Chapter Thirty-Five
Street station. “Just stay there. I’m coming.”
“Whit,” Merritt said on the other end of the line, “I have things to tell you.”
“And so do I,” he said, crossing Riverside Drive, “and I can’t say them over the phone. I have to say them to your face. I’ll
be there in, I don’t know, four hours? Five? Just stay there, okay? Don’t run away again.”
Merritt paused. Whit waited.
“Okay,” she said at last.
“Okay,” Whit said.
Merritt tried to nap as she waited for Whit. The meeting had ended at 10 a.m., and afterward, she and édouard had gone to
meet Evie at the law offices to share the news. After changing out of her borrowed clothes, Merritt allowed Evie to order
and pay for a celebratory Lyft to the airport, where she picked up her now-dead phone from customer service. Four hours later
she was back in Boston, and one slow Whelk Harbor Shuttle ride after that, she’d made it back to her mother’s home.
Now she was pacing her room, stopping herself, over and over again, from grabbing her phone and shooting off texts.
She wanted to tell Willa it had more or less worked; she wanted to tell Whit what had happened, before he could say what he had to say.
She was bursting with pride in herself, and part of her was eager to prove to Whit that he’d been wrong and she’d been right.
But then, after washing and folding all of her trip clothes, and while rearranging and then un-rearranging the furniture in
her bedroom, she began to wonder how Whit would take her news. She had gotten Shreya to agree to read the manuscript, but
it was the manuscript they’d made together. What if he was still hung up on Helen’s journals? She couldn’t blame him. And
then what?
“Goodness, you are a mess, aren’t you?”
Merritt looked up from reorganizing her mother’s ancient, untouched CD catalog, which usually filled the built-in cabinets
beneath the TV in the living room. Kathleen was staring at her while holding two bags of Chinese takeout.
Merritt waited for a follow-up and got in return, “What’s up with you?”
No good fibs sprang to mind.
“I’m waiting for Whit.”
Kathleen gave one reflective nod.
“What’d you get?” Merritt asked.
“Egg rolls, crab Rangoon, wonton soup, and sesame chicken. Why are you organizing my CDs?”
“Just . . .” Merritt struggled again for a believable lie. “Bored.”
Not believable.
Another laborious nod from Kathleen.
“Mom, what do you want?”
“You fly to New York for this man. He flies to New York for you. Now he’s coming here . . .”
“I did not fly to New York for him, I flew for the book. And me.”
Kathleen’s pauses were maddening.
“Mom.”
“Well, there’s no denying that he flew there for you. And I let him.”
She added the last part with a wicked smirk that then shifted to something more earnest. “If you could have seen him in the library, Merritt, he just—”
“Mom, I don’t want this right now.”
Merritt stood up but stopped short of storming off to her room like a moody sophomore.
“What time is he getting here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Hopefully soon. You’re running out of CDs.”
“Mom.”
Kathleen sighed.
“I’m going to eat some of this. Do you want some?”
She raised the bags. Merritt nodded, and her mother nodded back.
“All right. And then I’m going to walk across the street to check in on Peggy Stafford.”
Peggy was an octogenarian neighbor whom Kathleen had never once visited in the last five months.
Merritt groaned.
“Mom, seriously, don’t—”
“I am going to eat some of this and then go check in on Peggy, all right?”
Merritt took her glasses off to rub her eyes.
“Do whatever you want, Mom.”
When she replaced them, Kathleen was smiling at her in a soft, amused way.
“Oh, Merritt. I think you love that man.”
Merritt opened her mouth to protest, but Kathleen spoke first.
“Actually, I’m really only in the mood for soup. I’ll take it with me to Peggy’s, and the rest is yours. Sound good?”
Merritt dropped into her mother’s favorite armchair.
“Sounds good, Mom. Thanks.”
And once again, Merritt was alone.
It was 9 o’clock when an Uber driver named Stan in a Honda Odyssey pulled away from the Pryor house.
Whit looked down at himself as he stood on the sleet-wet pavement.
Under the light of the old-fashioned streetlight, he felt a bit sad and dumpy in his jeans, dove gray T-shirt, and Carhartt jacket.
His body seemed to be covered in a travel-born film of stickiness.
The yellow Victorian before him glowed like a jewel on the somber, wintry street, with each of its windows lit from within.
Behind one of them, Whit felt rather than saw, was Merritt.
