“No, jackass. At love.”
25
Katie
Monday was, in fact, not better. By noon, I was sitting on the terrace with my forehead smooshed against my space bar. I was just about to burst into tears when, out of the corner of my eye, Meredith put her hand on the chair at the head of the table. As usual, she was wearing linen trousers and a matching shift shirt.
“How’s it going?” she said.
I raised my face off my keyboard. “Good. Great? Fine!”
Meredith frowned. “Is it Tyler? Is he not able to do the work? I had high hopes for him, but if he’s still floundering, perhaps I could talk to Selma. The deadline, though, is very tight.”
I straightened myself again. “Oh, no. It’s not that. It’s... God, it’s a little weird telling you this. You’re, like, my boss.”
“You can tell me anything, Katie. Especially if it’s interesting.”
I laughed, rubbing the feathery end of my pen against the inside of my wrist as Meredith sat down across from me. “I feel like, since I got here, I can’t really get going with my writing. Everything has sort of lost its sparkle. Before, when I was in the city, the book was writing itself. The characters were telling me what they wanted to do. Words flew onto the page. Dialogue would come out of my fingertips before it even hit my brain. I’d be surprised by what I’d written, by what Tyler had written, but somehow, it was always right. And then...”
Pinot leaped from Meredith’s lap to the table, his tail swishingagainst a vase of white roses before he stopped in front of me. I nodded, and he pitter-pattered over my keyboard and into my arms.
“Are you not liking the house?” Meredith said. “Are you not comfortable? Do you need something? A spin bike, maybe? Tennis lessons?”
I shook my head, running my fingers through Pinot’s soft coat. He smelled like rosemary. “It’s not that at all. The house is fantastic. I’m so happy here. But I think I should probably get back to the city. I don’t know how long the repairs in my building are going to take—they’re saying September now—and I can definitely find another place to stay. Tyler and I were in the flow before, and I really love this job. I want to write something wonderful. And it’s just not happening out here. I want it to, but it’s not.”
Meredith considered this for a moment. “Why doesn’t Tyler come here, then? Clearly, he’s the missing piece.”
“Oh, I mean... that’s too much. Besides, Tyler and I aren’t friends or anything, not really.” I pushed the past few weeks out of my mind: my trembling fingertips on his story-drenched skin, the stammered sentence he never finished before I was whisked away on Meredith’s whim. “Not outside of work.”
“Nonsense,” she said, rising to her feet. Pinot flew into her arms. “He can stay in the cottage. I’ll make it up for him now.”
“Meredith, really. We don’t want to impose. I’m sure he wants to be in the city, anyway. I’ll just—”
“Katie, darling. It’s July. Nobody wants to be in the city. We’ll send the car.”
“You don’t know Tyler. He’s—”
“Katie,” she said again. She was already a quarter-way to the guesthouse. “If nothing else, do it for the story.”
Forced Proximity
When Henry Cooper returned to Southampton with a truck full of lumber, he was greeted with an eviction notice. He had known this was coming; he was months behind on rent. That was why he’d agreed to work for Willa’s father in the first place. With nowhere else to go, he packed a bag and settled into a half-finished room at the Inn. It was only temporary. Nobody needed to know. Imagine Henry’s surprise when, later that night, he discovered Willa Pearson living just two doors down.
26
Tyler
I arrived in Southampton around eight thirty that evening, my palms sweaty and my legs restless as Flying Point Road turned into Wickapogue Road, Fowler Street, and, finally, that strange and unnamed avenue into Meredith Bradford’s hidden universe. Katie sat on the bottom step of the sunset-smeared stoop in a cropped sweatshirt and a pair of leggings, twisting a wave of hair around her fingers. She rose to her feet as I hopped out of the car.
“What’s in the box, weirdo?”
I glared at her as Maurice, before I could stop him, disappeared with my shit. I hadn’t brought much. When Selma had called to tell me I’d been summoned, she said it’d only be for a few days. “They’re walkie-talkies.”
Katie grabbed the package and ran her fingers over the side panel. “And what, exactly, are we going to do with said walkie-talkies?”
“We’re going to use them, Katherine. When the murders happen.”
She tsked, then promptly tore open the cardboard and fished out two bubble-wrapped bricks, tiny antennas poking out. “Tyler! They’re pink!”
