Page 60 of The Pairing

Kit spots the glossy paperback.The House on the Lake,a John Garrison novel.

“Ah, yes. The one where the wife dies.”

“Isn’t that all of them?”

“Sure, but in this one she comes back as a ghost, which he’s only done two other times.”

I laugh. “Howisyour dad?”

“He’s alright. Moved into a nice town house in the Village.Still ghostwriting, clearly. His last one was on the list for forty-seven weeks.The Anchorite of Venus.”

“Oh my God, that was him?”

“The most prolific author no one’s ever heard of,” Kit says. He’s looking down into his absinthe, the cloud of sugar slowly clearing. “Truthfully, I haven’t spoken to him in about. . .six months?”

I don’t say anything. I don’t have to. We both know how out of character that is for him. I swill my sangria and wait.

“Remember that book he was working on when my mom died?”

I think back to that awful summer before eighth grade, climbing into Kit’s bed five nights a week and readingThe Silmarillionout loud so he could fall asleep. Ollie had a fresh license, so he did the grocery shopping, and Kit baked a cake once a week in whatever flavor Cora asked. And every day, his dad stayed in his office with a manuscript that couldn’t be delayed.

“It was supposed to be his first book under his own name, right? But his editor hated it, or something?”

“Yeah, that was the story,” Kit says with a grim smile. “So, you know how Ollie works for Dad’s publishing house now? A year ago, he had lunch with Dad’s editor and asked him what he really thought of that book, and the editor had no idea what hewas talking about. And so Ollie asked Dad, and it turns out the manuscript never actually existed.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“He never wrote it. He never wrote anything that summer. He only pretended to.”

I think of Kit, age thirteen, braiding Cora’s hair for her.

“Holy shit,” I say.

He’s still wearing his small, grim smile when he continues.

“After that, I started thinking about everything,” he says. “I always trusted there was some design to the choices he made for us. Moving across the world because he got bored, moving across the country when he didn’t want to be in the old house. He was alwayssoimpressiveto me, this romantic genius who might take us anywhere. Every second of his attention was so shiny and important.”

He takes a sip of absinthe, grimacing at the burn.

“But it was always just whatever he wanted,” Kit finishes. “And he wasn’t there that summer because he didn’t want to be.”

I swear earnestly. “So you haven’t spoken since Ollie told you about the manuscript?”

“Actually, I tried to talk to him when he was in Paris a few months ago,” Kit says. “About all of it. He kind of blew it off, said a lot of words about how much he loves me, which is not at all what the problem has ever been. Afterwards, I had to put him away on a shelf until I can, I don’t know. Process. Figure out what kind of relationship I want with him as an adult.”

“Well, fuck,” I say after a long pause. I feel like bare-knuckle fighting Kit’s dad right now. “Kit, that’s. . .that must be a lot. I’m really fucking sorry.”

“Thank you,” Kit says, giving me a small, tender smile.

His gaze shifts to the door behind me, and he suddenly swears in French.

“What?”

“I kind of—I forgot that I invited Santiago to meet up tonight.”

“Who?”

“The—”

---