Chapter 15

They walk the streets of Providence, arm in arm, until Saoirse can’t help herself, and asks, “If you skip your flight, won’t you miss work tomorrow?”

Emmit looks down at her, and a wisp of dark hair falls across his forehead. “The classes I teach at Johns Hopkins are Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so all I’ll really miss is an extra day of staring at a blank screen and pulling my hair out.” He turns right onto Waterman Street. “I’ll call the airline later and rebook for tomorrow. Or maybe I won’t. I suppose it depends on how long this little pumpkin-procuring excursion takes.” He winks, and Saoirse feels her body grow warm.

Emmit stops in front of a luxury apartment building and releases her arm to dig in his pocket. A moment later, he unlocks the sleek gray sports car in front of them.

Saoirse stares at the car, feeling her eyebrows climb toward her hairline. “This is what you use to drive the ten miles back and forth to the airport?” She’s not quite able to keep the cynicism from her voice.

Emmit gives her a sheepish look. “At the risk of sounding like an asshole, I had to spend my book deal money on something. I hate public transportation, but I live in two different cities, so I bought myself a car here and, well, the same one in Baltimore.” He laughs. “I haven’t been traveling much post-COVID, my apartments are subsidized by Brown and Johns Hopkins, respectively, and aside from good booze and the occasional edible, I don’t have what one might call expensive taste.”

“Says the guy with twin Mercedes,” Saoirse laughs, but she feels unmoored. The past fifteen minutes have been so unexpected, so surreal, she wonders yet again if she’s actually asleep in the living room of 88 Benefit Street, immersed in a dream while Pluto purrs on her stomach. “What was the name of the place you said we were going to?”

“The Farmer’s Daughter. One of my graduate students turned me on to it last year. It’s in South Kingstown. You’ll love it.”

Pretty confident for a guy who’s had one conversation with you, Jonathan sneers. Are you really getting into a car with this stranger?

Saoirse grits her teeth. This is Emmit Powell, she responds silently. Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist. Even if he does turn out to be nothing more than a womanizer with over-the-top pickup lines, he isn’t going to murder her. Saoirse slides into the passenger side and buckles her seat belt.

You’re strapped in now, Jonathan warns, literally and figuratively.

Exactly, she thinks back defiantly. Might as well enjoy the ride.

“Once we get off I-95, the drive is really scenic,” Emmit says. “And there are pumpkins at the Farmer’s Daughter in colors you won’t find at Trader Joe’s.”

Saoirse marvels at the way he jumps from casual to contemplative in the space of a single sentence. As if the shades of pumpkins have moved him in some profound, gratifying way.

“Is that so?” She’s careful not to meet his earnestness with sarcasm. “Well, I’m excited.” They drive for several minutes in silence.

They’re almost to the highway when Emmit glances at her. “I’d resigned myself to never seeing you again. What have you been up to since I saw you last?”

“Writing,” she says, surprised by how quickly she answers him, how quickly he’s elicited her trust. “Four poems in a single evening. It’s wild, because I was never much of a poet.”

“More like a mystery novelist,” Emmit says. She stares at him hard, and he grins at her. “Did you think I wasn’t going to look you up on Goodreads after you told me you were a writer? I saw the series you did with Ballantine. It was pretty successful.”

She blushes. “That’s generous,” she says. “Especially coming from—”

He cuts her off with a raised hand. “Don’t say what you are about to say. I happened to write something that, for whatever reason, appealed to both the critics and the masses. Talent is talent, and aside from the handful—and I mean handful—of geniuses, those literary giants that captivate us all, most talent at the Big Five publishing level is comparable. The fact that Vulture Eyes sold as many copies as it did does not mean it was any better than Sugar and Splice .”

Saoirse barks out a little laugh. “Um, of course it does. But I’m touched you know the name of one of my books.”

“Not just one,” he says. “After Sugar and Splice was Science Doesn’t Take Whisks , followed by We Knead to Keep Our Ion You .” Emmit smacks the steering wheel. “ Sugar and Splice was delightful!”

“You read it?”

“I did. And let me tell you, a baker and a scientist who team up to solve murders is far more enjoyable than a man driven to madness by guilt so intense it becomes corporeal. If I didn’t write Vulture Eyes , I’d never want to read it.”

Saoirse stares out the windshield. “The woman who wrote those novels was a different person,” she says. “One who was amused by lighthearted things.”

“And then your husband died, and the idea of writing another installment in the series sounded as enjoyable as being gnawed on by rats or eviscerated by a swinging pendulum.”

“That sounds about right.”

