Chapter Six #2
There were a dozen other reasons he’d asked Merritt for help, beyond the MFA.
Some were circumstantial—she lived close by, and she liked books.
Some of his reasons were more pointed, like seeing the pin on her lanyard, the kestrel and the spoon, a symbol from the second book that fans were constantly having tattooed on themselves.
(Did Merritt have a tattoo?) But the real reason he’d asked her could not really be articulated.
On those singing competition shows he often found himself watching on YouTube (did he have a reality TV addiction?) they would call it the X factor.
Whatever it was, Merritt seemed to have it.
He felt that he could trust her, and that she would care about the work.
But one could not say such things out loud.
“And I saw your pin,” he said instead, “that day at the library. The kestrel one.”
“The Sign of the Scout?”
Oh, yeah. That’s what it was called.
“Yes.”
“You did know it was called that, right?”
She was testing him, and for some reason, it amused him. “Are you accusing me of not knowing my wife’s books?”
Merritt waited for a long moment before speaking. “No,” she said, still thinking. “No, I don’t think so. I think you’ve read
them. I’m sure you’re familiar with them, but I’m not sure you . . . well, I’m not sure you actually like them.”
Whit couldn’t help it. His half-smirk grew into a full grin. He laughed, took a sip of his beer, and then held it up, as if
to tap it against her wineglass.
“That is really funny,” he said, and Merritt looked confused.
“What?”
“You’re the only person who’s ever said that to me.”
“Okay?”
“And you’re absolutely right.”
Merritt’s jaw dropped for the second time that afternoon. “You’re joking.”
He held up his hands. “I am not joking. Or, okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, maybe. I don’t not enjoy them. They are excellent books, and I am fully aware of their virtues, without any caveats. They’re just . . . not
for me.”
Merritt shook her head, wide-eyed and ready to speak, and Whit held a hand out over the bread to slow her.
“But,” he said, “before you decide I’m a horrible person, I should tell you . . . Helen truly, genuinely hated everything
I ever wrote.”
Merritt, who was raising her wine to drink, set the glass down once more.
“What? What is wrong with you people?”
Whit grinned again. “I know. Trust me, I know. I should be clear that she never said she hated it. She wouldn’t have done
that.”
A memory of her face after reading The Vow of Obedience, the last book he published before she got sick, washed over him, and he paused for a moment to remember it. They were in
the living room; it was afternoon. She set the book down beside her and grinned at him proudly. She could be very gentle to
him.
“But there was just something about the way she talked about it, I knew. I knew my work wasn’t just not for her, but she actively disliked it. And we never spoke of it, not in those terms. We would say, though, on occasion, that
we were each other’s biggest fans when it came to our success, and nowhere near each other’s biggest fans when it came to
reading our actual books.”
Whit watched Merritt think for a moment as she ate her bread in a protracted, three-chews-a-minute way, and then she asked
exactly what he expected her to ask.
“So she knew that about how you felt, but she still asked you to finish the series?”
Whit shook his head, mouth open in bemused agreement. “I know.”
“And you asked me because of my pin.”
“And you know the books.”
She narrowed her brown eyes at him, and a single wrinkle appeared at the center of her brow. “Why do you say that?”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “You put on a nice show the other day at the bookstore, but I could tell you were ready to explode
from all the pent-up knowledge in your brain. I have a feeling you know every book in the series, frontwards and backwards,
and every novella, and I would not be surprised if you had written some fan fiction here and there.”
She let out a scoffing noise and looked away, surveying the wall of orchids. Not, Whit noted, a denial.
“But mostly,” Whit lied, “because of your MFA.”
Merritt exhaled and moved her head around like a limited-edition Major League Baseball bobblehead. “Well.”
“What?” Whit asked.
She wavered a moment longer before explaining, “Technically, I did half of an MFA.”
They paused, and Whit tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. “Half?” he said at last.
“Half.” Then, after another, shorter pause: “Bad breakup.”
Whit forced himself to nod, as if unfazed, though he regretted pushing her into revealing this information.
“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling like that was insufficient, and she nodded, too.
“It happens. Does that change your opinion of me?”
“No,” Whit said, with what felt like too much speed. Then, as if more talking would somehow make things better, he added,
“You got in, didn’t you?”
“And I got out.”
Whit laughed. “Right, well . . . MFAs aren’t . . . they’re not the only way to . . . I don’t think it matters one way or another. I know you can write.”
Mercifully, the waitress returned with their food—a Romaine salad with goat cheese, almonds, and strawberries to split, roast
chicken for him, and a brie and apple panini for her—and then Whit waited.
“And,” he said finally, after they’d each had a few silent bites, “on top of all that, there’s just . . .”
He stopped himself. He had explicitly decided not to say this, and now he was saying it. Could not, it turned out, stop saying things.
“There’s just something about you,” he said, moving his fork in the air in an abstract circle.
Merritt paused, her panini floating above her plate. She chewed her last bite, slowly again, as she thought. Then she spoke.
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
Merritt shrugged, then waved her panini in one hand before holding it up as he had earlier with the beer. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“You’ll do it?”
“Yes, Whit,” she said, almost irritably, and the way she said his name sent a bubble through his lungs that emerged in a laugh.
“And you know I’m going to pay you, right?”
“Oh,” she said, through a mouthful of panini, her face almost incredulous. “Obviously. I want a contract, an advance, a royalties
agreement, the whole shebang.”
“Of course,” Whit said, looking down to cut his chicken. “We’ll get it all down on paper.”
When he looked up again, Merritt was looking around the space, smiling to herself, and Whit found that he couldn’t help doing
the same.