Now, though, it was back to business as usual, which in Merritt’s case was anything but. She had moved to Whelk Harbor a month before with absolutely no prospects other than her mother’s insistence that Goodenough Books, the bookstore on Cork Street, would hire her because they would hire anyone who, like Merritt, was willing to be paid essentially nothing. Kathleen had been right, thankfully, and today, on her way to work, Merritt was walking the brick-lined sidewalks of this absurdly appealing street, coffee tumbler in hand, earbuds in her ears, thinking that maybe this life detour wasn’t such a bad one. Sure, it had meant the end of all her hopes and dreams, the absolute, unresuscitable demise of all her ambitions, but at least this street was cute. And at least she finally had a reason to wear her deep indigo fall coat,which felt like something Little Red Riding Hood would have graduated into wearing as an adult. The MFA program she’d dropped out of in Texas had been a good one, but there were no seasons there, only whiplash shifts from surface-of-the-sun hot to below-freezing temperatures. The trees in Texas seemed to shed all their leaves at once, and on the rare occasion that it snowed, people acted as though Jesus himself was returning on his white horse to end the world as we knew it. In Whelk Harbor, people knew how to drive on snowy roads.
Merritt walked through the windowed door of the bookstore, its charming bell tinkling overhead, and then made her way to the back room, where a work apron and Huong waited for her. Ten years younger than Merritt and twenty times cooler, Huong had just graduated from the college down the coast. She was staying with her parents and working at Goodenough Books while she “figured things out.” On day one, Huong, with her bobbed black hair, a fuzzy white sweater, and possibly ironic cargo pants, told her this in a bored-teenager voice while they stood together in the stockroom. Merritt had said, “Me too,” and the two women had formed an immediate if not quite warm connection.
It was the truth. Merritt was herself trying to figure things out, and, depressingly, she had also moved in with a parent. She had tried something in Texas, and it hadn’t worked out, and now she was living with her mom in a small New England town. The only thing that kept this whole situation from dipping into Hallmark Christmas movie territory was that Whelk Harbor was not her hometown, but the place her parents had moved to from Virginia a decade ago to look after Merritt’s grandfather. But her grandfather had died, and then her father, too, and well, Hallmark movies didn’t usually deliver such a ruthless one-two punch.
“Morning,” Huong said without looking up from her phone as she sat on a stack of boxes. Today she was wearing wide-leggedjeans and an oversized flannel, and Merritt hated,hated, that she felt uncool, that she could even care about being uncool at her age.
“Hi,” Merritt said lightly, smoothing the front of her chunky beige sweater and trying not to think about her own jeans.No, she thought,I like this sweater. I am not a wide-legged-pants person. I do not need to wear anything ironically ever again.
“Is it just us today?”
“Yes,” Merritt answered, and though Huong didn’t say it, they were both thinking the same thing: the training wheels were off. The store’s owner was a woman named Diana, who shirked the normal uniform of New England women in Whelk Harbor—unflashy but quality clothing that would protect them from surprise bad weather in a pinch—in favor of cashmere sweater sets and trench coats and the occasional floral scarf over her nearly white shoulder-length hair. Merritt had replaced a former morning shift manager, and Diana had been eager to relinquish the day-to-day duties to her new employee. She continually swatted away Merritt’s hesitations like they were persistent bees.You’ll be fine. You’re a grown-up, aren’t you?
“Well,” Huong said, glancing up at last, “let’s see how this goes.”
“As long as we don’t set the building on fire, I think Diana will call it a success.”
“A high bar,” Huong said, standing up with a short laugh, “but I think we can manage.”
Whatever catastrophes the two women had been imagining did not come to pass. Huong handled the register, and Merritt walked around tidying things, giving suggestions to the occasional patron, changing the soundtrack from jazz classics to coffee shop acoustic and then back to jazz. The bell tinkled, and locals came in looking for gifts or a current bestseller calledHow to Kick Ass Like a Girl. Had she read it? No, she had not, not really a fan of self-help, if you could believe it. Four separate women came inlooking for a novel about a pregnant and possibly mentally unwell ex-nurse on bedrest who is sure her rich neighbor has stabbed the gardener with a pair of pruning shears—a book club pick. When the bell over the door rang out once again, Merritt almost didn’t turn around, determined to force the admirably indifferent Huong to do the greeting song-and-dance for once. But then she did take a look, and it was him. Whit Longacre, formerly the husband of Helen Albright Longacre.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, and he looked at her like he recognized her and was surprised to be recognized back. Fair. It had been several days, and she had been a little preoccupied with his gift the last time they met.
“It’s me,” he said, his smile not unkind but also not enthusiastic. He had trimmed his beard, she noticed, and he wore a beige fisherman’s turtleneck and greenish pants. “Oh, gosh.”
She followed his eyes as they moved down her body, and something twisted up her spine. Was he checking her out?
“We match,” he said, laughing now. It was true, right down to the green pants.
“Oh God,” she laughed back. “I don’t know which of us should be more embarrassed.”
“Neither. We look great.”
His voice had a certain edge to it—a half-rasp, perhaps. Why did noting that make her face feel warm?
“We,” she said, holding out thee, “look like the kind of people who take color-coordinated family photos on the beach.”
“Oh, so you’ve met my mother.”
Merritt laughed. “You actually have met mine, and it won’t surprise you to learn that our family pictures are all a little bit blurry, not a coordinated outfit in sight.”
“I’d actually like to see those.”
Her face was really warm now, but Merritt was smiling when she said, “How can I help you, Mr. Longacre?”
He held up a hand. “Whit. And I have a bit of a strange question.”
“Okay?”
Whit looked embarrassed. He glanced at Huong, who was doing a sudoku on the register computer. He cast his eyes quickly over the room, taking in the exposed beams above, the Persian rugs below, the high shelves, the mishmash of chairs and couches (wingback, Louis XVI, a few fragile-looking wooden ones), the fairy lights. As Merritt stood at the top of a small slope in the warped floor, their eyes were almost even. She saw that his gray-blue irises looked self-conscious today, and hesitant, rather than sad.
“I need to see what Greenwood Castle books you have.”
“Don’t you have them all?” Merritt asked, before immediately wishing to take the words back.
Whit shrugged. “You would think so, and yet—I think we must be missing one of the stand-alones. You know, one of the ones that’s not technically part of the main story, but...”
He trailed off.
