Chapter Sixteen
Evie didn’t mess around. The next morning, a Sunday, she texted to say she had bought a plane ticket and would be landing
in Boston Monday at noon. He felt the pinch in his chest that he often experienced when he got something he more or less wanted
and then immediately second-guessed both the wanting and the thing itself.
He had been cheered by the thought of Evie in the house for however long (a week? two weeks? a month?), playing board games
with Annie, helping with carpool, and noticing whatever ghastly household things he’d let go before setting them to rights
again in her capable, attentive way. Why, then, did he feel something that wasn’t quite dread but certainly wasn’t excitement,
either?
Sitting on the freshly made guest-room bed, he ignored that thought in order to text Merritt.
Hey Merritt. My sister is flying in tomorrow as a last-minute thing, and I don’t think we’ll make it back from the airport
until time to pick Annie up. Then I have my writing group Tuesday. See you Wednesday?
He headed down to the refrigerator, which he planned to clean out to avoid the silent shaming Evie was destined to give him
when she discovered four separate weeks-old takeout containers hiding in the back.
No worries, Merritt texted as he stood there, head in the fridge like Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire.
That was it. No worries.
No “See you then,” no “Oh, that’s nice.”
For the first time, he felt defensive. He had tried to kiss her, yes. That was stupid. Misguided. Deranged even. But it had felt right in the moment, and they had had a good time when he arrived, and he had also valiantly saved her from Ian Hoult—oh. Ian Hoult.
Whit retraced what had happened back there with Ian Hoult and Merritt. First, Ian’s grandstanding about his class and autofiction
and his next Atlantic piece, and Merritt on the back porch, offering him a confession. Vouchsafing a true and painful thing to him. We were in love. And then he’d gone and tried to kiss her, and they hadn’t spoken again about what she’d revealed to him.
His mind flinched at the thought and changed gears as he purposefully turned to the fact that she was apparently the inspiration
for a popular novelist’s juicy new book. He tried to imagine how he would feel if Helen had put him in one of her novels,
or how Helen would feel if he’d done the same to her. Sharing with the world even the most glowing portrayal of someone he
knew felt taboo, yet here was Graydon Lyons dropping Merritt into some sort of vengeful takedown dressed up as high art.
The face Merritt had made, explaining things to him on that cold step, had been one of deepest shame and regret. Why hadn’t
he worked harder to prove that he wasn’t the kind of person around whom she needed to feel those things . . . instead of trying to kiss her? He was someone who had spent much of his early life being embarrassed by most parts of himself. These days it wasn’t shame
that disgusted him but the lack of it in the Lyonses and Hoults of the world. Why hadn’t he said that out there on Willa’s
porch? Maybe she would be justified in thinking he was no better than them.
Should he text her again?
No, he would wait until Wednesday, when he would be radically normal in her presence, not at all like a crush-stricken teen, and then he’d bring it up only if the opportunity presented itself with undeniable clarity.
He would say something to let her know how things stood for him, and how he saw her no differently from before, and how really, to love someone was the brave thing to do—
The phone buzzed again, and thank God.
It was Merritt.
Actually, I’m taking my mom to a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday. Thursday okay?
Fine then. Radical normalness could wait until Thursday.
Whit did what he always did, which was to arrive at the airport far earlier than any sane person would think necessary. He
felt this was excusable when he was the departing traveler, but he wasn’t. He was here to pick up his sister, and he now had
an hour and a half to kill, so he found himself doing the other thing he normally did in situations like this one: driving
around, today in the Seaport District, looking for a bookstore that also sold coffee. He settled on a place that was more
industrial than he preferred, with lots of tall glass windows and dark steel beams, but at least the music was ambient and
soothing, and the Americano he now sipped as he walked the aisles was hot and strong.
Whit’s most prosaic I-am-a-writer feature was his ability to spend hours and hours at a bookstore and never be bored. In a
normal year, he was a regular at Goodenough back in Whelk Harbor. He’d become fast friends with Moishe, the nice older gentleman
who worked there, while mostly ignoring the nosy questions Diana asked whenever she spotted him. But he hadn’t left the house
much at all lately, and this was his first trip out of Whelk Harbor in some time. Now here he was, alone, surrounded by stories
and possibility. This, he thought to himself, is nice.
