Chapter Two
Vivian
Vivian wakes up in a stormy mood. She never rises before nine, but the morning sunlight floods the house at 7:30. It’s disorienting to wake up in an unfamiliar bed, especially when she remembers why she’s here. To make things worse, she’d barely heard from Oscar yesterday. She’d texted him walls of messages, the kind you need to scroll down to read in full, but he only shot back a short response: Oof. Will call tonight. She waited up for him for hours.
Lying in the dark, her head spun with furious monologues. She imagined ripping into her dad, berating him for being a cowardly liar and slimy hypocrite, cataloguing his failures, and watching him squirm with shame. There was one part of the mental script she couldn’t get quite right, though: She had this embarrassing urge to ask why he’d told Lucy about Vivian but not vice versa. Why didn’t he respect Vivian enough to give her the truth? It was a pointless exercise that only made her more resentful. She’d never know. She fell asleep clutching her phone and missed Oscar’s call at 1:18 a.m.
Vivian is used to stretches of silence or absence here and there—she can’t blame him for those. She knew full well what she was getting into when she fell for Oscar. But if a woman’s ever allowed to demand attention, it’s times like now. He wouldn’t be crass enough to think this way, but he has a seven-figure reason to text back. There’s money at stake that will have life-changing consequences for them both. The longer she goes without connecting with Oscar, the more anxious she gets. This is why, after what happened with her ex, she used to keep her relationships light and shallow—if it was never that serious, she couldn’t get hurt. Well, look at how that panned out. Oscar’s absence throbs.
In the kitchen below, Vivian hears footsteps, the rush of the tap, clattering drawers, a whistling kettle. The door to the back deck slides open and shut. Once Lucy’s outside, Vivian pries herself out of bed. She moves slowly downstairs and brews coffee, then remembers they have no milk and resigns herself to drinking it black on the front porch overlooking the scrubby lawn. There’s no wind today, only a flat, oppressive sun, the kind you could bake under. She hates the heat and can’t escape it—the house has no air-conditioning.
Unfortunately, it’s probably time to call her mother. She hasn’t exactly been rushing to tell Celeste about Lucy, but she needs to do it eventually. She can’t recall a time before their relationship was a source of frustration. Celeste published her first novel, The Mistress in the Mountains , when Vivian was five. As a kid, she had no interest in Celeste’s work; she knew her mother wrote grown-up books she wasn’t allowed to read yet. It wasn’t until Vivian was eleven and overheard her mother discussing her next novel, Naked in New York, that she began to pay attention. Naked? Ew!
“You can’t do this to me,” Vivian wailed. “It’s too gross. And embarrassing.”
“I’m sorry, I signed a contract,” Celeste said, unfazed.
Vivian tried appealing to Hank to see if he’d listen to her reasonable concerns. She could barely get the word “naked” out in front of her dad; she mostly made her plea to the rug beneath her feet. He only said, “Aw, hon. Nobody you know is going to read it. Promise.”
He was very wrong. Naked in New York —a barely fictionalized erotic novel about a frisky pair of Columbia coeds named Celine and Hal—debuted at number five on the New York Times bestseller list. It stayed there for a life-changing sixteen weeks in a row. Celeste became a household name. The most obnoxious boys in Vivian’s grade swiped copies from atop their mothers’ nightstands and quoted mortifying passages out loud to her between classes. The publication of the book instantly eclipsed Calhoun Middle School’s previously most talked-about scandal, that time Tabitha Zhu got stage fright while performing the lead role in the spring musical and accidentally peed during her biggest solo.
It wasn’t the last time Vivian resented Celeste’s career. The next year, after her mother had returned from a busy book tour, Vivian had asked her to sit side by side at the kitchen table, where she was doing a math worksheet. Vivian had missed her, and the click-clacks of Celeste’s typing alongside the scratch of her own pencil was nice. When she got to a question that stumped her, she asked for help.
“Mom?”
Nothing.
A little louder, “Mom?”
Nothing.
