Chapter Nineteen
They were working quickly now, perfecting their arcane, slightly persnickety system of outlining and revising and writing
and rewriting. Evie was an enormous help, picking up Annie from school or the nanny share most days and often taking her off
on adventures—to the library, the seaside, a whale museum. Whit and Merritt were able to spend more and more time writing
each day. They worked from lunchtime on, sometimes writing through dinner or, if Merritt was wanted back at the bookstore,
until the absolute last minute before she could leave and expect to make it to work on time. There were endless pots of tea
and several more chilly walks in the woods. The fire was always going, and Merritt seemed to be getting comfortable—with Whit,
yes, but also with Evie and Annie, with taking a blanket from the antique wooden crate at the end of the couch or finding
a snack to munch on in the kitchen. Never, never did they bring up the kiss that wasn’t, and Whit was glad of it.
The first weeks of November passed, and as the days grew colder and a little gloomier, the forest completed its transition
into an autumn coat. One day during the week leading up to Thanksgiving, before Whit and Merritt began work in earnest, she
made an announcement over her bowl of Italian wedding soup.
“I finished the book last night.”
Whit’s immediate reaction was one of bewilderment and surprise.
“What? Without me?”
He felt none of the relief he expected himself to feel at this moment, and he was more than a little hurt.
Merritt covered her lips with one hand, laughing through a mouthful of food.
“Sorry, I finished your book last night. The Hour of Matins.”
“Oh!” Whit said, understanding cracking over his mind like an egg. Then came the realization of what this announcement implied.
“Oh. Should I be concerned it took you a full month?”
Merritt smiled gently and shook her head. “I should be embarrassed. I’m just so tired when I finally get a moment to relax.”
“I blame the bookstore. It can’t be this that’s exhausting you.”
He spread his hands out, including the room around them in his statement, and Merritt sniffed out a laugh.
“No.” She paused, chewing on a thought and a piece of the sourdough she’d been dipping in her soup. Eventually she explained,
her voice more tentative than usual.
“I’ve been making myself write a little, after work. For me.”
Whit’s grin was entirely natural. “That’s great! Your old manuscript? Or something else?”
“A little bit of both. Fiddling with the old stuff and trying some new things, too.”
“That’s excellent,” Whit said, leaning against the kitchen counter. He downed his cup of tea then spoke again. “But wait,
you’re writing more after the work we do here?”
She shrugged. “Yeah.”
“I can’t fathom it,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve been trying to start the next Sister Marguerite book, but writing alone
isn’t like writing with you. It’s like the tank is empty at the end of the day. I keep expecting my agent to call any moment
and ask when the new manuscript will be finished, and then I try not to be hopelessly offended when she doesn’t.”
Merritt gave him a gracious smile, then wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Well, I’ll read it whenever it comes out. Once I finish, what is it, A Liturgy for Mourning?”
Whit flinched, keeping one eye closed for protection. “Yes.”
“Oh, stop,” Merritt said, standing up. “I really enjoyed The Hour of Matins. Sister Marguerite is great, and I love the whole ‘How would Father Brown really feel about all these murders in his parish?’ thing. Surely that man should be having more crises of faith.”
Whit shrugged. “That is sort of the driving question . . . hey, wait.”
Merritt hunched her shoulders slightly, looking like she might know what he was about to say next.
“How much is left to write in your manuscript?”
She turned to walk toward the living room and spoke with her back to him. “I don’t know, not much. Just the ending, really.”
“Nearly finished!”
She nodded, still not looking. “I’m struggling with it a bit, but I’ll figure it out.”
“You know what could help . . . are you trying to run away right now?”
She finally turned back. “Yes, Whit. I’m not enjoying talking about this.”
“We were just talking about my book.”
Merritt crossed her arms. “Which has been published. After it was gone over a dozen times by your editor and agent and whoever
else. It’s not the same thing.”
She was walking now, trying to retreat to her chair.
“Merritt,” he said more loudly.
“What?”
She turned back. Whit did not have a plan for what to say next. He looked around the room. On the coffee table were the remnants
of a game of war between Evie and Annie.
“I’ll play you for it.”
“For what?”
“For your book. If you win, the manuscript can remain hidden from the world indefinitely. And if I win, I get to read it.”
Merritt deliberated, then smiled. “Fine,” she said, with a scheming look on her face, “but I get to pick the game.”
