A full-blown Thanksgiving crisis is averted. But it’s not great being a single mom at the holidays. It’s just not.
JP has the kids for Christmas. He won’t let Vivi see them on Christmas Eve—they’re busy, he says, with church and the party at the Field and Oar Club. Vivi stays home alone, makes a grilled cheese, and wraps presents for the kids （she has intentionally saved her wrapping for tonight, fearing she would end up with nothing else to do）。 She puts on the Vienna Boys’ Choir, opens a split of Veuve Clicquot, and toasts her tiny, bedraggled Charlie Brown tree. She admits to herself that she went overboard on gifts, just like a stereotypical “absentee parent.”
It feels profoundly unfair that JP had an affair and Vivi is the one who has been cast out.
As she drinks her champagne and stacks the gifts in three piles—the children will be over tomorrow afternoon to open gifts, then it’s back to JP’s by six because they’re having a “big Christmas dinner”—she makes some promises to herself. She will not succumb to self-pity, tempting as that may be. She will not bad-mouth JP or Amy. She will buy a big house and spend whatever it takes to make it even warmer and cozier than the one she left. She will be resilient; she will bounce back. She will be happier than ever before.
Willa
Vivi’s publicist, Flor, calls Willa.
“I shared the video of Brett Caspian singing ‘Golden Girl’ with the producers of Great Morning USA,” she says. “Tanya Price wants him on the show next week. Would you forward me his contact info?”
“Oh!” Willa says. “Great Morning USA? Really? Wow…um, I should probably…check with him first? He’s a private person.”
“Of course,” Flor says. “I hope he agrees. This could be huge for the book.”
“Would he just be singing the song?” Willa asks. “Or would he be talking with Tanya about his relationship with my mom?”
“A little of both, I imagine,” Flor says.
That’s what Willa is afraid of. Golden Girl, which the entire country is buying and loving—the Facebook messages gushing over the novel number in the thousands—will be exposed as containing Vivi’s own secret within it, a secret so guarded, Vivi didn’t even tell her own children, her husband, her best friend.
Willa considers calling Flor and saying that she checked with Brett and he’d rather not appear on the show.
But Willa can’t lie like that. She’s a rule follower. She likes to do the right thing, not the easy thing. Calling Brett isn’t easy, but she has to do it.
She tells Brett that she sent the video of him singing “Golden Girl” to Vivi’s publicist. （Did she overstep in doing this without his express permission? Probably.） The publicist then forwarded the video to the producers of Great Morning USA, who showed it to Tanya Price, and now Tanya Price wants Brett to sing on the show.
Brett laughs. “That’s crazy,” he says. “We put Great Morning USA on in our lobby every day. And you’re saying she wants me on to sing?”
“You may have to talk a little bit about your relationship with my mom,” Willa says. “But…if you do that, I think you should exercise discretion.”
Brett is quiet. Willa needs to make herself crystal clear.
“I’m not sure you should tell the nation that my mom got pregnant in high school. Or that she told you she got pregnant.”
“Willa,” Brett says. “I would never do that. I’ll just stick to talking about our romance and the song.”
Willa exhales. “Thank you.” She wonders if she can trust him. Willa has watched Tanya Price enough to know that she’s a serious journalist who finds the heart of every story like a heat-seeking missile, and although Brett seemed pretty sanguine about the whole Vivi-maybe-probably-lying situation, if he wanted to get revenge, this would be the way to do it. “Can I trust you?”
“Willa,” he says, and she feels bad for even asking.
Brett is scheduled to appear on Great Morning USA the following Monday at eight thirty. Willa realizes she has to tell her siblings, her father, and Savannah. She would prefer just not to mention it; Carson and Leo don’t watch TV, JP is busy at the Cone in the morning making ice cream, and Savannah is so busy running her nonprofit and caring for her parents that she has even less free time than JP. Brett could appear, sing his song, and tell the story about dating Vivi, and none of them would ever know.
Lucinda watches Great Morning USA. Penny Rosen too. Probably a lot more people watch than Willa realizes—ten million people. There’s no way to keep this quiet.