Vivian tapped on Celeste’s laptop, and a moment later, her mother peeled her gaze from the screen. “Sorry, were you saying something?”
The times Celeste did pay attention to Vivian, it didn’t necessarily go well. She was typically self-conscious about her grades in English, but when she earned an A on an essay about Shakespeare’s portrayal of female ambition in Macbeth , she was proud to hand it over to her mother. Celeste returned it covered in red ink. Whenever Vivian ordered fettucine alfredo at her favorite Italian restaurant, Celeste pointedly ordered the plain salmon. Once, in the dressing room at Abercrombie depending on your perspective, she comes across as either regal or absurd.
Hank was more even-keeled, but less present—he said he worked hard all year so he could vacation with Vivian at the lake in peace. They ate dinner as a family, but after his final bite, he’d retreat to his home office. Aside from August, quality time was crammed into slivers of weekends. He’d take her to the Central Park Zoo, or Mars 2112, or the new Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, or wherever seemed cool to Vivian that year. They’d go to Pinkberry for fro-yo, and he didn’t say a word when she loaded up on toppings. He asked about her schoolwork, her friends, which song from his generation Glee had covered that week. Back then, she was too naive to appreciate their bond. It didn’t occur to her that it could change.
Before Vivian loses her nerve, she punches her mother’s name into her phone. When it comes to her conversations with Celeste, dread is nothing new. This time, though, it’s agonizing. As a teenager, she’d been tormented by the question of whether she should confess her suspicions about her dad. Ultimately, she decided to keep quiet. Celeste clearly loved Hank, dedicating book after book to him. Some notes were coyly intimate; others displayed earnest gratitude. Vivian didn’t want to be responsible for ruining her parents’ marriage.
A bead of sweat trickles down her spine as the phone trills. Is this how her mother felt when she delivered the news about Hank? She picks up on the second ring. Vivian almost wishes she hadn’t.
“Vivian? Is everything all right?”
“Yeah! I’m fine.”
Celeste’s voice wilts with relief. “Oh, good.”
Vivian needs to burn off her nervous energy. She charges down the driveway onto Loon Road. To her right, a lush emerald forest stretches tall. To her left, sun-dappled water glitters beyond a row of ramshackle old cabins. A brilliant orange monarch butterfly flaps by lazily. The whole scene is blanketed by an aquamarine sky. It’s a sharp contrast to New York’s crammed concrete blocks. Portland—Maine’s largest “city,” with sixty thousand people—is a happy medium between the two, though she and Hank rarely bothered to make the hour-long drive.
“How are you?” Vivian asks. It was a useless question. Obviously not well.
“Brilliantly,” her mother deadpans.
Oh, Celeste’s day is only going to get worse.
“So? What’s up?”
“Something…strange happened yesterday. At the house.”
She waits a beat to see if Celeste jumps in to explain, but she doesn’t.
“When I showed up, somebody was already there,” Vivian continues.
Her mother gasps. “A burglar?”
Hank used to lock up at the end of each summer, but during those languid, relaxed August days, security never felt like an issue. The doors weren’t just unlocked—half the time, they’d forget to pull the sliding doors shut or would leave the garage door wide open. Anybody could’ve sailed right in. But getting to the house required winding through narrow, bumpy back roads and a thicket of woods, down a dead-end street. If there was a burglar in town, there were plenty of more accessible places to steal from.
“No, nothing like that. Some girl. I didn’t recognize her.” Again, she pauses, waiting for Celeste to jump in. Her chest is tight with anticipation. “Her name is Lucy.”
She can’t tell if the silence is steely or shocked.
“I told him so many times, it’s not safe to keep that place unlocked.”
“Mom,” Vivian says, a little more sharply. “Does that ring a bell? Daughter of Dawn Webster?”
“No, should it?” She sounds defensive.
At events, when journalists or avid readers approach her, she has a habit of darting discreet, pointed glances at her agent or publicist, meaning, Am I supposed to know this person? Based on their subtle nods or tilts of the head, she’ll warmly say, “It’s so lovely to meet you,” or, “Oh, fabulous! You’re here!” She encounters an endless parade of people. But she wouldn’t forget Lucy or Dawn—she couldn’t.
