“Hey now,” he said, holding up his own pointer finger. “I said they weren’t for me, there’s a difference.”
“Butmymanuscriptwouldhave beenHelen’skind of thing.”
“Youareusingalotofemphasis,” he joked. “But it would have been her thing, yes.” Then he let out a heavy sigh and leaned against the wall of the stairway for support.
“And you...”
He trailed off.
“What?”
He bit his lip, eyes on the ceiling as he spoke.
“You are about to force me to say something that makes me feel very guilty, but I am going to say it anyway.”
“Oh God, just get it over—”
“I liked it,” he interrupted, “more than I liked Helen’s stuff.”
He winced.
Merritt was aware that her eyes had gone wide and that her mouth now hung open, but a great hollowness also seemed to have filled her skull, from ear to ear. She felt lightheaded.
“I’m not the best judge of kid lit,” he said. “So who cares what I like. But you’ve done something with this story—the reverse Narnia aspect, the people on the other side of the portal—that’s subversive and interesting, but it still feels like the sort of thing Annie would read, and I think that’s really impressive.”
Her face burned with the most pleasant heat she could ever remember feeling.
“But what really matters,” he continued, “is that the writingbe undeniablygood. And Merritt, it’sreallygood. You are agoodwriter.”
He said these words in a tone that left her incapable of disbelieving him. Then he squeezed her hands once and released them. Merritt waited, a bit thunderstruck.
“And now, you must promise me you will never again be surprised when someone tells you something like that, okay?”
Merritt tried to think.
“I...”
He smiled.
“Fine, be surprised all you want, but know this: you’re going to be hearing it a lot, and one day you’ll get used to it.”
He smiled, a beautiful, proud smile, and then turned and walked away, leaving her stunned on the staircase.
Chapter Twenty-Four
After that, their work had stalled out for the day. The next thing to do was write the death scene, and Whit could tell that Merritt was still waiting for some sign from Helen that this would be okay.
Instead, they took a walk along the trails behind the house, bundled up and mostly in companionable silence. Whit was sure that he and Merritt were both thinking about the same thing: how good all this was. He was somewhat surprised, almost perplexed, by his own feelings on the matter. He really was at ease about it all—killing off a main character, making the book their own, what had happened between him and Merritt the day before, and what he hoped would happen again. Merritt walked in front today, and he watched her as he thought. He liked the way the occasional bursts of sun through the clouds seemed to brighten her hair first, turning it a shade lighter than it looked up in the house, and he liked her purposeful stride and her quiet, unconscious humming.
They walked for a little over a mile, until Whit said they should turn back. Annie would be home soon. On the return, they walked side by side, and Whit reached out, tentative and sure at once, to take Merritt’s gloved hand in his. It surprised her, clearly, and she looked at him, a little stricken, until her face softened into a smile.
“Sorry, I’m such a weirdo.”
He laughed. “You’re not.”
“It’s just that I’ve been trying very hard tonotdo this.”
“What?”
