Once they were back in the house, they unbundled, and Whit made tea while Merritt stoked the fire back to life. He popped a mixed berry pie left over from the day before into the microwave, and the two of them sat in the living room, warming themselves and feeling, Merritt thought, simply happy. She assessed the sensation, because she’d felt it so infrequently lately. The truth was that everything in her immediate vicinity was right and good, and that rare impression was casting a warm, fuzzy glow over the rest of her life. She was glad, she realized, to be living in Whelk Harbor, glad to be spending time with her mother in a place that wasn’t Texas or her childhood home in Virginia. She was more and more confident in the book she and Whit were crafting. She believed in it. And then there was Whit. She has happy with Whit.
When the front door opened and slammed in rapid succession, it shook both of them from their quiet reverie. Annie shot through the room in a blur, and then the back door opened and shut in the same way, letting in a wave of cold air from both sides.
Whit and Merritt looked at each other, perplexed and worried, and then Evie and Édouard came in through the front door.
“I told her we’re going home on Sunday,” Evie said.
“Whit mentioned that,” Merritt said. “You’ll be missed.”
Evie turned to her and nodded with a somber smile. “I figured I’d fly back with Édouard. We’re having Christmas with my dad in the Cayman Islands this year, and I want to spend some time at home before we go. Plus, Édouard misses me desperately.”
“It’s true, I am despondent,” he said, crouching dramatically to rest his head on her shoulder. “I can hardly function.”
He said “hardly” like’ard-lee, and Merritt felt herself grinning at him like a schoolgirl. Whit cleared his throat, and she laughed.
“I gather Annie didn’t take it very well,” Merritt said, returning to the business at hand.
Eviehmm-ed and inclined her head in response.
“I’ll go talk to her,” Whit said, standing up.
Once he’d left the room, the other three adults moved to the window and watched as Whit called for Annie, who turned to him from the edge of the woods. She waited for him to approach, then fell into him, and he scooped her up and held her to his chest while she cried.
“Oh,” Merritt and Evie said in unison, and then Evie nudged her with her shoulder.
Later that night, when Merritt was home, trying to read on her window seat, she thought about what she’d seen. About the way Whit hadn’t said much, had just held his daughter and let her cry. She thought about how, several minutes later, a puffy-eyed Annie had come back inside and run to Evie, hugged her tightly, and whispered, “I’m just going to miss you so much,” and about how Whit had clearly helped her sort out her feelings just by being her dad whom she loved and trusted. Merritt felt such affection for him that she couldn’t help grinning. And there was Evie’s nudge, which was hard to interpret. Was it a proud-sister-of-a-brother thing, or something more sororal, a look-at-your-man moment? Whatever it meant, Evie had made Merritt feel good, at the end of an afternoon of feeling good.
Now her phone buzzed. Whit.
Find anything on the laptop?
Merritt sniffed out a laugh. She had feltsogood that she’d forgotten all about her mission. Within a minute, she was back on the window seat, her book shoved to the side and the computer on her lap.
She opened it, and the lock screen presented her with a picture of slightly younger Longacres. Annie looked to be about five, and the three of them were bundled up in snow gear, squeezing each other next to a leaning snowman. They looked happy, and it tugged at Merritt a little, but also made her smile.
Are you watching me?she silently asked the redheaded woman in a tasseled beanie. Helen’s smile was inscrutable—of course it was, she wasn’t going to speak from the computer screen—and Merritt thought for the hundredth time how strange it was that her days were filled with this woman’s work and now her husband. Two years ago, she would have given anything to meet her; now she almost felt like she knew her, and the thought made her both thankful and sad.
She typed in the password—A-n-n-i-e—and was met by an entirely empty desktop. She’d never seen anything like it. Helen was either extremely organized or she’d been in the CIA. Merritt started to click around. It didn’t take long to find the folder of Greenwood Castle documents, but Whit was right: all she found was a smattering of bare outlines and four files with titles like “GC 1–TDITGW Final.”
Merritt let her mouse hover over the last file for a moment before closing the folder. To open those, she felt, would be like intruding on Helenasshe wrote, like barging into her study at the top of the Longacre house. Merritt knew it didn’t make sense, but it’s how she felt, and she decided to respect that feeling, and Helen in the process.
As she clicked around the rest of the laptop, going everywhere she could think of, she found again that Whit was right. There was nothing. Nothing in the Trash folder, nothing in the folders with names like “Household” and “Miscellaneous.” Merritt evenopened a browser to find that Helen was still logged into Google, but her drive was empty. She would not check the email, but she did make a mental note to ask Whit if he had done so, despite being sure that he had.
So there was nothing. Really, truly nothing. And nothing in Helen’s desk. Nothing in her study. Whit had gone through her things, too, after she’d died—her closet, her car—but had nothing to show for it.
The only possibility, to Merritt’s mind, was that Helen Albright Longacre was a genius with a magical, encyclopedic brain. That was all there was to it.
Nothing, she texted Whit, who sent back a shrugging emoji that felt like anI told you so. She rolled her eyes.
Eventually, Merritt got out her own laptop and went through her usual ritual. First, she set a ten-minute timer. She would check her email, then do the Mini Crossword on theNew York Timeswebsite, and then, with whatever time remained, scan the news headlines, opening tabs for the articles she wanted to read later. When the timer went off, she’d write until she reached a thousand words, maybe more.
At least, that was how things usually went. Because usually the email part went quickly. Usually, there was nothing exciting waiting in her inbox.
But today, amid the newsletters and notifications of flash sales, there was a message with a subject line that made Merritt’s throat seize up.
Interview Request for The Atlantic (Graydon Lyons’s SERIOUS GAMES)
It was from Ian Hoult.
