Now, two days later, she was walking from her mother’s house toward the home of the Barrett-Linds, which was located on Cork Street, like Goodenough Books and Carafe but on the other side of the village green. It was the residential side, made up of large, mostly whitewashed Victorians as well as traditional New England saltbox colonials.
As usual, Merritt was enjoying her walk, with the autumnal trees and autumnal breeze and the seemingly endless series of pumpkins: squat ones in muted oranges and whites that looked as if they’d been sat on, zucchini-ish oblongs that curved at the end like swans’ necks, the bright bursts of almost sensually vivid red pumpkins, and the occasional verrucose gray oval ones. She carried a bottle of wine in one hand and had to hold her top hatto her head with the other because the breeze was picking up. But she didn’t mind. In fact, Merritt felt especially at home beneath her indigo coat, in her sheer black cape and bell sleeves. She was proud of her costume, which was fun but not too over the top. She had spent the day trying to guess what thevibewould be, hating herself a little bit for caring and for continually thinking the wordvibe, and eventually she decided on something that could be dressed down if the party turned out to be more of a masquerade-mask-slash-animal-ears-and-a-T-shirt event.
She arrived at the house that both the map on her phone and the collection of parked cars confirmed to be Willa’s. It was one of the white Victorians—a Queen Anne, she thought—with a wraparound porch, a balcony above, and a pencil-shaped tower at one corner. Merritt opened the low wrought-iron gate and walked up the red-brick path to a porch lit by two fire lanterns.
She stood there for a moment. Merritt never felt nervous about social gatherings—being good at parties was secretly a point of pride for her. She liked to say that she had an introvert’s brain in an extrovert’s body, which wasn’t exactly what she meant (what kind of body would that be?), but it made sense enough to her.
Why, then, did she feel a tremble in her throat? Why was the thought of meeting Whit’s friends and their kids and whoever else might be here making her wish she’d said no to his text?
She knew why.
The door opened, exhaling a wave of mulling spices and citrus. It revealed a Black woman, shorter than Merritt and dressed in a baggy white wind-suit with three-quarter sleeves and a red stripe across the chest. In an arch over her short, curly hair was a thick white headband that covered both ears, except for a silver cross earring dangling from her right side.
“Whitney Houston at the Super Bowl,” Merritt gushed, thrilled by the choice.
The woman’s face broke into a brilliant smile.
“Yes!”
“Incredible,” Merritt said, pulling her coat open slightly. “I’m—”
“Stevie Nicks?”
“Yes!”
Oh, she liked this woman.
“Two icons.”
Merritt smiled. “Great minds.”
“You look wonderful. Merritt?”
She nodded.
“I’m Willa. So glad you could make it.”
“Thanks for having me,” Merritt said, holding up the wine.
“Too kind.” Willa took the bottle in two hands and nodded Merritt inside, closing the door behind her.
“I’m a big fan of your mom, by the way.”
“Oh, me too,” Merritt said. It was her usual joke response, because most people in this town seemed to love Kathleen Pryor.
Merritt looked around at the narrow, wood-floored entryway wallpapered in a blue William Morris pattern that she recognized from her undergraduate art history class. One child was chasing another up the stairs leading to the second story, and in the rooms beyond, she heard jazz standards and the jovial voices of a party in full swing. Candles were lit here and there, and the house was pleasantly warm, in contrast to the bluster outside. Willa’s hand at her elbow offered its own warmth.
“Let me take your coat.”
“Great, thanks,” Merritt said, shrugging it off. She was trying to look furtively into the dining room and study on either side of her, listening for Whit’s familiar voice, but apparently not furtively enough.
“Whit and Annie aren’t here yet,” Willa explained as she folded Merritt’s coat over itself, “but if you’ll let me put this away, I’ll introduce you to Adrienne, and to Albie, if he hasn’t run off too far with his friends.”
When Willa returned, she led Merritt through the house, which was comfortably cluttered in the style of an English country house, and, less comfortably, crowded with people she did not know. In the kitchen—a pleasant sage-and-white affair—several people were gathered around a massive cheeseboard, admiring the food as well as the tastefully arranged pumpkins, candelabra, and mercury glass skulls. A stout white woman stood by the stove, ladling a plum-colored liquid into clear glass mugs.
“Adrienne,” Willa called, and her wife looked up. She was older than Willa, and wearing a pitch-perfect Rockford Peaches costume, though the red baseball cap was tucked into the pocket of the apron she wore around her waist. She wiped a strand of straw-colored hair from her face and gave Merritt a soft smile that, in the glow of the kitchen and steam of the stove, made her look momentarily like a woman from an oil painting.
“This is Merritt.”