Emmit allows his eyes to stray from the road for a moment to observe her. “You said at Carr Haus you’d already stopped writing before your husband’s death. So your metamorphosis from commercial writer to death-obsessed poet has been much longer in the making.” One side of his mouth raises in its lopsided grin. “Speaking of your dark, death-obsessed poetry, when do I get to read it?”

“I’m not sure I’m ready for anyone to see this stuff. You’re right that it’s dark. Dark and disturbing.”

“I like dark. I live in the dark. I don’t care if it’s on another planet from the Sugar and Splice series. I’d love to read more of your work.”

Saoirse’s cheeks feel warm. Emmit Powell wants to read her work? She sits in silence, a twinge in her chest. A good one, though—not the tightness she experiences when she’s overexerted herself or missed a day of medication.

Emmit steers them around the curve adjacent to Thurbers Avenue, and the horizon beyond the highway darkens. “That looks sufficiently ominous,” he says, frowning.

Saoirse stays quiet as raindrops spatter the windshield.

“I’m not averse to pumpkin picking in the rain,” Emmit adds, “but neither of us is dressed for inclement weather.” His frown deepens. “And I don’t have an umbrella. Should we turn around?”

“I guess?” Saoirse responds, trying to hide her disappointment.

“Unless ... you’re hungry?” Emmit asks.

Saoirse’s eyes flick to the back seat.

“Forget the salad. Do you know any restaurants around here?”

“I moved back less than two weeks ago, remember?” She looks out the window for a telltale building or landmark—not that she would remember anything from her sporadic ventures off Brown’s campus more than a decade ago. “I have no idea.”

The rain increases from a few splattering drops to a downpour.

“I’m getting off here,” Emmit says, jerking his chin at an upcoming exit and slowing. It’s cute, how worried he is. But she’s a little uneasy herself. The visibility is terrible, and the rain is not letting up. Halfway down the ramp, the visibility improves, and Saoirse relaxes slightly. Emmit takes a left.

“What town are we in?” Saoirse asks.

“No idea. Maybe Cranston?” Emmit’s knuckles loosen around the steering wheel. “It looks like we’re coming to a little stretch of civilization now.” He pulls into a small public lot next to a strip of shops and restaurants. “There’s a place right there,” he says, pointing. He reaches over, grabs her hand, and squeezes it, then gives a wistful glance over his shoulder. “I can’t believe I don’t have my damn umbrella.”

Hand tingling from his touch, mind reeling from this unexpected adventure she’s somehow found herself on, Saoirse shrugs. “It’ll be fine. We’ll make a run for it.”

Emmit chuckles, staring at the rain, which is coming down in sheets. “I like your optimism.” They grab their respective door handles simultaneously.

The rain has turned the late-October afternoon cold. Saoirse pulls her coat tighter around her as she runs for the restaurant. They’re drenched by the time they reach the overhang and both laughing hysterically. Together, rainwater dripping in their eyes, they inspect the menu on the glass-encased bulletin board by the door.

“This looks great,” Saoirse says.

“Ditto,” Emmit replies, “though I’m basing my acquiescence entirely on their wine selection. I’m not normally a big drinker, but this rain makes me want to warm my bones from the inside out.” He gives her a calculating look. “Are you a drinker?”

Saoirse hesitates. What to say to this? Who could be, watching their husband mix everything from scotch to IPAs with his Ambien and Adderall, intent on self-medicating his stress away. Or, I am, as long as I err on the side of extreme moderation, so as to not upset the delicate balance of my own prescriptions?

“Sort of,” she says, and Emmit cocks his head, his expression indicating this is something he will return to later. But then his eyes jump from her face to the bulletin board again, and his mouth curls into a grin.

Saoirse follows his gaze to a piece of paper tacked to the side of the dessert menu. At the sight of the words there, a cool sensation passes along the back of her neck, as if a spider has skittered over the skin there. A spider ... or a fly.

She reads the words a second time, and then a third, and each time she does, the image in her brain grows sharper. Sharper, but no more comprehensible. It’s of Sarah Helen Whitman sitting in an alcove in the Athen?um, reading from a notebook to the man who has recently become her fiancé. Reading her poetry aloud to Edgar Allan Poe.

“What time is it?” Saoirse asks warily.

“Twenty of six.” Emmit’s eyes glint with the tiny drops of rainwater caught in his lashes. “I’m not going to say this is a sign.”

Saoirse scoffs.

“But, I mean, this is a sign, right? It’s got to be a sign.”

She shakes her head. “The rain is sign enough that we should eat here. Let’s go in.”

Emmit opens the door. Saoirse looks one final time at the piece of paper, willing the words to change or to disappear. They remain:

Open Mic Night: POETRY! PROSE! MUSIC!

Regale us with your creative endeavors!

Too shy? Regale us with someone else’s!

Every Sunday, 6 to 8 p.m.