Chapter 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 swishing against 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.”