Zach reaches out and takes Carson in his arms and rocks her back and forth, shushing her. “I’m so sorry, baby. But you can’t stay here. You have to go.”
Carson raises her face and they start kissing. Carson feels Zach’s entire body leap to life; he’s helpless when they’re together. How can he possibly think he could break up with her?
He runs his hand up her T-shirt and unbuttons her skirt.
Vivi
She has been watching closely because she’s worried Carson is going to do something stupid—hurt herself or someone else. Vivi should have used a nudge to close the bathroom door so Jaime—poor, sweet Jaime—didn’t see Carson, and Carson didn’t get fired. Or, better still, she should have had Carson drop the cocaine into the toilet. George is right—Carson needs help. She’s on a path to self-destruction.
What can Vivi do?
At that instant, the green door swings open and Martha enters. She has tied a brilliant blue Hermès scarf at the corners, slipped her arms through the holes, and is wearing it as a little shrug.
“Now, that,” Vivi says, “is the cutest look yet.” Then she remembers herself. “What are you doing here? Do I need you?”
“Pull back your scope,” Martha says.
“Gladly,” Vivi says. She was about to leave Carson and Zach anyway, for obvious reasons. She would very much like to nudge them far, far away from each other, but any fool can see that they are beyond the point of a nudge.
Vivi widens her scope—and gasps. Pamela’s red Range Rover is rolling down Hooper Farm toward Parker Lane. She’ll be home in two minutes.
“Carson!” Vivi shouts.
“She can’t hear you.”
Vivi stops herself from swearing out loud, but of course it doesn’t matter; Martha reads minds. “What can I do?” Vivi asks. The Range Rover turns onto Parker and before Vivi can say one more word, it turns onto Gray Avenue.
Carson and Zach are going to get caught. Vivi tries to predict what this will mean. Carson will be vilified by Pamela and by the elder Bonhams—who is Vivi kidding? She’ll be vilified by the entire community. Nantucket will blame Carson instead of Zach. Carson is wild, they’ll say. She gets fired one minute and is revealed to be a homewrecker the next. Vivi thinks about Peter Bridgeman. He’s an odd duck but Vivi would never want to see him hurt. However, Vivi’s main concern is Willa. Poor Willa will be caught in a firestorm. She will take Pamela’s side over her own sister’s because Willa has an intractable sense of right and wrong; she doesn’t even like reading about infidelity. （She didn’t care for Along the South Shore for this reason, she told Vivi.）
Everyone in Vivi’s family has been through enough without piling this on top. Getting fired will, Vivi suspects, be good for Carson in the end. But this—no. The affair with Zachary Bridgeman needs to stop, obviously. But not like this.
“Is there a way for Carson to realize she has almost been caught but not be caught?” Vivi asks. “Can we scare her straight?”
“Use a nudge,” Martha says. “Pronto.”
Carson and Zach are going at it on the living-room sofa. Carson’s clothes are scattered across the floor of both the living room and the hallway. When Pamela pulls into the driveway, there’s a three-tone chime that sounds throughout the house. It’s an alarm, Vivi realizes, to let the occupants know someone has arrived. An alarm for this reason feels like overkill—they’re on Nantucket!—but of course, Pamela works in insurance. Possibly the alarm company offered it to Pamela free of charge. The alarm is worth its weight in gold in this situation.
Zach leaps to his feet, pushing Carson off him and into the coffee table, where she knocks over a pair of candlesticks.
“She’s home,” Zach says. “Go out the back.”
Carson is naked. “I need my clothes.”
She and Zach snatch up Carson’s clothes. Pamela, meanwhile, turns off the ignition and reaches into the back seat for her sports duffel and her racket.
“I can’t find my thong,” Carson says. “What did you do with it?”
Zach runs a frantic hand around the cushions of the sofa. “Just take what clothes you have and go.”
Pamela reaches for the car door.
“Nudge,” Martha prompts. “She isn’t going to make it out of the house in time. Nudge right now.”
“How?” Vivi says.
“Call Pamela,” Martha says.
“Call her? On her cell? How can I call her? I’m dead.”