Golden Girl(14)

Willa once said, “Dennis clearly isn’t Mr. Right, but he’s Mr. Right Now. Mom likes him. She doesn’t need someone complicated; she’s complicated enough all by herself.”

But in the past year, Rip has grown quite fond of Dennis. The insurance office’s furnace went on the fritz in January, and Rip had called Dennis at six o’clock on a Tuesday evening. He’d shown up right away and stayed until almost midnight to get it up and running. Rip and Dennis were alone in the office for those hours and Dennis told great stories about hunting ducks over on Tuckernuck and about the Datsun 240Z he’d restored in high school before he was even old enough to drive.

Rip had gone home and woken Willa up just to tell her with wonderment, “Dennis is actually pretty cool.”

“She got hit by a car at the end of Kingsley while she was running,” Rip says to Dennis now. “I’m so sorry, man. I am just so…sorry.” The words feel wrong in his mouth, like he’s chewing on gristle.

Dennis’s face crumples and he bends over, hands on knees, and starts sucking in air like he’s just finished a dozen wind sprints on the practice field. Rip wants to vaporize. He can’t even add something about how much Vivi cared for Dennis because Willa told Rip that her mother had broken up with Dennis a couple of weeks earlier.

At that second, Willa calls from the other room, “Rip?”

Rip puts a gentle hand on Dennis’s shoulder and goes to his wife.

“Dennis is here,” he says.

“Who else have you told?”

“Just Pamela,” he says. “I told her to call my parents.” The elder Bonhams are on a Mediterranean cruise.

“I need to make a list,” Willa says. “Mom’s agent, her editor, her publicist. There’s going to have to be some kind of formal announcement made by her publishing house. I need to find out if there’s a will and who’s allowed to access her bank accounts.”

“Babe,” Rip says. “There’s time for that later. You’re in shock right now.”

Willa stares at him. Her pretty face is blank; her brown eyes are glazed over. “I am in shock.”

There’s a niggling thought in Rip’s mind. “Have you told your father?”

Willa gasps. “Oh my God.”

She has not told her father.

Willa’s eyes widen and she turns around to look at Carson and Leo, who are sodden heaps on the sofa. “Did either of you text Dad?” Willa asks. “Or call him?”

Leo has his head between his knees like he’s on a plane that’s going down. “No,” he says.

“No,” Carson says. She’s pressing tissues against her closed eyes. “And I’m not gonna.”

“Would you do it, Rip, please?” Willa says. “We just can’t.”

Rip sighs. “Sure.” He kisses Willa’s forehead, then heads back to the kitchen. Dennis has disappeared, and Rip feels like he let the guy down—he should have been more comforting—and he decides he’ll reach out to him later. He needs to call JP now before he hears the news from someone else, before JP’s girlfriend, Amy, hears it from someone at the salon or JP’s mother, Lucinda, finds out from someone as she’s having lunch on the patio at the Field and Oar Club.

Rip steps outside the kitchen door and nearly trips over a pan filled with water on the flagstone path. Rip empties the water out of the pan and carries it to the kitchen; it has the scorched remains of something stuck to the bottom. He puts it in the sink to soak.

He’s stalling.

When he steps outside again, his hands are shaking. He calls JP’s cell phone but gets his voice mail. Leaving a message isn’t an option. Rip tries to think. Should he call Amy? Amy is a stylist at RJ Miller. She has always been jealous of Vivi. She might offer lukewarm condolences, and that’s not anything Rip wants to hear.

He tries JP’s cell again—again, the call goes to voice mail—and then the ice cream parlor.

JP answers on the first ring. “Good morning, the Cone.” In the background, Rip hears the Rolling Stones singing “Brown Sugar.”

“JP?” Rip says. “It’s Rip.”

“Rip!” JP says. His voice is peppy. He’s probably preparing the shop for a busy summer Saturday, checking inventory, making ten gallons of brownie-batter ice cream, the Cone’s most popular flavor, writing out the specials on the board: Nantucket blackberry sorbet, peach cobbler, and lemon square, with ripples of curd and graham cracker bits. JP has no idea that in the next second, his life will be forever changed.

“I have some bad news,” Rip says. “Tragic news.”

The music stops. “Is it Willa?”

“It’s Vivi, actually,” Rip says. “She’s…well, she was out running and she got hit by a car. On Kingsley. Right at the end of Kingsley.”

“What?” JP says. “Is she okay? Did she break anything? Did she go to the hospital?”

“She’s…” Rip clears his throat. “She’s dead, JP. She died.”

There’s silence.

Rip feels the years fall away. He was only twelve years old when he asked Willa Quinboro to the Valentine’s Day dance at the Nantucket Boys and Girls Club. Willa’s parents had picked them up from the dance on their way home from dinner at Fifty-Six Union. Rip can still remember the smell of Vivi’s perfume mixing with some other intriguing scent that Rip now knows was truffle oil from the fries in a to-go box. JP and Vivi were younger than Rip’s parents by a good ten years and he remembers how loose and fun-loving and…happy they seemed. He’d spent days with them on the beach at Fortieth Pole, where they would grill salmon or chicken for lunch, and football Sundays at their house, when Vivi made hot artichoke dip and pepperoni bread and spicy mixed nuts. Vivi would sit on the arm of JP’s chair, and JP would snake an arm around Vivi’s waist as they yelled and cheered for the Patriots. They were a dynamic couple. Rip had been enthralled by them.