Chapter Twelve
After their walk, Merritt and Whit returned to writing, once again falling into a groove they both felt was especially productive.
For Merritt, it was thrilling, a kind of pleasant fugue state in which the words fell onto the page like perfectly placed
darts on a dartboard. She was making notes about her fairy tale theory, building her ideas out into a plausible arc that could
fit within the outline they’d already crafted before sharing them with Whit. She felt like a detective building a case until
she was finally ready to speak.
“I think there’s something here.”
They were at the kitchen table now, with their teas, and Whit looked up from his.
“There are lots and lots of fan theories about Christabel and the story of Sleeping Beauty.”
“I thought elves didn’t sleep?”
“Correct,” Merritt said, with a faux-impressed nod. “But she’s half-human, so I suppose it’s possible. Anyway, there are all
these little things that could be clues strewn throughout the books. Her elf father’s estate is called Briar House. The family
crest has a rose on it. We know she’s cursed at the very end of book 4, and some magic force is making her sluggish, and there’s
a throwaway moment at the beginning of that book where she pricks her finger—”
“I don’t think so.”
Whit’s voice was so clipped, so direct, that she felt called up short.
“You don’t think what?”
Whit’s face was solemn and self-assured.
“I don’t think she would purposefully be doing a Sleeping Beauty thing.”
“What do you mean?” Merritt said, a little incredulous at this sudden snag in what had felt like a surefire discovery. She
decided to defend herself. “It’s all there: Christabel can finally fall asleep somewhere around the midpoint of our book,
which means Ursula and Rupert need to awaken her.”
Whit’s face was unmoved. She went on.
“Helen’s done this before, with the Robin Hood imagery in book 2, and the arrow in the stone instead of a sword in the stone
in book 1. It’s exactly the kind of thing people look for.”
Merritt was right about this, she was sure, and yet here was Whit smiling with a sudden calm confidence.
He adjusted how he was sitting, pressed his hands together as if in prayer, then rubbed both index fingers across his mouth.
He was really giving his next words a good once-over before uttering them aloud.
Then he looked at Merritt, almost apologetic.
“It might be something people think Helen the author would do, but it’s decidedly not something Helen the person would do.”
Oh.
“She hated those old princess-y fairy tales. She would let Annie watch the movies, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella, but she would explain the whole time what was wrong with them, how those boys shouldn’t have kissed sleeping girls without
their permission, and how Cinderella really should’ve gotten to know Prince Charming a little better first.”
Though he was looking at the window, he was really looking at the memory, his lips still turned up at their corners.
“I agreed, but we would get in little arguments about it, because Annie was four or five, and couldn’t Helen just let her
enjoy the movie, blah blah.”
He paused and thought and smiled again. Merritt nodded, ignoring a feeling akin to dread that had lodged in her stomach.
“Her whole thing was, why even give the bad stuff airtime when there were so many better stories for girls out there?”
Now Whit looked at Merritt like he was grateful for the memory.
“So,” he continued, “she might have been doing something like that unconsciously, but—” He laughed. “She would hate to be accused of that, and I can pretty much guarantee it wouldn’t be a major plot point in this book.”
“I’m sorry,” Merritt said immediately, feeling suddenly stupid. “I wasn’t trying to accuse her of anything, I just—”
Whit waved his hands quickly, kindly. “Of course you weren’t! You were following a lead. It’s all we have, leads. We have
to use them where we can.”
Merritt nodded, but inside, something felt wrong. Like a sweater twisted into a knot by the washing machine. She knew she
should be compassionate toward this man who sat before her, remembering his wife with warmth and certainty. And of course
Whit knew Helen better than she ever could. But what he’d said about Helen the writer and Helen the person . . . weren’t they
concerning themselves explicitly with Helen the writer? Wasn’t that why Merritt was here? Because she was the expert when it came to Helen’s work?
And she had worked on this idea, had been working on it for a long time, even before taking this job to help this man who
didn’t know which way was up when it came to the Greenwood Castle books. But now Whit had summarily dismissed her idea—her
good idea, she knew it was good—and he’d wrapped it in a bow of gentleness and understanding that made her feel like there was
nothing she could do about it.
She wanted to speak up for herself and her instincts, to talk about how events in fiction aren’t necessarily always in keeping with one’s moral compulsions—didn’t he, the mystery novelist, know this?
