“You’re welcome,” Willa says. This whole encounter has been very distasteful and Willa is still smarting from the comment about Rip. As if!
But that’s not what bothers Willa the most. What bothers her the most is…something she’s too addled to admit even to herself.
Pamela heads to the kitchen, calling out, “Coffee, here I come!” and Willa heads for the front door, scooping the thong up as she leaves.
Amy
Amy loves Sundays with Dennis because he knows how to relax. JP was always up at the crack of dawn, which arrives very, very early in the summer, because he liked to be waiting outside the Hub on Main Street when the guy arrived to deliver the New York Times. JP claimed this behavior had been ingrained in him from childhood in Manhattan—Sundays didn’t begin for Lucinda or his grandparents until the Times was snapped open—but Amy suspects it has more to do with Vivi and the bestseller list. After he secured the paper, it was off to the Downyflake to get a box of doughnuts and then home to make a second pot of coffee.
Dennis, however, likes to sleep in. He has what Amy thinks of as a talent for sleep. He sleeps deep and hard and nothing can stir him or wake him until morning. He makes a soft growling noise like a snuggly woodland creature, a welcome change from JP’s snoring, which sounded like someone jackhammering asphalt. It was occasionally so bad that Amy would think, No wonder Vivi didn’t fight harder to reconcile.
When Dennis wakes up, he heads to the bathroom to relieve himself and brush his teeth, then he returns to bed and makes love to Amy （skillfully; he’s by far the best lover she’s ever had） and falls back to sleep. Sundays are his only day off （same with Amy in the summer） and he doesn’t feel the need to plan anything. Sunday is as God intended: a day of rest.
On the third Sunday in August—the summer is drawing to a close and Amy, for one, is relieved—she and Dennis are lying in bed. They’re at the part of the morning when they have just made love and Dennis has fallen back to sleep. Amy curls up against Dennis’s wide, warm back and kisses the tattoo of an American flag on his right shoulder blade. She can see bright sunshine trying to insinuate itself into the room around the edges of the room-darkening shades. Amy always wishes for a rainy Sunday, the gloomier the better, but she hasn’t been granted one all summer. The Sundays have been painfully beautiful. They’ll have to go to the beach later, she supposes. Or maybe she’ll suggest a late lunch at the Galley. She has found Dennis to be lavish when it comes to spending money on fun, which is another thing she likes about him, in addition to the sex and the sleeping.
They’re really very compatible, she thinks.
On this particular morning, Amy can’t fall back to sleep, probably because of the espresso martini she enjoyed last night at the Pearl. She isn’t quite ready to get out of bed—she spends so much time on her feet at work that it’s a luxury to lie down—so she resorts to looking at her phone.
The only news she actually enjoys is entertainment news. When she clicks on the People magazine site, she sees the following headline: “‘Golden Girl’ and Golden Girl Claim Number-One Spots.”
Keep scrolling, Amy tells herself. But she can’t. She’s lying in bed with Vivian Howe’s ex-boyfriend after a bad breakup with Vivian Howe’s ex-husband. Her adult life here on Nantucket has been shaped by Vivi, and even though Amy has vowed to change this, she clicks the link.
Golden Girl, the novel, is at number one. Amy saw the headline splashed across the front of the Nantucket Standard this past Thursday. Everyone on Nantucket was proud of Vivi because she had finally nabbed the top spot.
The article at People.com says that Brett Caspian, Vivi’s “high-school beau,” recorded the song “Golden Girl” with Apple Music shortly after his appearance on Great Morning USA. It shot straight up the iTunes chart to land at number one. It has twelve million downloads this week.
“Holy crow,” Amy says. She taps Dennis on the shoulder. “Dude, guess what?”
He murmurs unintelligibly. He’s asleep. She should let him be.
“Remember that guy I told you about on TV who wrote that song for Vivi in high school? The song ‘Golden Girl’？” Lorna had been convinced that Dennis watched the segment and was only feigning indifference, but Amy knows he’s given up on all Vivi-related things cold turkey in a way she can’t seem to do. She doesn’t want to bother him, but this is cool. This is rock-star stuff.
Dennis utters another soft mumble.