He nodded at the desk behind Merritt.
“There’s a pen over there that she loved—always those G2-10s, which I find to be so runny and messy, but she loved them.”
He smiled a soft smile, looking down at his hands as they touched the ground.
“I remember her picking out this rug. Things like that.”
Whit nodded to himself, and Merritt felt a little guilty about being here in this room with him, which she had not forced him to enter but which he had entered on her behalf nonetheless. But then, he turned to Merritt with a look that felt layered in meaning, like he was trying to comforther, like he was seeing her, fully, in spite of all this talk and in spite of where they were, and he said something that felt sharp and soft, like a knife and a blanket at once.
“She would have liked you.”
“Oh. Oh?”
“Yeah,” Whit said easily, with a quick raise of the shoulders. “You have the sort of humor she enjoyed, and you’re kind, which was what she valued most. And she would’ve liked your work.”
Merritt felt warm all over.
“You can’t know that.”
“Of course I can.”
Whit stood up and extended a hand, which Merritt took.
“Grab that,” he said, nodding at the laptop. “Have a look around tonight. The password is just capital-AAnnie.”
“Are you sure? I mean about me looking at it?”
Whit nodded, then continued his thought from before.
“I don’t know how she would have felt about what we’re doing with the book—I think she knew she couldn’t have an opinion at this point anyway. Hence the ‘whatever means he deems necessary’ business. But if we could somehow remove what you’ve done from the context of it beingherseries, she would have liked it. And Iknowshe would have liked your own manuscript, which, by the way, cuts off at a very cliffhanger-y moment. I can’t wait to read the end.”
He had deliberately shifted away from her as he said this, and Merritt’s laptop-free hand shot out, unbidden, and yanked him back by the shoulder. He was laughing as he turned to look at her.
“Youwhat?”
“I finished it. What you have anyway. I have some notes—almost entirely positive—but—”
“Shut up, you read it. And you waited until now to tell me? When did you finish?”
“Late last night after you left.”
“Lastnight?”
He was turning away again, walking toward the door and down the narrow stairs, giving Merritt the opportunity to storm after him.
“And you didn’t call or text to tell me?”
He held his hands up, as if saying,What do you want from me?
“Oh my God,” she said, mildly frustrated. Then she stopped midway down the stairs and said again, in a new, fearful tone, “Oh my God. You hated it, didn’t you?”
Whit stopped, too, and turned back to look at her. “What?”
“You hated it. Otherwise you would’ve told me—”
“I’ve just told you.AndI explicitly said Helen would have liked it.”
She held up her pointer finger. “Exactly. And you have also explicitly said you did not like Helen’s books—”
