Page 19 of Golden Girl
There had been more discussion, Marissa trying to persuade him to take it back, Marissa telling him he’d be sorry, Marissa apologizing for the times she’d been cruel—she couldn’t help it, she said; she had father issues—Marissa getting angry and calling Leo names, Marissa crying, and, finally, Marissa storming off, which came as a relief. Leo pulled another beer out of the ice-filled trash can and found Cruz, who was sitting by the fire talking to his girlfriend, Jasmine Kelly, who was going to Vanderbilt in the fall.
“That’s done,” Leo said. “I broke up with her.”
Jasmine made a noise of disbelief with her lips and Leo said, “I’m serious. It’s over. No turning back.”
“Whoa,” Cruz said. “Are we staying or going?”
“Staying,” Leo said. “But I need something stronger than this beer.”
There are at least a dozen missed calls from Marissa in the midnight hour while Leo was still at the party. The last missed call was at 1:27, and then they dropped off; she must have fallen asleep.
There’s one text from her, sent at noon today. It says:Alexis told me what happened to your mom. I’m so sorry. Alexis says Cruz is a suspect.
Cruz isnota suspect,Leo thinks. Cruz was the one who found Vivi.
There’s a string of texts from Cruz:
The police impounded my car. Forensics has to check it. My dad came and got me. I’m home.
I’m not sure when you’ll get this, but you need to clean your phone.
There’s gonna be a text from Peter Bridgeman, a photo. Delete it.
I’m home. Call me.
She was my mom too.
Delete that photo, man. Please. We can talk about it later. Or not.
Leo scrolls back to a time he now thinks of not as “morning” or “last night” but “when Mom was alive.”
Sure enough, a text fromMaybe: Peter. Attachment: 1 image.
Leo clicks on it and immediately leans over to dry-heave.
No!he thinks. He breaks out in a sweat. Peter Bridgeman took this? Leo races for the bathroom and dry-heaves into the toilet, then realizes he has left the photo open on his bed where anyone could see it.
He runs back out, snaps up his phone, deletes the photo, then deletes it from his deleted file.
Should he call Peter? He has never liked the kid and they had that fight last fall when Peter got in Leo’s face. Leo had wanted to whip him so badly but there were people around to break it up and Leo supposed he was grateful for that. Peter is sort of family; Willa’s husband, Rip, is Peter’s uncle.
Who else did Peter send this picture to other than Cruz? Leo could call and threaten Peter—but by now, Peter would have heard about Vivi, and even lowlife Peter Bridgeman would feel bad for Leo, so hopefully he’ll delete the picture and that will be the end of that.
But Leo fears it’s just the beginning.
Nantucket
When the news breaks that the writer Vivian Howe has been killed in a hit-and-run off the Madaket Road, everyone has something to say.
She was a local—she had lived on Nantucket for over twenty-five years—but she wasn’t a native. She was from…Pennsylvania? Ohio? That made her a wash-ashore.
A few years earlier, the editor of theNantucket Standard,Jordan Randolph, had pointed out an error in one of Vivian Howe’s novels. She had referred to a ferry unloading at Steamship Wharf rather than Steamboat Wharf, and he’d verbally flogged her in his weekly editorial, saying that if she couldn’t get the basics of Nantucket correct then she had no place writing about this island. This was met with backlash. The ferries were run by the Steamship Authority so nearly all of us—wash-ashore and native—called it Steamship Wharf. Honor Prentice, who was a fifth-generation Nantucketer, wrote a letter to the editor saying that evenhecalled it Steamship Wharf.
Advantage, Vivi.
Most of the small-business owners in town loved Vivi because her books drove tourism—in particular, they brought in day-trippers with money to spend. When Vivi set a scene in her books at a specific restaurant, people wanted to eat there. When a character bought a dress at a certain boutique, her readers wanted to shop there.
Vivi was also blamed for the downside of tourism. As Lucinda Quinboro sat in a line of cars at the intersection by the high school, she said to her best friend and bridge partner, Penny Rosen, “This is all Vivi’s fault, you know.”