The coffee bar was at the rear of the shop.
Holding his cup and The Remains of the Day, Whit slowly made his way through the fiction section toward the front, where the new releases were.
The Ishiguro book was an old favorite, and he’d been wanting to reread it, but his copy had gone missing. When he reached
the mystery subsection, he hesitated for a long beat, then shrugged and made the turn into the little enclave. His eyes scanned the shelves
for the Ls, and there it was: his life’s work.
There were several copies of The Hour of Matins, his first book, and then a smattering of the later works, with more copies of his last release, The One Keeping Vigil, already in paperback.
His agent would want him to alert the booksellers of his presence so he could sign the merchandise,
then post about it online—“If you’re in the Seaport District, there are signed copies at . . .” But Whit was feeling very
satisfied in his silent aloneness today, and so he merely dragged a finger across the spines and then made his way to the
children’s section, hardly thinking about what he was doing.
There was an entire Greenwood Castle shelf, with the four extant novels and the companion texts, plus stuffed animals, journals,
sticker sets, pins like the one Merritt wore on her Foothills School lanyard—the whole kit and caboodle. Atop the shelf was
a cardboard cutout with enlarged illustrations of the books’ three main characters. Whit could have found this depressing:
the sharp contrast in the degree of fanfare for his books and his late wife’s. Instead, he felt a warm sense of pride. How
many people could say they’d made something like this before they died? And how many others could say they knew someone like
that?
The glow quickly faded, however, when his eyes wandered over to another shelf in annoyingly close proximity to the Albright
Longacre section. There a handwritten chalkboard sign read: series to help you survive the wait for greenwood castle 5.
Whit gripped his Ishiguro and sighed. Then he looked back at the veritable altar dedicated to his wife and resumed his trudge toward new releases. There was a Claire Keegan book he’d been meaning to buy and a new Ann Patchett, and, oh God, there it was. The new Graydon
Lyons, in between a Min Jin Lee and an Emily St. John Mandel. Whit caught himself looking over his shoulders before picking
up a copy, then shaking his head at himself. No one would catch him in the act here.
He held the book in his hands, feeling a bit like someone with an issue of Hustler out in public. It did feel indecent to be holding it now that he knew it was definitely about Merritt. It felt like a betrayal,
too, but then something in Whit—perhaps the devil on his other shoulder—told him that was silly. Books were books. Anyone
could read anything. To behave otherwise was to get dangerously close to aligning with the book-banning idiots of the world,
and anyway, Merritt hadn’t said he couldn’t read it, had she? And who was he to be told anything anyway?
Whit lowered his stack of books to his waist and shook his head again. He was, of course, full of shit. He wanted to read
it, and his conscience could be confronted later. Right now, he needed to be heading in the direction of the airport. (Evie’s
flight would land in a mere forty-five minutes!) He hefted his books—Ishiguro, Keegan, Patchett, Lyons—and headed to the register.
Evie was nowhere to be seen on his first lap around the pickup lane; nor could she be spotted on his second lap, or the fourth,
but by the fifth time around she was standing there smiling, with her light brown hair in a ponytail poking out the back of
a Yankees cap, and the rest of her covered by sunglasses, a fawn-colored tweed trench coat, white sneakers, and jeans.
Evie waved enthusiastically as he pulled to a stop, and she gave him an enormous hug when he reached her to help with her
two bags.
“Hi, Bubba,” she said.
“Hi, Evelyn.”
She gave him a light shove because she, like Willa, hated her full name.
“How was your flight?” he asked as they loaded her luggage into the back of the Range Rover.
“Fine. How was your drive? Did you get here at 6 a.m.?”
“Ha-ha,” he said, closing the trunk and moving to the driver’s seat. Once they were both seated and buckled in, he looked
at Evie. “Thanks for coming.”
She beamed at him. “Seriously. I’m so happy to. And excited to get out of the city for a bit.”
Whit pulled the car away from the curb. “Aren’t you sad about leaving édouard?”
Evie laughed.
“I’ll survive. He’s the one you should worry about. He’s hopelessly in love with me. And he’ll have no one to show his fancy
little outfits to with me gone.”
She had stowed her trench coat in the backseat and he could see that she was wearing a designer sweatshirt underneath. Evie