Page 69 of Swan Song

“But you haven’t been to any of their parties or gone out to dinner with them?”

“No,” Sharon admits. Every time the pool-cleaning crew pulls into the driveway, Sharon wishes it were Coco in her baby-blue Land Rover with another hand-delivered invitation. As for dinner, Sharon has heard the Richardsons prefer to go out alone and eat at the bar, where they can introduce themselves to even more people. “Why do you ask?”

“I didn’t tell you this earlier because it’s really none of my business, but I recognized the name Bull Richardson because…” Here, Heather draws out a long pause as though she’s the writer creating suspense. Sharon has to admit her interest is piqued. She knows nothing about the Richardsons, really, which is odd, since she’s been inside their home and aboard their boat.

“Yes?” Sharon says.

Heather sighs. “Well, we investigated him for a whistleblower complaint about some environmental fraud.”

Oh my god, how dull, Sharon thinks. But what was she expecting? Heather works for the federal government. “I didn’t realize you investigated private companies.”

“Of course we do,” Heather says. “Theranos. Ring a bell?”

The know-it-all comments are starting to irritate Sharon. “And that’s what you wanted to tell me?”

“I mentioned the name to Skip,” Heather says. Skip, Heather’s longtime (dare Sharon say long-suffering?) boyfriend, has a job that’s even more boring than Heather’s: He works for the IRS. He’s pretty high up—not the top-top job, but close.

“And?” Sharon says.

“He intimated—because of course he can’t come right out and tell me—that Bull Richardson and Sweetwater Distribution might be in their crosshairs as well.”

Environmental fraud and taxes. Sharon is practically asleep.

“I know you’re enamored with the Richardsons,” Heather says.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Sharon snaps. “Leslee throws fun parties.”

“You said she’s shaking up Nantucket and that she and Bull have basically become the grown-up version of prom king and queen.”

Did Sharon say that? She’d had at least three firecracker cocktails on the Fourth of July as well as some champagne, so she was pretty tipsy when she got home, but did she use that phrase—the grown-up version of prom king and queen? She might have.

“Just be careful, please, Sharon,” Heather says.

Sharon doesn’t like it when her older sister tells her what to do; she has never liked it. Sharon is about to toss a snide-adjacent Will do! when she hears a beeping. Heather has already hung up.

She considers what Heather told her. She would never betray her sister’s confidence by going into specifics, but the old Sharon would have called Fast Eddie and intimated that maybe the Richardsons weren’t quite what everyone thought—and Eddie might have mentioned this to his brother-in-law Glenn Daley, and Glenn might have called Rachel McMann, and Rachel would naturally have said something to Dr. Andy, and Dr. Andy would tell his dental hygienist Janice, and the next time Sharon bumped into Celadon Morse at Sea View Farm, Celadon would ask her if it was true that Bull Richardson was a drug lord with connections to the Mob.

Sharon doesn’t call Fast Eddie; Sharon doesn’t repeat what Heather said to anyone. Has the world turned upside down? Sharon has no interest in speculating about Bull and Leslee Richardson. Sharon has become the kind of woman she never understood before—someone who doesn’t need to talk about other people to make her days more interesting because her days are interesting enough as it is.

When Coco gets home from her errands in town, she lugs bags of groceries and a handle of Tito’s up the stairs without crushing the loaf of sourdough and finds Leslee and Lamont in the kitchen; Leslee is making crepes with whipped cream and peaches.

“Oh, hello,” Coco says. There’s a bottle of Laurent-Perrier lounging in an ice bucket. Lamont has a full flute in front of him; Leslee is drinking hers at the stove.

“Hey,” Lamont says.

“Did you remember to get the bread sliced thin?” Leslee asks as she pours crepe batter into a pan sizzling with butter.

“I did,” Coco says. There are so many things assaulting her senses that she’s not sure where to start. First off, Leslee never cooks, yet here she is, whipping up crepes? (Then Coco remembers: Leslee used to be a crepe chef in Vegas. Apparently, a true story.) Second, why are she and Lamont day-drinking together on a weekday? Third, Coco has never failed to get the sourdough sliced thin, so why must Leslee check? “Are you two celebrating something?”

“I just dropped Bull off at the airport,” Leslee says. “He’ll be gone for a week.”

“He… what?” Coco is confused. Neither Bull nor Leslee mentioned another trip.

“That thing in Indo is blowing up,” Leslee says. “He needs to be there in person. Then he’s going to the Philippines afterward to try and drum up some new business.”

Coco made the Richardsons’ bed this morning and folded their pajamas, and she didn’t see a suitcase. It feels like this trip was kept secret from her.

“What about all the dinner reservations I made?” she says. “The tickets for the White Heron Theatre? The passes for the silent disco at the Dreamland? I thought you guys wanted to go to that. Should I cancel?”

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