Page 23 of Beneath the Poet's House

Pluto stares. His tail twitches again. Saoirse rattles the food in the bowl so he remembers where it is, grabs her jacket, and steps out into the autumn sun. Across the street, on a neighbor’s porch, a resin tombstone warns visitors to BEWARE. From an adjacent porch, cornstalks rustle in the breeze. A quick look around tells her hers is the only house on the block not yet decorated for Halloween, and there’s only one more week until the thirty-first.

“Pumpkin shopping it is,” she says to the empty street.

It was better when you were talking to the cat,Jonathan taunts.

Ignoring him, Saoirse looks in the opposite direction of Brown’s campus and the Athenæum, but she’s loath to seek out a new grocery store when she’s already familiar with the Main Street Trader Joe’s. She heads south on Benefit Street, telling herself she will not, under any circumstances, let her unease—or is it her excitement?—about running into a certain Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist dictate her actions.

By the time she reaches Trader Joe’s, she’s forgotten all about Emmit Powell and is calculating the logistics of carrying a planter of maroon mums the mile-walk home. It’s only when she hears a deep but lilting voice, friendly and thoughtful in equal measure, that she puts the palm-size pumpkin she is clutching down and turns toward the registers.

Twenty feet away, at the self-checkout, a man is inserting a credit card into the reader. A prepackaged salad and a bottle of iced tea are on the ledge by his elbow, waiting to be placed into the reusable shopping bag slung over his arm.

“No major calamities today, Janice,” the man says to the fiftysomething woman charged with keeping an eye on the area. “I’ll master these self-checkout registers yet.”

The woman throws her head back in laughter. “I don’t doubt it, Mr. Powell. In fact, it’s been a few weeks since you’ve needed me to bail you out with my magic key card.”

No.Saoirse’s hands are cold and her muscles frozen.No way. I fell asleep in the living room and am dreaming.Saoirse spins around, her purse knocking into the pumpkins on the table. She manages to catch the two that go rolling before they drop to the floor. A thought intervenes before she can sprint for the frozen foods section:This is insanity. He’s buying a salad. He isn’t stalking you.

Maybe not. But this has gone far beyond coincidence and into the realm of statistical impossibility.

Maybe it’s time to accept Emmit’s theory that you two are predestined to have some sort of relationship,Jonathan says mockingly from inside her head. She resists the urge to respond and slowly turns back toward the registers.

Emmit has bagged his tea and salad and is giving Janice a salute as he makes his way toward the door. Saoirse follows at a walk until he gets to the exit, then jogs after him as he disappears through the door.

Outside, Emmit turns in the direction Saoirse came from a mere ten minutes before. She considers calling out, but she’s only a few strides away. In another moment, she’s caught up to him and reaches out to grab the sleeve of his soft wool jacket. He stops. Turns. Saoirse can’t help it. At the sight of his wide, smooth forehead and bushy eyebrows, she smiles and says, “I thought about barreling into you on the sidewalk like you did to me, but I didn’t want you to drop your expensive salad.”

Emmit gawks. He looks down at his shopping bag then back up at her.

“Don’t you dare ask if I’m following you,” Saoirse says. “The only reason I came up to you isbecauseof your goddamn premonition. I’mstill not sure I believe in it, but it’s getting harder and harder to explain why we keep running into each other.”

Emmit studies her face, still not saying a word, then drops his gaze to her empty hands.

“I came for a pumpkin,” Saoirse says. “I saw you before I could finish picking one out.”

Emmit nods, and when he smiles, any lingering doubt over whether it was prudent to approach him melts away.Don’t turn into an idiotic, lust-sick puppy,she thinks.Even Jonathanwas considerate and charming when he was courting you.But then Emmit is angling himself toward her so that she can link her arm with his, and they are walking away from the supermarket.

“Where are we going?” Saoirse asks.

“I was supposed to be leaving for the airport,” Emmit says. “Like every Sunday afternoon, I come to Trader Joe’s and get a—sometimes healthy, sometimes not—dinner, drive to T. F. Green, and take the hour-and-a-half flight back to Baltimore, where I crash into bed before the start of another week.”

Saoirse looks at the cars lining the street, though, of course, she has no idea what Emmit drives. “So, you’re going to the airport?”

“Not anymore,” he says and pulls her closer to him. “Now I’m going to the Farmer’s Daughter to get you a proper pumpkin.”

Saoirse tries to think of an excuse, a reason why she cannot get into a car with this man she does not know and go to some farm she’s never heard of. But nothing comes. So she allows herself to be led, to enjoy the sunshine on her face and the company of a man who thinks it’s worth missing a flight to spend the afternoon with her.

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?”

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