Vivian exhales. This is it. “Lucy is Dad’s daughter. His other daughter. They spent every July together at the lake.”
There’s a bark of stunned, uncomfortable laughter. “No. No, that’s not true.”
She recognizes the shift in Celeste’s voice—it’s richer, a hair louder, and every syllable is enunciated with precision. It’s the same tone she puts on in front of a crowd.
“Mom,” she says, exasperated.
Celeste plows on. “That’s a scam. I did a storyline like that in Trouble in Tahiti. A well-off man dies, a piece of scum finds the obituary and shows up, pretending to be a long-lost relative to get a slice of the pie.”
“She hasn’t asked about money.” Yet , Vivian thinks.
“Yet,” Celeste says. Then she sniffs. “Of course you’d know that if you actually read Trouble in Tahiti .”
Vivian ignores that jab. She’s read several of her mother’s books, but there are dozens. And while it’s true that Celeste enthusiastically supports Vivian’s work, ordering bottles of her favorite Sancerre is not exactly a burden.
“I’m serious. She knows all about him. There are photos of them together. Not even Meryl Streep could fake a reaction like that when I told her he died.”
Her mother waves this off. “It could be Photoshop.”
“Lucy and I are six months apart. He cheated on you right before you got married.” Vivian doesn’t enjoy pressing this point, but it has to be done.
Celeste digests this information silently for long enough that Vivian has to ask, “Mom? Are you still there?”
She can imagine her mother whipping off her glasses and rubbing one temple, eyes pinched shut in irritation.
“Don’t talk about Dad like that,” she snaps.
Vivian’s jaw drops. “That’s what you care about right now? Shouldn’t you be shocked? Furious?”
“Don’t tell me what to feel.”
“You knew.”
This conversation is veering sickeningly close to her final conversation with her dad. The last time she accused a parent of lying, it didn’t go well.
“So? He was my husband, of course I knew.”
“Then why pretend you didn’t?” Vivian explodes. Her voice bounces between the trees.
Her whole life, she’d kept quiet to avoid hurting her mother—and for what?
“Why are you entitled to know private things about my marriage?”
“Oh, don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Shut me out!”
She’s stewed over Celeste forever, but never thought she’d throw something like that in her mother’s face.
“Vivian,” Celeste says flatly, “you’re being very dramatic.”
“You’re doing it again. You’re not actually listening to me.”
“I’m listening to you right now, and I’m telling you, this isn’t up for discussion.”
“You always do this. You don’t think I’m worth paying attention to.”
“That’s not true. But I’m busy. I can’t spend all my time thinking about you.”
Vivian squeezes her phone and holds it away in disgust, shaking. She’s enraged enough to fire off something cruel and hang up, but a deeper part of her wants to keep digging.
All she says is “You’re insufferable.”
“Don’t be rude. I’m feeling very dehydrated, this isn’t a good time for me to talk. Let’s—”
“Mom.”
“I think I’ve got a migraine coming on.”
“Don’t go.”
“Thank you for calling, but I have some work to do, so—”
She’s been having trouble writing her next novel, Pleasure and Spain. She’s desperate to deliver a knockout success; her agent has warned that if she doesn’t, her publisher likely won’t offer another book deal.
“Mom, please!” Vivian’s voice cracks. “Just listen!”
“What?” Celeste spits out.
Now that Vivian has her mother’s attention, she’s nearly at a loss for words. “How did you find out? How long have you known?”
“About the girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, it’s been years.”
“Dad told you?”
“He didn’t have to.”
The vagueness is infuriating. “So then why did you let him keep this from me? Why did you keep it from me?”
Celeste takes a shaky breath, all airs of imperiousness gone. “Because…it wasn’t your business. You had a fabulous childhood. I didn’t want to ruin it.”
“What about when I was older?”
“I don’t owe you every answer, Vivian.”
She recoils. “Do you know how I found out? It wasn’t just because I ran into her yesterday.”
