Golden Girl(67)

“Did it?” Carson let her hand fall lightly on Zach’s thigh, which was very bad and very bold. He picked her hand up, kissed it, and said, “You’re extremely beautiful, Carson. But I’m married and a father and you’re half my age.”

“But we nearly died,” Carson said. “We should be celebrating life. I feel like something should happen now.”

Zach signaled for the check. “What happens now is you go to Savannah’s, and I’ll see you back on Nantucket. At…Thanksgiving. Willa is hosting, right?”

“Right.”

“We probably shouldn’t tell anyone about today.”

“Except we’re not doing anything wrong,” Carson said. “You’re rejecting my advances.”

Zach squeezed her hand. “Someday you’ll thank me for rejecting your advances. Nothing good could come of this—not for me and not for you either.”

Zach paid the bill, then escorted Carson to the lobby and waited while the bellman retrieved her bag. He took care of tipping the bellman, which was such a kind and generous thing to do that Carson fell even deeper into her infatuation.

“Shall I wait with you while your Uber comes?” he asked outside the hotel.

“Please don’t,” Carson said. “I’ll be fine.”

Zach kissed her once, gently, on the lips. It fell somewhere between a romantic kiss and an avuncular one. “Thank you. That was the best afternoon I’ve had in a long time.”

“It could get better,” Carson said.

Zach laughed and disappeared through the revolving door.

Carson waited for a few addled seconds as she tried to read that kiss. Then she canceled her Uber and dragged her bag back into the lobby. She moved straight for the elevator bank. She was grateful that some other dude (who gave her a not-so-subtle up-and-down) had a key card that made the elevator rise.

“What floor?” he asked.

“Eleven,” she said. Zach’s key card, still in its little cardboard jacket, had been sitting between them on the table all through lunch. Room 1112.

She rolled her bag down the thick carpet of the hallway to Zach’s door. She stood quietly for a second, and, just like they say happens in the moments before death, Carson’s life passed before her eyes. She saw all of the bad and naughty things she’d done in her life: slapping Willa across the face, stealing Tic Tacs from the Stop and Shop, calling her mother a bitch, telling Amy she had a fat ass, starting the bad rumor about Juliana Corty in sixth grade, vaping, smoking weed, stealing her mother’s Jeep and going for a joy ride on Miacomet Golf Course, doing a beer bong at three in the morning at the Pike house and then having sex with the fraternity president in the hall coat closet, failing all but one course first semester sophomore year, generally being a smart aleck, high maintenance, a relentless attention seeker, and the squeaky wheel.

But nothing Carson had done in her twenty-one years compared to this.

She knocked. A second later, Zach answered. Did he look surprised to see her?

No.

“I watched you from the window,” he said, his voice now husky.

“And?”

He stared at her for a long second, so long that Carson wondered if he was running through his own worst moments. Then he sighed and held open the door.



Carson is startled out of her memories by a pair of headlights creeping slowly down Gray Avenue. She squints. It’s very late now, past one. Who is this?

She catches a glint of red and sees the outline of the Range Rover. It’s Pamela. Carson is about to get busted lurking outside the Bridgeman house. How will she explain this?

She slides all the way down in her seat, fighting the urge to open the car door and vomit on the ground. She hears the Rover slowing down as it gets closer. She’s every bit as scared now as she was when the plane was plummeting. She decides to act surprised to see Pamela. She’ll say she didn’t realize this was the Bridgemans’ house. Will Pamela buy this? She’ll use her mother’s death as an excuse. She’ll say she was on her way home from the Box, took a wrong turn, and pulled over to sober up. She’ll say she has been completely lost since the accident.

The only time Carson has been to the Bridgeman home was for Willa’s bridal shower, which was one of the most unbearable afternoons of Carson’s life. She remembers the squealing over monogrammed towels, the ribbons and bows taped to a paper plate that Willa was supposed to wear as a hat. Carson had slipped out to the driveway to get high—there was simply no other way to tolerate it—and when she came back inside with bleary red eyes and wolfed down half a platter of tea sandwiches that Tink Bonham had had shipped in from Le Petit Chef in Philadelphia, her mother approached her, frowning, and said, “You could have at least invited me to go with you.”

The Rover seems to idle right in front of Carson’s Jeep for long minutes. What is Pamela doing? Carson holds her breath, waiting for Pamela to knock on the window. It’s like a horror film, and Pamela is the hatchet that will hack Carson’s emotional life to bloody pieces.

The knock doesn’t come and Carson can see the lights swing around into the Bridgemans’ driveway. Carson lets her breath go a little at a time, and when she hears the car door slam, she pops her head up just enough to watch Pamela stumble across her front yard and into the house.

Carson counts to fifty, watching the house for lights. No lights. Carson imagines Pamela stumbling up to bed in the dark or, better still, passing out facedown on the kitchen floor.