“We would still destroy two families—yours and what’s left of mine. It has to end, Zach.” She forces the words out. She doesn’t want it to end. She wants Alaska, Hawaii, Paris, however improbable that sounds. “I had a very handsome man ask me out at work. He lives here, he’s single, he’s closer to my age.”
Zach closes his eyes. “Yes, I saw your Instagram.”
Well, that was why she’d posted it, wasn’t it? Carson doesn’t care a whit about her social media except as a way of agitating Zach.
Carson kisses Zach’s cheek and opens her door. “I’ll see you at the next family gathering.” She closes the door gently but firmly and starts walking down the dirt road to her house. She hears one door open and close, then another; he’s moving to the front seat. The engine starts up. She wills him to drive right past her, but if he does, she knows tonight will end with her leaving him desperate voice mails, and in the final one, she’ll threaten to tell Pamela everything if he doesn’t meet her again tomorrow.
The car slows down; she hears the electric hum of his window. “You know I can’t live without you and I can’t stand the thought of anyone else touching you.”
She keeps walking. She wants to be with him but it’s wrong—so wrong that her mother is now dead.
“Carson!” he whispers. It’s risky for them to be out here on the road together. Carson has no idea what Leo is up to—it’s like they’re sad motel guests whose paths cross occasionally—but he could come driving down the road any second, and what would he make of this? Carson at a quarter past midnight communing with their sister’s brother-in-law. “Carson, please stop.”
She keeps walking.
“Please, Carson. I love you.”
I love you too, she thinks. She has never been in love before and has never said the words to a man; she’s a late bloomer in this, but she knows that this is what love feels like. It feels like jumping out of a plane with a parachute that has been packed by someone who’s assured you that, yes, it will open, and you will float safely to the ground.
She walks over to where Zach’s Audi is idling and kisses him, right out in the open.
“See you tomorrow?” he asks.
She nods, and he drives away.
Vivi
Vivi leaps out of her chair. “No,” she says. “Absolutely not. I refuse to believe it.”
“Believe it,” Martha says.
“Carson and Zach Bridgeman?”
“Yes.”
Vivi is…stunned. She’s…aghast. Carson and Zach? This had been going on while Vivi was alive? While Carson was living under Vivi’s roof? Vivi thinks about her final morning on Earth, of Carson coming home at five thirty a.m. Had she been out with Zach? Vivi thinks back to the night at the Oystercatcher when Zach and Pamela sat down at the bar. Carson had been flustered, there was no denying it; she’d stammered, knocked over the menus, spilled bourbon over the rim of the glass. Had they planned that cute little meeting or had Zach ambushed her? Was he cruel enough to bring his wife to the bar where Carson was working without warning her?
Vivi has depicted some scandalous affairs in her novels, but never anything quite this sordid.
“Eh,” Martha says. “Some of them were pretty sordid. Let’s not forget Clay and Meghan in Main Street Gossip.”
“But he’s”—Vivi calculates. She thinks Zach is a year older than Pamela, so he’s about forty-two. And Carson is twenty-one—“twice her age.”
“It happens.”
“I’m the novelist,” Vivi says. “I know it happens. But no, sorry, this I can’t abide.” How long has this been going on? Who else knows? Does Willa know? （Definitely not.） Vivi thinks back. Did Carson and Zach have a close relationship in the past? Not that she’d noticed. Was this thing going on when Willa got married? At the wedding, Vivi had been too consumed with herself, JP, Amy, Dennis, and Lucinda to worry about Carson. “I’m glad you advised me to save my nudges. Because I’m putting an end to this.”
“You can’t,” Martha says. “They’ve fallen in love. Breaking that up requires more than just a nudge.”
“So now you’re telling me my nudges won’t work?”
“They’ll work,” Martha says. “What I’m telling you is a nudge is a nudge. It’s exactly what a parent tries to do in real life. But you don’t have the power to stop love or change it.”