—and she wanted to suggest that maybe Helen was going to do something subversive with this allusion, that they could
be subversive, too. She sat there with the words forming between her teeth, and then Whit’s phone buzzed.
“Crap,” he said after reading a message. “That’s the nanny from the nanny share. She’s sick in bed.”
Something about this information seemed to weary Whit, right before her eyes, and she remembered that he was a tired, grieving
father who no longer had a wife with whom he could share the load. This was a bitter pill that seemed to undermine her justifiable
defensiveness, and for the second time in as many minutes she felt called up short.
“I need to pick up Annie from school in a bit.”
Whit blinked it slow motion. He was clearly exhausted.
She swallowed the pill and felt its bitterness gradually fade.
“Can I drop you off somewhere on the way?” he asked. “Or if you prefer to call Diana—”
“God, please no,” Merritt interrupted, drawing a laugh from Whit. “I mean yes. You can drop me off.”
Whit scratched the back of his head, thinking and feeling but keeping it to himself. Then he nodded to her, as if he’d built
the resolution needed to do the next thing, small as it was, and pick up his daughter from school.
“Splendid,” he said. “Let’s get going.”
In the garage, she saw a silver Audi Q4 Sportback next to a surprisingly tall, faded blue jeep with a hard-shell top that
could be removed in warm weather. Whit opened the garage and started walking toward the Range Rover parked behind them in
the driveway. He paused when Merritt didn’t follow him right away.
“What?”
Was she gawking?
“Nothing,” she said. “You just didn’t strike me as a three-cars-one-of-which-is-for-joyriding kind of person.”
He smiled.
“I used to just drive the jeep, if you can believe it. I’ve had it for years, and I love it, but then . . .” He paused again,
almost certainly avoiding saying something akin to we got rich. “The Audi was Helen’s idea. It’s electric and just more sensible, especially with all the cold weather we get here. Less—”
“College frat boy?” she said before she could stop herself. It felt good, after Sleeping Beauty, to get a little dig in.
“Wow,” Whit said, making a look of mock disappointment, as if she’d crossed a line.
“Too far?”
He shook his head slowly. “Just, wow.”
Then they both laughed. The bitterness was almost undetectable now.
“But I’ve been driving her old car. The Range Rover. I get the feeling Annie likes it.”
Minutes later, Merritt could see why. They were warm in the spacious SUV with its legroom and couchlike comfort, driving back
to town on a side road she hadn’t known about. She wondered if the lemon and lavender scent was from a car wash, or an air
freshener, or if it was the last lingering vestige of the woman who’d once driven this car.
“Eleanor Beardsley,” Merritt muttered to herself.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, just talking to myself.”
“Are you guessing the NPR correspondent—”
“Before they say their names, yes.”
“Oh. Neat.”
She gave his shoulder a shove. He smiled to himself, and they drove on, quiet for a moment.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the way his thumb rubbed the steering wheel.
She hated that the word caress came to mind, but it did, and part of her wondered whether his reasons for driving this car went beyond his daughter’s preferences.
Whit’s phone rang, and he ignored it, but not before the words evie longacre—mobile flashed across the car’s head unit.
“Your mom?”
“My sister.”
“Ah.”
A sister. She knew he had a brother-in-law but hadn’t worked out whether that man was Helen’s brother or his sister’s husband.
Whit had seemed like an island to her, but of course he had a family before Annie and Helen.
“Are you close?”
He nodded. “Yeah. But she calls a lot more since Helen died. She worries.”
Merritt shrugged and nodded, just barely managing to stop herself from saying that her mother had done that when she and Graydon
broke up. It was not the same thing.
“Is it just the two of you?”
“My parents, but they’re divorced. And then Evie lives in New York with her husband, édouard Marchand. He’s French Canadian,
a former pro hockey player turned lawyer. We have him to thank for our contract. Extremely fashionable and a bit of a jock.
I love him.”
Merritt laughed.
“What about you?”
She shrugged. “Just me and my mom now.”
Whit nodded. “Helen loved your mom. I mean, I love your mom, too, but Helen really loved her. And Annie does, too.”
“That’s sweet,” Merritt said and, feeling immediately that the words sounded dismissive, added, “She had nice things to say about you and Helen and Annie, too.”
Her eyes widened as she realized what she’d just revealed, and though she refused to even glance Whit’s way, she was sure
he had looked at her then. You’ve been talking about me, his energy seemed to say.