Golden Girl(101)

“I’m all set, thanks,” Willa says. She has to decide if she wants to tell Savannah and her father about Brett Caspian together now or wait and tell only Savannah. She decides to just come out with it. “So, listen, this completely bizarre thing happened. I found that guy you were talking about on Mom’s memorial Facebook page, the one who said he was Mom’s boyfriend in high school.”

“Your mother didn’t have a boyfriend in high school,” JP says.

“Did you contact him?” Savannah asks.

“I did.” Willa should have told Savannah sooner, she realizes. She should have told her right away. “He’s legit.”

“He…what?” Savannah says.

“Your mother did not have a boyfriend in high school,” JP says. He lifts himself out of the pool and dries off. “You know there are crackpots out there, sweetie.”

“I invited him to come to Nantucket for the day,” Willa says. She swallows. “He had all these pictures of him and Mom back in Parma, hanging out at the mall and at the Christmas formal. He told me stories about her father…”

“What?” JP says.

“And he played me this song he wrote for Mom,” Willa says. “‘Golden Girl.’ It’s a really, really good song.” Willa stops there. She isn’t going to say a word about the fake pregnancy to anyone, not Savannah, not even Rip.

“What’s the guy’s name?” JP asks.

“Brett Caspian,” Willa says. “He’s going on Great Morning USA on Monday to play the song and talk about Mom. Tanya Price is interviewing him.”

“What?” Savannah and JP say together.





Nantucket




We’ve been keeping an eye on the New York Times bestseller list and the top two spots on Hardcover Fiction have remained the same: Satan’s Weekend by D. K. Bolt at number one and Golden Girl by Vivian Howe at number two. Number three has been something of a revolving door, though one of our favorite Low Country writers, Dorothea Benton Frank, camps out at number three for two weeks. Everyone loves Dottie!



A rumor goes around that a man from Vivian Howe’s past has emerged from the woodwork and will be appearing on Great Morning USA to play a song he wrote for Vivi. None of us want to miss that.

At precisely 8:40 on Monday morning, Tanya Price, our very favorite of all the morning-show hosts, introduces the segment.

“On Saturday, June nineteenth, at approximately seven fifteen a.m., bestselling novelist Vivian Howe was out for her morning run when she was struck by a car and killed. The identity of the driver is still unknown, and the island of Nantucket, located thirty miles off the coast of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, mourns one of its most celebrated locals. Vivian Howe leaves behind three children and thirteen novels about her island home, the most recent of which, Golden Girl, is presently at number two on the New York Times bestseller list.

“The novel begins with a high-school romance between characters Alison Revere and Stott Macklemore. I can’t say much else without spoilers, but what I can tell you is that Stott Macklemore is a budding musician who, in the book, writes a song for Alison called ‘Golden Girl.’ Turns out, Vivian Howe enjoyed her own high-school romance with our next guest, Brett Caspian. He wrote a real song entitled ‘Golden Girl’ over thirty years ago. He’s here to play it for us now.”

The spotlight shifts to the stage, where Brett Caspian sits on a high stool in front of a microphone. Some of us are nervous—who is this guy? Is he talented enough to play for a national audience or will he make a fool of himself?—but when he starts to sing, we are instantly mesmerized. The song is a love ballad with a rock beat. You’re the fire in my eyes. Brett Caspian looks like someone who might have been a heartthrob in the 1980s. Pamela Bonham Bridgeman, who is watching the segment on the office computer with her brother, Rip, thinks Brett’s attire—a white T-shirt and jeans—is meant to be reminiscent of a Bryan Adams album cover. Brett has longish dark but graying hair that flops in his eyes and a soulful, yearning voice with a bit of a rough edge. It’s safe to say that every straight woman on Nantucket—maybe even across the country—instantly develops a crush on him.

When the song is over, many of us applaud in our own kitchens, our own living rooms. Woo-hoo! He did it! What a tribute to Vivi!

Brett strides across the stage to sit down with Tanya Price.



“That was incredible.” Tanya Price is beaming. She looks pretty smitten herself. “So that’s a song you wrote thirty-four years ago for your girlfriend at the time, Vivian Howe. And Vivian made this song central in her novel Golden Girl.” Tanya leans in. “Is the character of Stott Macklemore based on you, Brett? Did Vivian Howe borrow more than just the title of the song from her real-life experience?”

Brett smiles shyly. “The character in the book and I have a lot in common, but it’s not me. I think what Vivi did in this novel was to take the emotions she felt while we were together and use them in the story. We were together our entire senior year of high school and there were a lot of intense feelings. We were growing up in small-town Middle America. It’s the stuff rock and roll is made of—so many classic rock anthems use the tumultuous teenage years as their emotional touchstone.”

On the screen behind Tanya and Brett is a photograph of a young Brett and a young Vivi on a bench at the mall sharing an Orange Julius. Those of us who knew Vivian Howe on Nantucket gasp. It’s undeniably her but she looks so different. Her hair is so long, her makeup so heavy; she looks like a young Joan Jett.