Chapter Thirty
taking Helen’s notes and writing them out in grammatically correct, well-punctuated sentences. He was Helen’s posthumous amanuensis,
and he was bad, bad, bad at the job.
Writing this without Merritt felt like taking the band on tour after the lead singer had died. And—and!—every part of him ached without her. It wasn’t the same grief of losing Helen. That had felt heavy and cold and final. Losing
Merritt, when Merritt was still out there . . . losing Merritt when he could clearly trace the cause of her departure back
to himself, to his hang-ups, to a duty he felt he’d never be relieved of . . . that filled every cell of him with unmet, unmeetable
yearning.
“Hi, Joan,” he said, leaning back in Helen’s desk chair.
How was your Christmas. Oh, the Cayman Islands, how fun. Does Annie still believe in Santa Claus? Yes, they are so sweet at
that age.
“Joan,” Whit said at last, cutting through the chitchat and preempting the coming question. “Joan, I can’t do it.”
“You what?”
“I can’t finish the book. I’ve tried it, and I failed.”
“Oh, goodness.”
The conversation was brief, and Joan masked her irritation well.
It felt to him as if she already suspected what he would be telling her, but still her sympathy was strained.
He told her, finally, about Merritt, and about the journals.
She told him about another children’s fantasy author the publisher already had in mind.
This author was known for their unceasing productivity and, most appealingly, for their speed.
She asked if she could make arrangements to get the journals to the publisher for their benefit, and Whit agreed.
Finally, she explained how the royalties would work, though Whit could not have cared less.
At that point, it seemed she was ready to get off the phone.
Okay, Whit told her. He understood.
When they hung up, Whit reached behind the chair to grab Helen’s old blanket and then sat very still, watching the wet snow
drop into piles in his backyard and slowly melt away.
And then on January 17, someone knocked on his door.
Only after he’d answered it and found her there did he realize what he looked like: matted hair, wearing a white T-shirt and
gray sweatpants under a maroon-striped robe that looked like it had come from a high school theater program’s costume closet.
His beard was scragglier than ever; his eyes, he thought, were probably a little bloodshot from drinking too much and sleeping
too poorly.
But here was Merritt, standing tall in her indigo coat, full of confidence and warmth. Her hair was down, looking extra shiny
in the presence of Whit’s greasiness, and she had brought the sun with her after days of rain and gloom.
“Merritt,” he said, surprised and embarrassed and, in some small pocket of himself, thrilled. Merritt!
“Hi,” she said. Her voice was soft, as though she might scare him off. Her face was polite, and maybe a little concerned.
She kept one hand on the straps of the tote bag she had slung over her shoulder. He wanted—oh, how he wanted—to pull her into his arms.
No, he wanted her to pull him into her arms. He needed her.
“Can we talk?”
Talk? Whit thought. No, he thought, let’s skip all that!
“Yes, of course. Come in. Take your coat? Cup of tea?”
“That’s all right,” she said, standing in the entryway. “I don’t need to stay long.”
“Oh.” The warmth that had begun to rise in his chest tumbled downward like fog rolling over a mountain peak.
“It’s just . . .” she said, trailing off as she reached into her tote bag.
When her hand came up, it was holding a sheaf of papers bound by a large black binder clip.
“I finished it,” she said, “and I wanted to know what you think.”
She handed the manuscript over, and as Whit looked at it in his hand, he registered, first, that she had come up with a title
for her previously unfinished work. Then his eyes processed the words at the center of the front page.
THE FAIRY IN THE HIGH TOWER
The Final Installment of the Greenwood Castle Saga
by
Whit Longacre and Merritt Pryor
in the style of
Helen Albright Longacre
“What?”
His voice felt paper thin. The manuscript was suddenly heavy, his arms suddenly weak. The sounds in his ears seemed muffled.
“I finished it,” she said again. “I finished my own manuscript first, and then this.”
He was stunned.
“You did . . . you did both? How is that possible?”
She shrugged. Then smiled in a way that suddenly seemed very like Isabel Abbott’s trademark smirk.
He felt awed and immediately powerless. He wondered if he had been an impediment, if he had been an unnecessary part of the thing they’d made together.
He should have gotten out of the way far sooner.
Had Merritt enjoyed writing without him?
He felt stupid. He felt territorial, relieved, and then . . . oh.
“But,” he said slowly, “Merritt, there’s no point.”
She pulled her head back.
“What?”
“The deadline, it’s passed.”
“What do you mean? It’s still January.”
Whit felt incredibly tired.
“The deadline was two days ago.”
Her eyes widened.
“Joan called,” he explained. “I told her everything. She said they already have someone lined up anyway. It’s over, Merritt.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. God, he was sorry.
Merritt’s face began to scrunch up, but then she seemed to set her jaw and harden her eyes.
“Whit, no.”
He wanted to hold her. He wanted to lie down.
“I know,” he said softly. “But . . . but I’ll read this. Of course I will. I want to know how it ends.”
He gave her a weak smile, but she was shaking her head. She was angry.
“Whit,” she said again, “no. We can’t just give up. I finished it for us—”
He closed his eyes halfway.
“Merritt, we talked about this. Helen—”
“Helen wrote some stuff down in some journals, yeah, I know, Whit.”
His eyes shot open.
“Wow,” he said. He could not believe her.
“But she also wanted you to write the book. That’s what she put in the will. Nothing about the journals. Nothing about how the book was supposed to end. She just wanted you to do it, ‘by any means you deem necessary.’ ”
“Merritt—”
“No, Whit,” she said. Her hands flew to either side of her head, then she stepped forward and actually grabbed him by the
lapels of his robe. “Whit, don’t you get it? She gave her life’s work to you. Because she loved you and she believed in you and she thought . . . when she realized she couldn’t finish her story herself . . .
you were the person she thought of.”
The words hit Whit like a battering ram against the sides of an iron ship: hard, but dull.
Merritt gave the lapels a tug.
“Do you hear me, Whit? She gave the story to you, and now you’re letting it go, so some stranger can swoop in and make God knows what of her life’s work. All because of a deadline? A deadline that passed two days ago?”
Exhaustion. That was Whit’s primary feeling, his central thought. He was exhausted. This was exhausting. The story was out of his hands now, and that had devastated him, but it had also freed him of an unrelenting
burden. And letting it go had meant letting Merritt go, too, but now she was here, trying to storm back into the picture,
to force their story over the transom of the publisher’s locked and barred door.
“Merritt, they don’t want me. You don’t know what it’s been like. They’re glad to be rid of me. They have no reason to listen—”
“Then we make them listen, Whit. Honestly, do you hear yourself?”
He closed his eyes again, weary, weary, weary.
“I do. Merritt, I think you should go.”
She was crying now, shaking her head and biting her lip. She slipped her fingertips under her glasses to rub at her eyes, then gave a big, final sniff.
“I got you so wrong.”
She swallowed.
Whit didn’t know what to say.
Without another word, she walked out the door, leaving Whit standing there, the manuscript still in his hand.
In the car, Merritt checked her hair in the mirror, reapplied a layer of sensible lipstick, and took one deep, steadying breath.
Then she texted Ian Hoult a second time. A simple three-word text.
I’m ready now.