Her mother sighs. “No. I suppose you want to tell me.”
“If you’re not too ‘dehydrated’ to listen,” she says bitterly.
“Oh, Vivian, grow up.”
It was a Saturday night when Vivian was fourteen. She was at her friend Cleo Vega’s apartment for a sleepover—not that they still called it that—discussing their upcoming eighth-grade graduation ceremony. Vivian had been campaigning hard for her parents to let her celebrate at Pastis with some friends. A party at their apartment would’ve felt kind of babyish. A dinner out, where they could order mocktails and wear slinky tops with 7 for All Mankind jeans, felt more glamorous. Her parents had been promising to discuss it for weeks.
Important conversations aside, she and Cleo embarked on their grand plans to watch all four hours of Titanic , which was really just an excuse to watch the scene in the fogged-up carriage. Before they got there, though, Cleo’s dog, a Yorkie named Cashmere, managed to eat an entire package of prosciutto, plastic included. Cleo went with her family to the emergency vet, and Vivian walked home.
Her mother was away on a “writing retreat”—her term for jotting down ideas in between mimosas and happy hour while vacationing with her author friends. Hank’s home office was just off the foyer, and when Vivian walked in, she heard a voice on speakerphone.
“Do you think you’ll come?” It sounded like a girl her age. “Mom didn’t know if you’d make it.”
She crept closer. The door was half open.
“I told Mom that—”
Hank paced into view. They made bewildered eye contact. Vivian froze. He yanked the door shut, but it didn’t fully block out the sound.
“Hey, hey, one sec,” he interjected. The speakerphone cut out. “Let’s talk later, okay?”
When he opened the door, his cheeks were pink.
He loosened his tie and cleared his throat. “What happened? I thought you were staying over.”
“Cleo’s dog got sick. Who was that?”
He glanced down at his BlackBerry. With the press of a button, the screen went dark. “Tim’s daughter called. She couldn’t reach him and thought he might be with me.”
His partner at the firm had a girl about Vivian’s age.
Time slowed. For a moment, she had perfect clarity. The girl had said “Mom,” not “my mom.” Vivian could pretend nothing had happened or she could pry. No matter what she did next, she had the eerie sense that the decision would have life-changing consequences. It felt like stumbling into a movie, only she’d never been handed a script.
“Really? It didn’t sound like her.” She crossed her arms so he couldn’t see her hands shaking.
Hank clenched his jaw. “You haven’t seen her in years. She’s grown up, just like you.”
Vivian felt painfully young right then, unsure what to do. “Did you call her mom ‘Mom’?”
He furrowed his brow. “What? No.”
She was at a loss for words.
He took the opportunity to change the subject. “Did you eat dinner? There are leftovers in the fridge.”
She lied and said yes just so she could get away from him. In the safety of her room, she locked the door and sobbed. Up until then, she hadn’t ever given her parents’ marriage much thought. Sometimes they bickered, yes, but most of the time, they said “I love you” to each other before hanging up the phone. They weren’t divorced like some of her friends’ parents. But neither did they hold hands while watching embarrassingly sexy French art films in the living room, like Cleo’s parents.
Over the next few weeks, she tried to guess her dad’s email password (no dice), snoop through his BlackBerry (impossible, it was always on him), and riffle through his home office (nothing). She worried she’d misread the entire situation, but her dad seemed tense—that had to mean something. With no real leads, she figured he’d be more likely to have a secret daughter in Fox Hill than anywhere else, but that didn’t help her much, either. What was she supposed to do, wander around town asking strangers to point her toward the local love child?
Ultimately, she got the dinner at Pastis with ten of her friends. There were sparkling lemon mocktails garnished with fragrant sprigs of mint, towers of jumbo shrimp cocktail, and an array of black tube tops showing off freshly spray-tanned shoulders. The table buzzed with conversations about camp: which hot CITs were coming back as counselors; whose crushes from last summer had growth spurts; the rumor about the two swim instructors who got fired after they got caught drunk, naked, and all over each other in the hot tub after lights-out. By the start of July, Vivian had settled into a top bunk in the oldest girls’ cabin, and Hank had left the city for his annual business trip to San Francisco.