Now Whit considered. “Fine. What are we playing?”
“Nertz,” she said, scooping up the cards and walking back to the kitchen. “Do you have another deck of cards?”
“What’s Nertz?” he asked once they had procured a second deck and were seated again at the kitchen table.
His ignorance visibly thrilled Merritt. With her shoulders pushed back as she shuffled, almost in shimmying territory, she
was suddenly looking very superior.
“Oh, it’s not hard.”
“I feel like you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying. The rules are straightforward. I’m just very good.”
She began to explain the game. Each person got thirteen cards—their Nertz pile—and laid out four other cards next to it, face
up and side by side.
“Then, when we say ‘Go,’ you flip the top card on your Nertz pile—”
Whit listened, nodding along as she explained that each player essentially played solitaire on their four cards, except for
their aces, which they placed in the middle, where they were free game for anyone to play cards of the same suit in numerical
order. All this time, Whit nodded along, squinting as if overwhelmed by her quick explanation of the rules.
“Ready?” she asked, barely able to contain her glee at the onslaught that was about to occur.
“I guess.”
Then, with no preamble, she said, “Go!” and they were off.
Whit watched her for a moment as she flipped cards, three at a time, from the deck in her hands and moved with an easy grace to place a black ten on a red jack, a red three on a black four. Then the ace of clubs appeared, and she slid it fluidly to the middle.
“Aren’t you going to go?” she asked, not looking up.
“Yep,” he said, and then he was off, too.
He did not move with the same elegance, but he did have the speed. A red queen on a black king, a whole run (jack, ten, nine,
eight) over to that pile. The ace of hearts, and the two of hearts, and the three, then Merritt’s ace of clubs covered in
a flash.
“What—” she started, but Whit played on steadily and in silence.
The truth was that, from the moment she’d mentioned the “Nertz pile,” he’d known what was what. He’d grown up playing a similar
game, with a few tweaks to the rules. Some people called it Dutch Blitz. The Longacres called it Hell, and they were vicious.
“Hell!” Whit shouted at last, slamming the final card from his pile of thirteen onto a stack of spades in the middle. “I mean,
Nertz.”
Merritt made a noise like a cut-off gasp, then gave him a fiery look.
“You little shit.”
He grinned back at her. “I know. I’m sorry.”
But he was not sorry.
“You can email me the manuscript whenever. And I’m sure it will be wonderful.”
Merritt stewed in the reality of Whit’s deception for a moment before she spoke.
“Okay, whatever. But you should know—”
He waved her words away with a hand.
“Don’t,” he said. “Just receive the compliment. I mean it. I’m really looking forward to reading it.”
“Fine. I’ll email it to you today. But if it’s really bad, I want you to simply send me a text message firing me and asking never to see me again, because I won’t be able to show my face here after that.”
“It won’t be really bad!”
She gave him a stern just-you-wait-and-see look, and Whit laughed again. He was laughing a lot these days.
“And what if it’s only a little bit bad?” he joked.
She shrugged. “Then your feedback would be . . . helpful. I suppose.”
“And if it’s really good?”
Merritt had clearly had enough. She swatted the air, moving to stand up. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Hey, wait.”
She looked at him as though he might be about to deliver some sort of meaningful statement.
“Yes?”
He nodded at the cards. “Don’t you want to play again?”
She rolled her eyes, then relaxed. “Actually, I do.”
They played four more games, but after the first, they forgot to keep score.
In fact, it took her days to hold up her end of the deal. She typed the message, attached the incomplete doc, the whole thing,
but the email sat unsent for at least seventy-two hours.
This was stupid, of course. She’d spent the first year of her MFA building up the calloused skin necessary to endure criticism, especially the brutal, unfiltered kind that came from those students most willing to demolish their peers to get a leg up themselves.
Still, Whit was Whit. This was risky, like jeopardizing her standing in his eyes; she was inviting him to judge her.
What if giving him access to her work—the book of her heart—what if that somehow proved, once and for all, that she wasn’t cut out to be an author in her own right?
It took another hike, another morning spent staring at the same misty pond—its trees now leafless and black against the pinkish
dawn light—before she was ready. I am going to be a writer, she reminded herself, then pulled out her phone and released the email from the confines of her drafts folder.
Immediate regret. That was her first emotion. Then, after taking two deep breaths and stretching her arms to their fullest