Chapter Twenty-Four
After that, their work had stalled out for the day. The next thing to do was write the death scene, and Whit could tell that
Merritt was still waiting for some sign from Helen that this would be okay.
Instead, they took a walk along the trails behind the house, bundled up and mostly in companionable silence. Whit was sure
that he and Merritt were both thinking about the same thing: how good all this was. He was somewhat surprised, almost perplexed,
by his own feelings on the matter. He really was at ease about it all—killing off a main character, making the book their
own, what had happened between him and Merritt the day before, and what he hoped would happen again. Merritt walked in front
today, and he watched her as he thought. He liked the way the occasional bursts of sun through the clouds seemed to brighten
her hair first, turning it a shade lighter than it looked up in the house, and he liked her purposeful stride and her quiet,
unconscious humming.
They walked for a little over a mile, until Whit said they should turn back. Annie would be home soon. On the return, they
walked side by side, and Whit reached out, tentative and sure at once, to take Merritt’s gloved hand in his. It surprised
her, clearly, and she looked at him, a little stricken, until her face softened into a smile.
“Sorry, I’m such a weirdo.”
He laughed. “You’re not.”
“It’s just that I’ve been trying very hard to not do this.”
“What?”
“Like you,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze. “Have any feelings for you whatsoever.”
“Oh, I’ve made it very hard, have I?”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t release his hand.
“Don’t get cocky.” She paused. “But oddly enough, yes.”
“You must have a thing for borderline depressed dads who need therapy and a good shave.”
“Everyone needs therapy,” Merritt said casually. “As for the rest, maybe I do. The heart wants, et cetera.”
Whit stopped, pulling Merritt’s hand until she did the same.
“What?” she said.
“I don’t want you to think . . .”
He could see the worry descend on her face, and he jumped to find the right words.
“It’s not like you’ve been languishing in your feelings for me all alone.”
“I object to ‘languishing,’ but go on.”
She waited, clearly unsure where he was going.
“I . . .” He puffed up his cheeks and let out a long breath. “It’s complicated, being a . . . widower. I hate that word. Anyway,
I’m not very self-aware when it comes to my own feelings. I’m trying to be, but it’s still hard, even without all the grief
and guilt. Lately, though, when I do have any nameable feelings, it’s like they’re plants in a terrarium, and I know they’re there, but I have to break through
to get to them.”
He looked down and stepped on a dead leaf.
“Not always, but often, and so anything I’ve felt for you—and I’ve felt a lot for you, from the beginning, from the moment
you got that book stuck in the book drop—but I had to let myself get to it first, if that makes sense. And I don’t want to always talk about Helen, really, I’m sorry about that, but I think
that’s just going to be part of this. Part of me, and—”
Merritt brought her other hand forward so that his hand was wrapped in both of hers.
“Whit,” she said, interrupting him, “you know how you said I’m not allowed to be surprised when people say my writing is good?”
She said this directly without a single quiver of self-doubt.
“Yes?”
“Right. Well, you are not allowed to apologize for grieving. The guilt is another story—it’s natural, I know that from when
my dad died, even if it’s not logical or fair to yourself—but you can’t change the grief, and you can’t feel bad about it.
That, or talking about Helen. Okay?”
Whit started to speak, then stopped himself, waiting, letting himself feel Merritt’s words. And the feeling came. In the early
months after Helen’s death, he had tried to push through, for Annie, and he had lived more or less on autopilot, going through
each day without being really conscious of any decision he made. The soft parts of himself were buried far within, unreachable
except sometimes, when something unexpected would breach all his protective layers: discovering one of Helen’s earrings in
the couch cushions, or a song they’d both liked coming on the radio. Or once—he remembered this specifically—he’d been sitting
in the optometrist’s chair, and the technician, who was adjusting the refractor against Whit’s eyes, barely grazed his cheekbones
with his fingertips at the very same moment he asked, “So how have you been?” and Whit had felt a shudder roll through him,
and his eyes had filled with tears. He’d apologized, explaining that his wife had just died.
He felt much the same now as Merritt gave those soft parts permission to be, and as she told him in so many words that feeling
these things for her did not lessen his love for Helen. And he did not cry, and he did not apologize, but he wrapped his other
hand around hers for the second time that day.
“Okay,” he said softly. “Thank you.”
Merritt nodded.
“And,” she said, “just a point of clarification: I did not get the book stuck in the book drop. I got the book unstuck, thank you very much.”
Whit smiled.
“Of course. I must have forgotten.”
“Well, don’t do it again,” she said, pulling her hands free as she continued to walk. “I’m the hero of that story.”
“Yes,” Whit said, “you are.”
Once they were back in the house, they unbundled, and Whit made tea while Merritt stoked the fire back to life. He popped
a mixed berry pie left over from the day before into the microwave, and the two of them sat in the living room, warming themselves
and feeling, Merritt thought, simply happy. She assessed the sensation, because she’d felt it so infrequently lately. The
truth was that everything in her immediate vicinity was right and good, and that rare impression was casting a warm, fuzzy
glow over the rest of her life. She was glad, she realized, to be living in Whelk Harbor, glad to be spending time with her
mother in a place that wasn’t Texas or her childhood home in Virginia. She was more and more confident in the book she and
Whit were crafting. She believed in it. And then there was Whit. She has happy with Whit.