Merritt leaned against the kitchen counter, which now smelled like lemon and shone like the surface of a lake. The house was
sparkling, the trash taken out, the CDs were alphabetized. As Merritt considered whether deep cleaning the oven was worth
her time, there came a knock on the door.
Crap, Merritt thought, looking down at herself. She had had time to scrub the sink with baking soda and hot water but hadn’t thought
to change out of her sweat-shorts and the long-sleeve Foothills School T-shirt she had on permanent loan from her mom.
Who cared, anyway. She wasn’t trying to impress Whit anymore—only to tell him she’d saved the book. Her main concern should
have been whether he would actually be pleased with this news, but as she padded in her sock feet toward the front door, something
aching and broad filled her from shoulders to knees.
Whit was behind that door. She had hardly seen him in a month. Sad, sweet, stuck Whit, who was also smart and funny and compassionate.
And good. She missed him. Desperately.
Merritt stopped in the entryway and closed her eyes tight.
No, she told herself. No.
She gave her head a shake and, before she could think about it much more, yanked open the door.
The light from inside spilled onto the dark, cold porch where Whit stood, and there was Merritt.
She looked like a fond memory.
She looked like home.
He was standing there, the same old Whit, in the Carhartt jacket she loved, and he looked tired, or rather like someone waking
up. At the sight of her, his eyes grew wider and bluer, and for a moment it felt almost like he was having to hold himself
back, but she chastised herself, because surely she was just confused by her own deep well of longing. She wanted to go to
him, to hold him and smell the cedary, minty smell of his skin. And there was something behind his eyes, too, something soft yet determined that had not been there before.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he said, and it came out in a cloud of white.
“It’s freezing, come in.”
“Thanks,” Whit said, and his hesitance sent a pang through her—a sharp shot that cut through the ache.
“Can I take your coat?” she said in the entryway.
“Yes, please.”
“Tea?” she offered.
He smiled, sheepish. “Sure.”
Merritt swiped Kathleen’s copper kettle from the stove and turned toward the sink, but as she extended it toward the faucet, Whit put his hand gently on her forearm.
“Merritt.” His voice was soft and stretched.
When she looked at him, she saw that his eyes were full of something painful.
“Whit . . .” she started. She hadn’t told him about the book yet. She hadn’t explained what had happened with Shreya and the
manuscript—their manuscript—and whatever he was going to say next, she felt that she needed to explain those things, because what if that
changed everything again, and what if—
“Merritt,” Whit said once more, turning her and gently cupping her cheek in his hand. The rest of the words died in her throat.
His face was beautiful to her.
“Merritt, I love you.”
She stood with her mouth slightly open.
“I love you,” he said again, “and I’m sorry. I was so wrong . . . the book, our book, it’s just . . . perfect, and that’s because of you, and I should never have thrown that all away, and more than that, I just . . . I can’t believe
I was willing to let you get away over, God, I don’t know, my own sense of impossibility—and I think I was mad because all this would have been so
much easier if I had just known about the journals, but then . . .”
Whit shook his head. She still held the kettle in one hand, but his fingers on her face were hot water bottles that filled
her whole body with warmth.
“But then I wouldn’t have met you, and I wouldn’t have realized that I can do it, and that Helen loved me enough to let me do it. I think I was afraid, because this is all messy and complicated, and I do have Annie to think about. But when you
were gone . . . when I thought you’d maybe moved away to New York, I realized this is worth whatever messy complications there
are. You are worth it.”
Merritt tried to speak, but he continued, his next words spilling out rapidly, tripping over each other in an angry sprint.
“And then—I’m sorry, Merritt, but I missed you so much, so I read that stupid Lyons book—and I realized that there is no version
of the story where you’re the bad guy. You’re the heroine. In all of it. And you saved me, too.”
He paused, swallowed, and tenderly stroked her cheek. “I love you, Merritt, and I don’t care about any of the rest. I love
you.”
Merritt stood, stunned, as the ache in her body moved up her throat and prickled all around her head, transformed into something
fizzy and buzzing. She looked at the kettle in her hand as if it were an alien object, until Whit deftly slipped it from her
fingers and set it, blindly, on the counter behind him. His hands reached for hers, but she pulled them away and up, up toward
his face. His beard was bristly against her palms, and his eyes latched onto hers.
“Oh Whit, I love you,” she said, and the words came out almost perfunctorily, because of course, of course she did. “I’ve been lying to myself about it since that first day I came to your house.”
He looked so surprised that she laughed.
“What, then? I was a mess.”
“ ‘Was’?”
He pretended to pull away, offended, but she held his face straight.