When Vivian unearths it all for the first time in her life, she heaves a sigh. Celeste had interrupted a few times, but Vivian had successfully quieted her with “I’m speaking.” She’d been mindlessly pacing the same stretch of the road. Now she keeps going.
“You could’ve said something to me,” Celeste says. Her earlier haughtiness has deflated.
“I didn’t want to risk hurting you,” Vivian admits.
“Oh, please. I’m fine.”
Celeste’s father, a Holocaust survivor from Austria, apparently had several affairs that were an open secret. After everyone and everything he’d lost, his wife wasn’t going to pry him away from his mistresses, too. He died when Vivian was young, but she has a few memories of him: his gruff, accented English; the serial number inked on his arm; the tufts of white hair indicating he was twenty years older than everyone else’s grandparents—time had been stolen from him. Maybe Celeste is used to this particular kind of forgiveness.
“And—” Vivian bites her lip, anticipating that Celeste won’t like hearing this. “I didn’t think I could tell you.” She can practically hear Celeste frown.
“You can tell me anything, I’m your mother.”
Keeping her relationship with Oscar secret came naturally to Vivian because she’d had years of practice burying the truth.
Vivian sighs. “That’s the thing—I can’t.”
Vivian stews in resentment until she reaches the end of Loon Road. At the entrance of the street, there’s a tree with a dozen hand-painted signs nailed to its trunk indicating which families live where: McCormick, Foley, Bouchard. Hank never wanted to put one up. “Call me paranoid, but there’s no reason to make it so obvious where the one Jewish family lives around here,” he once said. Since then, Vivian hasn’t been able to see those signs without thinking about it.
She needs a distraction from her bitterness. On the way back, she calls the Realtor. Celeste had passed along his number last week. When Hank was growing up, he was friendly with another kid who also spent summers on Fox Hill Lake. They stayed in touch, and the friend gave Celeste a condolence call when he heard the news. He owns a real estate brokerage in Portland now, so Celeste told him she’d send Vivian his way. After five rings, Vivian thinks it’ll go to voicemail. Instead, someone picks up.
“Gray Realty,” a smooth voice says.
“Hi, I’m looking for Eric Gray?”
“I’m his son.”
“Oh, could you pass along a message?”
“Yeah, but we actually work together. Maybe I could help.”
Vivian introduces herself, explaining the connection. He clucks his tongue with sympathy at her name.
“Oh, I heard you might be calling. I’m so sorry to hear about your dad. I never met him, but my dad has nothing but great stories about him.”
Her face automatically slides into the pinched smile she wore during shiva. “That’s nice to hear, thank you.”
“So, the place is on Fox Hill Lake?” he asks.
“Yeah. With my dad gone, it’s more upkeep than my mom and I can handle. He was always more into it here than we were,” Vivian says, like she has to justify her choice.
Guilt flashes through her. “Always” isn’t quite right. She remembers the August afternoons of her childhood: diving off the dock, seeing how far she could swim, having fun making pizza from scratch because she missed home. Those days are behind her, though. The shift happened slowly. As she reached high school, a full month away from her friends felt like torture. She spent more and more time indoors, collaging together her back-to-school shopping lists with photos clipped from Seventeen, Teen Vogue , and Nylon : liquid leggings, red skinny jeans, headbands blooming with rosettes.
After she heard that phone call, things changed between them. She occasionally baited him. At his firm’s holiday party, she positioned herself within earshot of her dad and chatted with Tim’s daughter. “Was my dad helpful that time you called him?” she asked.
The girl said, “What?”
Another time, she suggested visiting in July instead of August, and kept pressing the issue even after he said no. She was waiting for him to come clean, but he never did. By the time she left for college, it was too late to fix what had broken. Whenever she visited the lake, she dreaded sunset. She didn’t want to sit side by side with him in painful silence.
