was still as unreal a thing to her as the things she’d written about in that book.
The literal ghosts of Clara Broward and Florence “Flo” Hartshorn Merritt did not think she believed in. But the story of their thwarted teenage love affair and all the weird and terrible things to come at Brookhants: those things were documented fact. Those things were verifiable. And Merritt was someone who very much liked to have things verified.
She also happened to have had access to the best in primary-source material—diaries and yearbooks and newspaper clippings—because Elaine, the woman now so carefully building a s’more next to Merritt on an oversize outdoor sectional, was Elaine Elizabeth Bishop Brookhants, and certainly one of those names should ring a bell for you, Readers, if you’ve been paying attention. She owned the estate, her family’s estate, where what was left of the Brookhants School for Girls still stood. It was the same massive parcel of land that this, her historic ocean house, Breakwater,* was built upon.
But then, that’s Elaine Elizabeth Bishop Brookhants money for you.
Merritt had been visiting the property since second grade, the year her mother received a grant from Elaine’s research foundation, which kicked off a friendship between Professor Emmons and Elaine that lasted still. This happened back when Merritt’s father was still alive.
He wasn’t anymore.
The truth is, were Merritt’s father still alive it’s doubtful that she would have written her book in the first place. What happened, or at least what she told herself about what happened, was this: her father killed himself and as soon after as she could stand to, she threw herself into doing a thing to distract herself from that fact. That thing was writing the book The Happenings at Brookhants. Elaine had encouraged her relentlessly. In fact, for a long time, the intensity of Elaine’s belief in her was far greater than Merritt’s own belief in the book.
“So you aren’t happy with any of it?” Elaine now asked, fishing a peanut butter cup from the bag. Elaine claimed the earthiness from the peanut butter was a component so necessary as to outweigh any flimsy arguments from s’more traditionalists. She was a person like this: full of opinion and firm standing, she planted her flag in more topics than you could quite believe she could actually care about. Merritt loved this about her. Usually.
She was asking about the script and no, Merritt wasn’t happy with it, but it’s also true that her standards were both high and fickle. So many things felt so routinely disappointing to her that it seemed a shame to waste this evening on that mild unhappiness, one that she could admit to herself possibly wasn’t deserved.
“It’s just that it seems so blunted. But they also say you can’t really tell anything from a screenplay.” Merritt repeated this thing she’d heard and read and even said herself, though she did not believe it as fact when applied to her own work.
“I think it has its moments,” Elaine said, offering Merritt half of the now-finished s’more. Only Elaine could manage to break a s’more so cleanly. Where were the crumbs? Where was the gooey mess of marshmallow all over her pressed black capris or the smear of melted chocolate across the collar of her white linen shirt? Elaine went on, “And it’s really most useful to consider it as a means to an end, isn’t it?”
“Useful how?”
“Well, if you add up the performances, the costumes, the sets and the sound effects and the score—on and on—and then all the months of editing besides, the screenplay suddenly feels quite small, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know if small is the word I’d use,” Merritt said. Her fingers were sticky and a few graham cracker shards were already down her shirt.
“Merritt, don’t you think it’s maybe a tad precious to be so constantly disagreeable about your success?” her mother asked from the other end of the couch, a laptop propped on her knees so that its screen lent a ghoulish cast to her face.
If it seems I’ve mistakenly forgotten to mention her before now, forgive me, Readers. Though you should know that introducing her this way is also indicative of the role she played in her daughter’s life at that time.
“What you call preciousness I call critically informed realism,” Merritt said. “And not one thing about this movie is yet a success. If it even gets made.”
“What do you think, Lainey?” her mother’s ghoul mouth asked, her eyes not leaving her laptop and