. You can’t be that far apart in age.”
Merritt was thirty. Whit was thirty-seven. She had looked this up sometime last week, trying to figure out how old he and Helen had been when they had Annie, since they both seemed young to have had an eight-year-old. In an interview Merritt skimmed, Helen spoke about getting pregnant unexpectedly at twenty-eight, sooner than she’d planned and right in the middle of writing the first Greenwood Castle book—but this was all far more information than Merritt would ever admit to knowing.
“It’s not like that,” she said again, trying to blot out the words “young, attractive woman” from her memory.
The writing was going well for Whit. He was reminded of the time he’d switched from using a handheld can opener to an automated one—a wedding present. The difference between the jagged grinding via hand crank and the smooth, automatic slice of the machine was astounding, and he couldn’t believe he’d been opening cans any other way up until then. He imagined making this comparison to Merritt and laughed at the thought of her reaction to being associated with something used to unseal baked beans and Spaghetti-O’s. She was funny and clever and so capable, and in short, Whit couldn’t believe he’d been trying for a full year to write this thing without someone like her.
He found himself waiting for Merritt to arrive in the space between dropping Annie off at school and lunchtime, and it took a lot of effort to keep from opening the front door at the first sight of her car. Sometimes he would imagine Helen seeing him like this, and he’d feel a dagger of embarrassment, but then the door would open and he’d be swept into the whirlwind of their writing.
Today, when a Lexus pulled down the drive, he did let himself get the door. He was about to call out to ask if she’d gotten a new car when Merritt exited the passenger side.
“Thank you,” she said in a hurried voice. “See you at the store.”
She slammed the door shut and began tramping quickly toward him before waiting for an answer, but the window was already rolling down on the driver’s side.
“Hithere,” an older woman’s voice came from across the lawn. Then, to Merritt, “Let me know if you need a ride home, dear.”
“I’ll manage,” she said, climbing the steps at a brisk pace, her face knotted up in a get-inside-quickly look that drew a stifled laugh from Whit.
“What was all that about?” he asked a moment later, back at the tea kettle.
Merritt finished chewing her sandwich before speaking from her usual place at the kitchen table. “That was my boss, Diana. From the bookstore. My car died after work, and no one knew how to jump it, so she dropped me off.”
“Oh yeah, I know her a bit,” Whit said before registering the words.Diana. Bookstore. Dropping Merritt off.
“She’sfine,” Merritt continued, giving the word a different thrust than he’d ever heard someone give it. “Just patronizing and a little nosy.”
“Ah.” Whit was trying to play it cool, but there were precious few things Diana might be as curious about as why Merritt was visiting Whit Longacre.
Merritt dropped her half-eaten sandwich onto her crumpled lunch sack and held up her hands. “Don’t worry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t tell her anything really.”
“What does ‘really’ mean?”
Merritt gave him a look informing him that his tone had shifted.
“I told her just enough to make it clear that a ride was necessary.”
Whit tried, really tried, to look neutral and understanding, but he was thinking, again, of what Helen would say about all this. Wondering if he was doing something wrong by her, or something stupid in the grander scheme of the series and this book’s existence. If Diana found out that Merritt was helping Whit on the book, and if she realized how long this help was taking and put two and two together... It was not outside the realm of possibility that a woman who owned a bookstore would have connections in the broader literary world. If the rumor mill got to churning—Whit Longacre spends his days with a lovely younger woman writing his late wife’s last novel from scratch—well, the fans could be ruthless, and the longevity of the Greenwood Castle franchise, as Joan was fond of reminding him, was tied up in this novel’s success. Whit sighed despite himself.
Merritt crossed her arms. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said, hollowly.
“No, it’s not nothing.”
Whit opened his mouth, but he had difficulty finding words that didn’t sound like he thought she was careless, indiscreet, stupid—
“Whit, do you think I’m stupid? I understand the deal. I signed the contract. I’m a grown-up.”
He laughed, not because it was funny, but because he felt caught. He started blindly into the next sentence. “No, I just worry—”
“You worry that I’ll give the game away and screw everything up.”
He lowered himself into a chair in a way that felt like a full-body shrug.