The Realtor’s son asks some questions about the property, some of which she can answer (number of bedrooms: four, though none has any privacy) and many of which she can’t (lot size: “I guess…big?”). He says he’ll come by soon to measure.
“When would you like to sell?”
The sooner she has the money, the sooner her next chapter can kick off. “Immediately?”
“We’ll work as fast as we can. On your end, start getting the house in order—clear out the clutter, fix anything broken.”
“On it.”
By now, she’s made it back. Lucy meets her on the front porch. “That was the Realtor?”
Vivian braces herself for another unpleasant encounter. She doesn’t relish being the bad guy.
“It was,” she says evenly.
Lucy leans against the shingled exterior and crosses her arms. Her eyes are puffy from crying.
“It’s really upsetting that you’re selling the house.”
It’s like she’s daring Vivian to be heartless enough to take this away from her, poor Lucy, who subsisted on leftover scraps of Hank’s attention.
“It’s more complicated than that. There are practicalities to consider.”
“Practicalities?” she echoes, sounding bitter. “It’s not like you really need the money.”
Heat creeps into Vivian’s cheeks. “That’s none of your business.”
“But you don’t. Not that badly.”
“You don’t know that.”
“A single year of tuition at that private school you went to cost thirty-six thousand dollars,” Lucy snaps.
She recoils. Did it? That sounds like the right ballpark for Calhoun back then, though frankly, she doesn’t know for sure.
“It’s more like sixty thousand now,” Lucy adds.
Vivian stands as tall as she can. “Look, yeah, I grew up comfortably. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t. But I work in the restaurant business—I don’t make a fortune. My parents’ money isn’t my money. And…” She inhales; this part probably won’t go over well. “My dad’s money is all going to my mother. I’m not directly getting an inheritance. But she’ll let me keep the proceeds from the sale if I handle all the logistics.”
Lucy purses her lips. “That’s a pretty big payout for not much work.”
“I really do need the money. Trust me.”
She scratches her arm, uncomfortably aware of how this could ring false while she’s wearing four or five thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry. (Most of those pieces were gifts, but it’s better if she doesn’t explain that to Lucy. It’s not cute when the rich girl doth protest too much.)
“Please,” Lucy says, sounding closer to begging than either of them would like. “I love this place more than you can possibly imagine. Why would you just give it up?”
Vivian can’t tell Lucy the full story, but anything short of that will sound precious and entitled.
“It’s personal.”
“This is personal to me, too!”
Vivian sighs. “My boyfriend and I need the money to open a business together, okay? A bar. I’m going to oversee the wine program, he’ll manage the place.”
Without the influx of cash, they’d need to find another source of funding. The angel investor who made Oscar’s dream of opening Della a reality—his wife Carla’s dad—is absolutely out of the question. Oscar can never ask him for another cent. She hates that her dad’s death is the thing that will pad her bank account and make the bar possible. It’s less of a silver lining and more like emotional handcuffs that will link her dad’s legacy to the new business forever.
Although she’s barely seen Oscar since Hank died, she did get the chance to tell him about the arrangement she’d made with her mother. It wasn’t something she mentioned lightly. This was serious cash, money that could be entirely Vivian’s. By investing it in a business with Oscar, she would be quite literally investing in their future as a couple. She needed to know if he was all in, the same way she was. His answer had made her glow. The bar is more than just a business. It’s a path to a new life, he’d said, one they’ve craved for so long. Lucy can’t take that away from them.
Lucy holds up her hands. “I’m not here to judge your life.”
Sure.
“But if we’re talking ‘practicalities,’?” she continues, “I’m newly separated. My ex is staying in our house. My only other option is staying with my mom, and that’s only through the summer. Neither of us will be able to stay there in the fall, when she’s getting repairs done on her roof.”
Vivian’s head aches from arguing all morning. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ll be able to figure something else out.”
Lucy looks hurt. “Dad would say this place is as much mine as it is yours, so…I’m not leaving.”