When the front door opened and slammed in rapid succession, it shook both of them from their quiet reverie. Annie shot through
the room in a blur, and then the back door opened and shut in the same way, letting in a wave of cold air from both sides.
Whit and Merritt looked at each other, perplexed and worried, and then Evie and édouard came in through the front door.
“I told her we’re going home on Sunday,” Evie said.
“Whit mentioned that,” Merritt said. “You’ll be missed.”
Evie turned to her and nodded with a somber smile. “I figured I’d fly back with édouard. We’re having Christmas with my dad in the Cayman Islands this year, and I want to spend some time at home before we go. Plus, édouard misses me desperately.”
“It’s true, I am despondent,” he said, crouching dramatically to rest his head on her shoulder. “I can hardly function.”
He said “hardly” like ’ard-lee, and Merritt felt herself grinning at him like a schoolgirl. Whit cleared his throat, and she laughed.
“I gather Annie didn’t take it very well,” Merritt said, returning to the business at hand.
Evie hmm-ed and inclined her head in response.
“I’ll go talk to her,” Whit said, standing up.
Once he’d left the room, the other three adults moved to the window and watched as Whit called for Annie, who turned to him
from the edge of the woods. She waited for him to approach, then fell into him, and he scooped her up and held her to his
chest while she cried.
“Oh,” Merritt and Evie said in unison, and then Evie nudged her with her shoulder.
Later that night, when Merritt was home, trying to read on her window seat, she thought about what she’d seen. About the way
Whit hadn’t said much, had just held his daughter and let her cry. She thought about how, several minutes later, a puffy-eyed
Annie had come back inside and run to Evie, hugged her tightly, and whispered, “I’m just going to miss you so much,” and about
how Whit had clearly helped her sort out her feelings just by being her dad whom she loved and trusted. Merritt felt such
affection for him that she couldn’t help grinning. And there was Evie’s nudge, which was hard to interpret. Was it a proud-sister-of-a-brother
thing, or something more sororal, a look-at-your-man moment? Whatever it meant, Evie had made Merritt feel good, at the end
of an afternoon of feeling good.
Now her phone buzzed. Whit.
Find anything on the laptop?
Merritt sniffed out a laugh. She had felt so good that she’d forgotten all about her mission. Within a minute, she was back on the window seat, her book shoved to the
side and the computer on her lap.
She opened it, and the lock screen presented her with a picture of slightly younger Longacres. Annie looked to be about five,
and the three of them were bundled up in snow gear, squeezing each other next to a leaning snowman. They looked happy, and
it tugged at Merritt a little, but also made her smile.
Are you watching me? she silently asked the redheaded woman in a tasseled beanie. Helen’s smile was inscrutable—of course it was, she wasn’t going
to speak from the computer screen—and Merritt thought for the hundredth time how strange it was that her days were filled
with this woman’s work and now her husband. Two years ago, she would have given anything to meet her; now she almost felt
like she knew her, and the thought made her both thankful and sad.
She typed in the password—A-n-n-i-e—and was met by an entirely empty desktop. She’d never seen anything like it. Helen was either extremely organized or she’d
been in the CIA. Merritt started to click around. It didn’t take long to find the folder of Greenwood Castle documents, but
Whit was right: all she found was a smattering of bare outlines and four files with titles like “GC 1–TDITGW Final.”
Merritt let her mouse hover over the last file for a moment before closing the folder. To open those, she felt, would be like
intruding on Helen as she wrote, like barging into her study at the top of the Longacre house. Merritt knew it didn’t make sense, but it’s how
she felt, and she decided to respect that feeling, and Helen in the process.
As she clicked around the rest of the laptop, going everywhere she could think of, she found again that Whit was right.
There was nothing. Nothing in the Trash folder, nothing in the folders with names like “Household” and “Miscellaneous.” Merritt even opened a browser to find that Helen was still logged into Google, but her drive was empty.
She would not check the email, but she did make a mental note to ask Whit if he had done so, despite being sure that he had.
So there was nothing. Really, truly nothing. And nothing in Helen’s desk. Nothing in her study. Whit had gone through her
things, too, after she’d died—her closet, her car—but had nothing to show for it.
The only possibility, to Merritt’s mind, was that Helen Albright Longacre was a genius with a magical, encyclopedic brain.
That was all there was to it.
Nothing, she texted Whit, who sent back a shrugging emoji that felt like an I told you so. She rolled her eyes.
Eventually, Merritt got out her own laptop and went through her usual ritual. First, she set a ten-minute timer. She would
check her email, then do the Mini Crossword on the New York Times website, and then, with whatever time remained, scan the news headlines, opening tabs for the articles she wanted to read
later. When the timer went off, she’d write until she reached a thousand words, maybe more.
At least, that was how things usually went. Because usually the email part went quickly. Usually, there was nothing exciting
waiting in her inbox.
But today, amid the newsletters and notifications of flash sales, there was a message with a subject line that made Merritt’s
throat seize up.
Interview Request for The Atlantic (Graydon Lyons’s SERIOUS GAMES)
It was from Ian Hoult.
Merritt shut her laptop without clicking it. She would not be writing tonight after all.