Whit shrugged, lost in a thought that felt like a sense memory. It wasn’t often that Helen had joined him on his walks, but there was one fall day, like this one, when the two of them had come out here. Annie had been small enough for them to take turns wearing the front-facing baby carrier.
“Maybe,” Helen had said, out of nowhere, in her ever-calm voice, “it’s a water thing.”
“What?” he’d asked, squeezing Annie’s cold hands in each of his. Then he saw Helen’s face and knew what was happening, because it often happened to him. She was in the world of her books,working out questions as she walked, and the nearby stream had provided an answer to one of them.
“I need a way for Ursula to remember something she’s forgotten. Maybe she has to bathe in a brook or something to get the memory back.”
This was after the second book had sold but just before the series had become a global phenomenon. Whit had just published his first book in the Sister Marguerite series, and though they had more money than they’d ever had, the future remained murky, and it felt like the two of them were still just trying to make it as writers.
“Sort of like Achilles,” Helen continued.
“Or a backwards Lethe,” Whit had put in, offering another Greek myth.
“Exactly,” Helen said, presenting him with a shining grin that communicated pure gratefulness. “A backwards Lethe, exactly.”
There were so few moments like that, times when they had felt like two writers side by side, and remembering it now felt like a blow to the chin.
“Whit?” Merritt said, for what he realized was the second time. “You okay?”
“What? Yes, sorry. I zoned out there for a second. What were you saying?”
“I was asking if any of this is inyourbooks.”
She waved her hands before her at the tall green spruces and firs, the more festal beeches and maples, the wet rocks and their overcoat of moss.
“My books?” Whit said, caught off guard.
“Yes?”
Whit thought for a moment, then smiled, surprised at himself. “You know, I suppose it is. There’s a Sister Marguerite book where they stumble onto a corpse while making a pilgrimage to a holy tree in Italy that supposedly grew from a seed dropped by Saint Paul.”
“Okay...”
Whit shrugged. “A lot of that book takes place in a forest, and, well, I’ve never been to an Italian forest. It’s just these woods reimagined, though I never realized that until now.”
Merritt nodded, interested. “Well, I look forward to that one. I’m likingThe Hour of Matinsso far.”
“You what?” Whit said in a voice that was half-gulp. Something electric had raced through him, which didn’t make sense. People did, in fact, read his books, and he had been the one to give Merritt the speech about writers writing for an audience. Still, the knowledge that Merritt was reading his book—hisfirstbook—had caused an internal frisson, a second, different blow to his body.
“I’m liking it,” she said, casting her eyes around the trees in a way he found suddenly maddening.
“Oh, please don’t start withthatone.”
“Of course I started with that one, what do you mean? Should I start in the middle of the series?”
“Yes. I promise, it gets better. I’ll catch you up on the important plot points.”
“Okay, that’s absurd. I’m a completist. And anyway, I said I’m enjoying it.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Whit turned and began walking in the direction of the house. The old story slithered through his brain as they walked: Sister Marguerite, the Anglican novitiate and amateur detective who investigates the mysterious death of a fellow nun during their morning devotions. He liked his novels, truly, and he thought they did the things he wanted them to do—did them well. They were murder mysteries, but they were also ruminations on faith, doubt, and duty, on wanting to believe in goodness and not always being able to. And he didbelievein being read by people. But, with the exception of Helen, Willa, and, for a time, Ian Hoult, his readership had always been distant and sortof imaginary. They existed, but somewhere else. He didn’t see them, and he only very rarely heard their opinions on his work.
The idea of Merritt reading his books, though... he didn’t know what exactly that felt like (beyond the sudden squirminess in his stomach). (Where had that come from?) But it definitely felt likesomething.
Chapter Twelve
After their walk, Merritt and Whit returned to writing, once again falling into a groove they both felt was especially productive. For Merritt, it was thrilling, a kind of pleasant fugue state in which the words fell onto the page like perfectly placed darts on a dartboard. She was making notes about her fairy tale theory, building her ideas out into a plausible arc that could fit within the outline they’d already crafted before sharing them with Whit. She felt like a detective building a case until she was finally ready to speak.
“I think there’s something here.”
