Merriton

“There’s a new restaurant openin’, so I thought I’d take ya to it. It’s almost the whole way to Up North. You okay with the long drive?” Kit Kat smiled at John and secretly worried about whether she would be able to last that long without a bathroom. She calculated the drive and mentally noted each gas station on the way. Worse case, she would have him stop so she could allow her intestines to do whatever it is they needed to do.

“Sure. I haven’t been Up North since I moved to Merriton. It will be nice to have a little variety for dinner.” Her food options had been vastly altered since the move and she honestly looked forward to trying a new restaurant. She fondly remembered the pho soup she and Dave used to eat when they were staying up late on the weekends. She smiled strangely at the thought that she missed the spicy soup and noodles more than she missed her estranged husband. Dave had faded out of her life during those last months together until it was barely noticeable when he disappeared altogether.

“Actually, it might be nice if we could hit a grocery store while we’re up there. I haven’t had a good bagel since I moved here and I’d like to stock up.” John nodded, “Sure thing. Look at us. All goin’ grocery shoppin’ together.” He smiled as his pickup slowed through Emigration.

Christmas had passed by without a comment from either of them. New Years Eve had been spent at the Thunder Brothers Ranch, watching the festivities on television. John hadn’t even tried to kiss her when the ball dropped, but Kit Kat had marked that up to embarrassment. James and that farmhand, Bree, were in the room with them. She didn’t want their first kiss to have an audience, anyway.

“I’m real excited ‘bout this restaurant. It’s supposed to be real good.” John tried to draw her into conversation and she replied, “What kind of food do they serve?” John laughed, “I been tryin’ to figure it out ‘cause everybody loves somethin’ different about ‘em. Samson said he liked the egg rolls, but then, he would, now wouldn’t he?”

Kit Kat didn’t know how to answer that question. She didn’t know enough about the man, but John continued without waiting for her. “Moe said that he likes their queso dip, which makes ‘em sound Mexican. Sounds like they just mix up all different kinds of food.”

Kit Kat’s stomach growled in protest. The thought of food made her nauseous, but she tried to uphold her end of the conversation. “Fusion cuisine. That’s what they used to call it in New York. It was a fad for a while. Who’s Moe?” John answered, “He’s Roscoe’s off-roading ranger. He empties the pit restrooms at the top of the mountains, like Moose Hill. He lives Up North, so he’d know whether this place was good or not.”

“I heard that Roscoe did all the off-roading work.” Kit Kat didn’t talk to Roscoe about his work, but when he got that promotion so many years ago, Dora had told her. She couldn’t really concentrate on it, however, because her focus was on the pain and bloating in her stomach. She had done everything right. She was practically living on BRAT foods in an effort to calm her diarrhea and nausea. 
“When Jeff retired, Roscoe took over the ranger station, so he doesn’t do as much off-roading as he used to do.” Kit Kat replied, “Oh,” but the word was more a comment of the stomach distress than to John’s explanation. They were about ten miles away from the first gas station on the outskirts of Up North. She tried to calculate whether she should ask him to stop or not.

“You’re mighty quiet.” Kit Kat nodded and did her best to talk through the pain, “I was working right up until the moment you picked me up, so I’m still lost in what I was writing.” It wasn’t a lie. When she wasn’t distressed about her stomach, she was thinking about the dowager of Langthrope. Her relationship with the worthy, but socially unattached, merchant was progressing nicely and she had to leave right in the middle of their witty repartee.

“Oh! Don’t tell me about it! I want to read it when it’s done, but I don’t want you to spoil it for me.” She nodded and pressed on her stomach. She had found that gentle pressure sometimes helped with the pain. “Okay. I’m just kind of trapped in Derbyshire right now.” She added with a hint of mischief, “With the unending desire to visit India.” The dowager’s biggest desire was to escape to India to have an adventure of her own, so her little joke was amusing to her, but unfathomable to John. “Well, I don’t want to get in the way of your book, so if you need to mull it over, it’s alright with me.”

After a few minutes of silence, they approached the first gas station, but Kit Kat was too embarrassed to ask him to stop. She knew how a visit to that restroom would end up. She would sit on the toilet for ten minutes, emit a few juicy farts and still have the pain with no relief. If she waited a bit longer, it might be better. Hopefully, she could wait that long.

“I have to say you look really good. I swear you lost some weight or somethin’.” John was trying to break the silence and she felt guilty for not being entertaining enough. “I HAVE lost weight. Almost twenty pounds since I got to Merriton.” John raved about how great it was that she lost weight, but she didn’t join him in his positive assessment.

Her weight loss was entirely due to the unceasing diarrhea and the lack of food variety in Merriton. She would write for days without eating and her diarrhea would abate, but the moment she started eating again, it would return. She would have let superstition get the better of her and blame the house on her stomach distress, but she had suffered with this problem in New York before she ever moved to the Bowen House.

The vision of the emaciated woman across the table from her, warning of the curse on the Bowen House gave Kit Kat a shiver. “You know, Sierra lost a lot of weight in that house. She got too skinny, though.” She wanted to change the topic of conversation. “You know, I heard that Sierra helped James with his Snow Eater thing. Is that true?”

John revealed how much the McCains had done for him and his brother when they lived in Merriton, but Kit Kat’s mind wandered. Perhaps the dowager could marry the merchant like LoWanda at Antioch House wanted. Her editor had received the preliminary chapters and wrote many emails warning her that if the dowager was going to choose the merchant that Kit Kat needed to write more passion into their encounters.

It was one such encounter that Kit Kat had been working on when John arrived at her door. She hadn’t even noticed that he was five minutes late because she had become so involved with her writing. The dowager couldn’t marry the merchant, however, because she did not love him. She merely enjoyed his stories of the Orient. LoWanda suggested that the dowager could travel with the merchant to Asia and India if she married him, but Kit Kat didn’t like that future for her character. No, the dowager was to travel to India alone and independent. She didn’t need a husband to go to India.

“…but we’re bleedin’ money from the farm, even with the subsidies and carbon credits.” The emotion in John’s voice snapped Kit Kat out of Derbyshire and back to reality. “I thought you said the Haunted Corn Maze made almost as much money as growing the corn,” she responded. John laughed and exited off the freeway. John laughed, “That’s true, but it says less about the success of the corn maze than about the failure of the corn business.”

His pickup slowed as they pulled into the mall parking lot. “It should be here somewhere. Moe said it was right by the mall.” After they circled toward the side of the mall that flanked the freeway, he found it. “There it is! Chili’s!” He pointed at the red and green sign of the Chili’s Restaurant ahead of them and Kit Kat’s heart sank.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like the food at Chili’s, it’s just that she had eaten there so many times. It was the same Up North as it was in New York. Sure, she and Dave had to drive out the Staten Island to eat there, but there were only so many Southwest Egg Rolls and Baby Back Ribs she could eat before she was sick of the place. And poor John was so excited about it.

She tried to hide her disappointment and enjoy the night out anyway.