“You sound like your mother,” Marissa said. “She hates me, you know. She never wanted us to get this serious.”
“She thinks we’re too young.”
“What about Willa and Rip? They’re married.” Marissa wrapped her arms around Leo. “And we’re getting married. You even said so.”
Leo knew he was guilty of indulging Marissa’s fantasy of the two of them getting married after they graduated from college. For most of their relationship, Leo had been content to go along with whatever Marissa wanted just to keep the peace. But those days were over.
“Sorry, Marissa. I don’t want to be with you anymore.”
“You’re drunk.”
“I’ve had one beer. I know what I’m saying. I know what I’m doing.” He sighed. “I just want to be free.”
There had been more discussion, Marissa trying to persuade him to take it back, Marissa telling him he’d be sorry, Marissa apologizing for the times she’d been cruel—she couldn’t help it, she said; she had father issues—Marissa getting angry and calling Leo names, Marissa crying, and, finally, Marissa storming off, which came as a relief. Leo pulled another beer out of the ice-filled trash can and found Cruz, who was sitting by the fire talking to his girlfriend, Jasmine Kelly, who was going to Vanderbilt in the fall.
“That’s done,” Leo said. “I broke up with her.”
Jasmine made a noise of disbelief with her lips and Leo said, “I’m serious. It’s over. No turning back.”
“Whoa,” Cruz said. “Are we staying or going?”
“Staying,” Leo said. “But I need something stronger than this beer.”
There are at least a dozen missed calls from Marissa in the midnight hour while Leo was still at the party. The last missed call was at 1:27, and then they dropped off; she must have fallen asleep.
There’s one text from her, sent at noon today. It says: Alexis told me what happened to your mom. I’m so sorry. Alexis says Cruz is a suspect.
Cruz is not a suspect, Leo thinks. Cruz was the one who found Vivi.
There’s a string of texts from Cruz:
The police impounded my car. Forensics has to check it. My dad came and got me. I’m home.
I’m not sure when you’ll get this, but you need to clean your phone.
There’s gonna be a text from Peter Bridgeman, a photo. Delete it.
I’m home. Call me.
She was my mom too.
Delete that photo, man. Please. We can talk about it later. Or not.
Leo scrolls back to a time he now thinks of not as “morning” or “last night” but “when Mom was alive.”
Sure enough, a text from Maybe: Peter. Attachment: 1 image.
Leo clicks on it and immediately leans over to dry-heave.
No! he thinks. He breaks out in a sweat. Peter Bridgeman took this? Leo races for the bathroom and dry-heaves into the toilet, then realizes he has left the photo open on his bed where anyone could see it.
He runs back out, snaps up his phone, deletes the photo, then deletes it from his deleted file.
Should he call Peter? He has never liked the kid and they had that fight last fall when Peter got in Leo’s face. Leo had wanted to whip him so badly but there were people around to break it up and Leo supposed he was grateful for that. Peter is sort of family; Willa’s husband, Rip, is Peter’s uncle.
Who else did Peter send this picture to other than Cruz? Leo could call and threaten Peter—but by now, Peter would have heard about Vivi, and even lowlife Peter Bridgeman would feel bad for Leo, so hopefully he’ll delete the picture and that will be the end of that.
But Leo fears it’s just the beginning.
Nantucket
When the news breaks that the writer Vivian Howe has been killed in a hit-and-run off the Madaket Road, everyone has something to say.
She was a local—she had lived on Nantucket for over twenty-five years—but she wasn’t a native. She was from…Pennsylvania? Ohio? That made her a wash-ashore.
A few years earlier, the editor of the Nantucket Standard, Jordan Randolph, had pointed out an error in one of Vivian Howe’s novels. She had referred to a ferry unloading at Steamship Wharf rather than Steamboat Wharf, and he’d verbally flogged her in his weekly editorial, saying that if she couldn’t get the basics of Nantucket correct then she had no place writing about this island. This was met with backlash. The ferries were run by the Steamship Authority so nearly all of us—wash-ashore and native—called it Steamship Wharf. Honor Prentice, who was a fifth-generation Nantucketer, wrote a letter to the editor saying that even he called it Steamship Wharf.