Golden Girl(115)

“Just wait, I’m getting there,” Martha says. “Archie and I barely saw Maribeth after that. We were never invited to New York or Nantucket—though of course, Maribeth would send me your books, so I felt like I’d been there.”

Vivi decides to take this as a compliment.

“And then one winter, Richard slipped on the ice on the sidewalk in New York, broke his hip, and died shortly thereafter. The following summer, Maribeth invited us to Nantucket.” Martha rests her head back against the chaise and Vivi follows her gaze up to the lacy pattern of light on the ceiling. “We had a magical week. We drove onto the beach at Great Point with magnums of Veuve Clicquot—Maribeth made a joke about the merry widow—and we grilled lobster tails and littleneck clams on the hibachi. We walked through the moors, visited Bartlett’s Farm, rode bikes out to Sconset during the first bloom of the cottage roses. We ate at the Boarding House and the Company of the Cauldron; we sang at the piano bar of the Club Car. We did all the things the people in your books do.”

“Wow,” Vivi says. All this time she had no idea that Martha was a…fan. She feels honored.

“We went for an all-day sail on Wind Castle. That boat had a captain and a mate and a chef who prepared lunch, but Maribeth liked to play bartender. She was making her signature cocktail, which she called the Bad Decision: vodka, St. Germain, and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice with a champagne floater. Well, I had five or maybe six Bad Decisions over the course of the afternoon. As the boat rounded Abrams Point and we could see Maribeth’s house in the distance, Maribeth said she was going to swim the rest of the way in, not to worry, she did it all the time, her captain would take care of the boat.” Martha pauses. “I made my own bad decision to join her, and Archie wasn’t about to be shown up by the two of us—we had all grown up together on Lake Michigan, don’t forget. Those two dived in ahead of me and off they went. I almost didn’t go after them, but in the end, I didn’t want to be bested by Maribeth. I was much drunker than I realized and the water was choppy and I hadn’t swum in open water in decades and it was much farther than I anticipated. I became exhausted and started swallowing water and I was dragged under for periods. I tried calling out and waving to Wind Castle but it was so far away that it was useless.” Martha stops. Vivi is holding her breath. “Those two made it to shore and I drowned.”

Vivi whispers, “I remember hearing that story as gossip, but it was never in the paper. And I had no idea it happened to Maribeth’s sister. Though, come to think of it, I hadn’t seen Maribeth in a while. When did this happen?”

“In 2019,” Martha says. “Maribeth saw to it that it was kept quiet. And then six months later, she married Archie.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I was brought up here to the Beyond, and my Person, Geri, gave me one nudge.”

“Only one?” Vivi says.

“The policy changed back in January,” Martha says. “Used to be one, now it’s three. You got lucky.”

“What did you nudge?” Vivi asks. “Didn’t you want to stop Archie and Maribeth from getting married?”

“I tried but I couldn’t,” Martha says. “Turns out, they were in love. They’d been in love for…decades. And nudges can’t change that.”

“Ah,” Vivi says. “So, instead?”

“Instead, I reached down and disappeared Maribeth’s collection of Hermès scarves.” Martha holds the silk square out, exhibit A. “She thought she was robbed.”

“You were allowed to bring the scarves up here?” Vivi asks.

Martha shrugs. “Geri was a progressive.”

Vivi marvels over this story. She thinks…well, what she thinks is that it would make one hell—oops, heck—of a novel, and it falls right in Vivi’s wheelhouse. The Swan Dive, she would call it. But before Vivi can ask Martha what she thinks—could she write a novel and distribute it, maybe, to the angels in the choir?—she turns to find that Martha is gone.





Leo




In one week, Leo’s father and Savannah will drive him out to Boulder. They’re taking the route Vivi mapped out and they’re stopping at all the places Vivi chose. Savannah found the itinerary in the Notes app of Vivi’s phone.

“It’ll be kind of like your mom is with us,” Savannah says. “I have her playlists and everything.”

Kind of like is just another way of saying nothing like, in Leo’s opinion. He has lost so much this summer, and although a part of him is ready to move on—get off the island, start a life somewhere new—he knows he has unfinished business.

Marissa has a list of things she wants to do before they both leave for college, and sleeping out on the beach at Madequecham is the only thing left. Marissa has some romantic vision of a bottle of wine, a couple of sleeping bags, and a sky filled with stars, and although Leo goes through the motions of preparing for this outing, he has no intention of sleeping on the beach.

He’s going to live his truth.

When he picks Marissa up, she’s subdued, and when he asks what’s wrong, she says that she had an unpleasant phone conversation with Rip Bonham about her claim.

“He thinks I’m lying about the timing of my accident,” she says.