He rolled his eyes again, then smiled at her. “You really do look nice. I like your hair that way.”
She had done her hair—had lightly curled it—and he had noticed.
Whit looked around the dining room table. Typically covered in laundry and Annie’s schoolwork, it was now draped in a deep green tablecloth and elegantly appointed by his sister, who’d found the china he and Helen had registered for but never actually used. Evie handwashed each plate, hand-selected the greenery and pine cones arranged up and down a muted gold runner, and handmade each dish now weighting down the long, sturdy table. Around him were his friends, his family, his daughter’s librarian, and Merritt.
Kathleen sat between them at the midafternoon meal, and Adrienne and Willa sat across from them, asking Kathleen about books and book bans and rehashing memories of Thanksgivings past. Whit didn’t mind. He liked just being near Merritt, liked watching her interact with his friends and her mother, liked how Evie laughed at her jokes and how Annie listened when she spoke. He liked...
He liked her.
Helikedher. There it was.
And of course, beneath the self-loathing he felt at having used such a silly phrase to describe his feelings—I like her—those words had an echo, and that echo was the nameHelen. This was his and Annie’s second Thanksgiving with her gone, and that was still a tender thing. The day felt different without her, the family felt incomplete, and if he allowed himself to dwell on it for too long, he could feel himself slipping into a kind of yearning—to hear her voice, to smell the pies she always made, to laugh at her parade commentary.
He had taken a walk early that morning and thought of all these things, and though he would never hear Helen’s voice again, Evie had made the pies, and Édouard had made Annie laugh at the parade floats, and Merritt was here. That felt different, too, but an okay different. A happy different, in fact. He liked her.
As they ate, he watched Annie, who really did seem all right. Occasionally, a cloud would pass over her face, and he wished forthe millionth time that he could read her mind, that he knew how to break down the tough walls she’d inherited from her often enigmatic mother. Was she worse off than him, one more holiday into a life without Helen? Was she better? She seemed to be watching Merritt and thinking, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not decipher what the look on her face might mean.
He would talk to her, he decided, at bedtime. For now, there was turkey and cranberry sauce and a sweet potato casserole he would have happily paid $18 for at the bistro on Cork Street.
After the meal, Whit said he’d do the dishes and Merritt offered to help. In seconds, Adrienne and Kathleen decided they’d go on a walk, while Willa joined Édouard as he explained the rules of a complicated card game to Annie, Albie, and a very competitive Evie. Whit had the distinct sense that people were deliberately leaving Merritt and him alone, but who cared. That was what he wanted.
“Evie is a really good cook,” Merritt said, as she moved around the dining room table making stacks of empty plates.
Whit was pouring unfinished glasses of wine and water into a used pitcher. “Yup,” he said. “Self-taught. Our mom was awful.”
“Mine, too. Or really, she just doesn’t like it. She’ll bake occasionally, but that’s mostly because she loves desserts. My dad was the big cook in the family.”
“Mine too,” Whit said. “Before my folks split up, he’d lock us out of the kitchen and make these huge spreads. That was probably the worst part of the divorce. We very quickly became a Hamburger Helper family half the time.”
Whit said it as a joke, and Merritt smiled softly. “That was probably kind of a sad reminder, though. Sitting down to dinner each night.”
Whit considered her words and shrugged. “Sort of, yeah,” he said. Then, realizing something: “Oh God.”
“What?”
“No, it’s fine.”
Merritt set her stack of plates on the table corner so she could really look at him. She did not seem convinced.
“Really,” he said. “It’s fine, I just didn’t think I’d find myself in the same position. Poor Annie, stuck with my bad cooking.”
Merritt’s smile returned, sad this time.
“I’m sorry, Whit.”
He let out a puff of a laugh. “It’s fine. Helen wasn’t actually a very good cook, either.”
Merritt waited, thinking, then spoke. “I’m pretty good.”
“Are you?”
“I am, actually. I’ve been lazy lately, letting my mom order takeout or whatever, because I guess that’s what you do when you stay at your parent’s house.”
“I grab a drink from the fridge every time I leave my mom’s.”
“Exactly.”
She started stacking plates again.