It takes real effort to avoid scoffing. Lucy calls herself Hank’s daughter the way NYU freshmen claim they’re New Yorkers, as if insisting upon it makes it true. If she were really equal to Vivian in Hank’s eyes, he would’ve done something about it—own up to Celeste, get divorced, split his time evenly, brought his daughters up together, something .
“I’m not, either. I don’t have anywhere else to stay up here,” Vivian says.
“Then don’t sell it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” The haughtiness of her own tone is jarring. She sounds eerily like Celeste.
“You know Dad would hate to see the house go.”
“I don’t care what he’d want! I don’t owe him anything. He lied to me my whole life.”
Lucy crosses her arms. “It’s like you’re not even upset that he’s gone.”
Anger flares through Vivian. She throws up her arms. “And you’re not upset that he hid you away up here?”
“He didn’t—”
Vivian strides past Lucy, snatches the urn off the mantel, and carries it down to the lake. She isn’t reckless; she doesn’t run. She isn’t doing anything other than exactly what Hank asked for.
Lucy, dumbstruck on the porch, sputters into action. “Wait! Wait, you can’t do that!”
Vivian ignores her.
“Please!” Lucy thunders down the stairs.
Vivian walks faster toward the end of the dock. Adrenaline pounds in her ears. She stands at the edge, watching the hypnotic motion of waves rising and falling below.
“Stop!” Lucy yelps. “I didn’t even get to wish him a happy Father’s Day, you know that? He didn’t pick up my call, and I bet it’s because he was with you.”
Vivian turns. Her shoulders tense. “That’s not my fault.”
“But it’s not fair, either.”
“Nothing about this is fair!” Vivian explodes.
Her voice echoes over the water, making her wince. How many people are listening to their showdown right now? That flash of self-consciousness snaps her back to reality. This is absurd. Hank wouldn’t want his ashes scattered like this. Regardless of how many secrets he kept and lies he told, he still deserves better than going out amid a screaming match.
With a long exhale, Vivian takes herself down several notches, from soap opera star to sensible person. “Okay. I won’t. Not now.”
Lucy sighs in relief. “Thank you.”
“However,” Vivian says sharply, “I will be selling the house and scattering the ashes at some point.”
A shadow crosses Lucy’s face. “Will you at least let me scatter them with you?”
Vivian’s not cruel enough to shut her out entirely. “Sure.”
“Let’s make it like a funeral. We could have a little ceremony on the boat.”
“Oh, no. His funeral was last month. I’m not doing it again.”
“I didn’t even know it was happening,” Lucy says. “You got closure. I didn’t.”
“You can get the Times up here, can’t you? His obituary was in the paper,” Vivian says acidly.
“Oh, yeah? How many daughters did it say he had?”
“Come on,” Vivian groans.
Lucy’s voice shakes. “I’m his daughter, too.”
Vivian hates to bend—as a Scorpio, she considers grudges her love language—but she does it anyway. She has to remember she’s angry at her dad, not Lucy. Her half-sister didn’t ask to be born into this mess, either, and acting like some entitled, territorial, basic hanger-on isn’t technically a crime.
“Okay, fine. But let’s not call it a funeral. Celebration of life?”
“Deal. Not right here, though. It would be creepy. We don’t really want him washing up by our house.”
It won’t be “our” house for much longer, but Vivian doesn’t protest. “Fine.”
“Can we drive around today and figure out where?”
It’s a real schlep to get the boat in the water, but the sooner they work this out, the sooner it’ll all be over. Reluctantly, Vivian agrees.
The garage is three times the size of Vivian’s West Village apartment, big enough to house the old truck, the boat on its trailer, the Jet Ski on a smaller trailer, a pair of jumbo trash bins, an array of life jackets, a pile of disintegrating pool noodles, two deflated rafts, and a pair of vintage water skis with plenty of room to spare. Most of it is filthy with offseason grime: dust, dirt, dried insects that died long ago.
Dealing with the boat is a two-person job, and while Vivian makes out okay as Hank’s sous chef in the whole ordeal, she’s never been responsible for the process on her own. She tended to follow his instructions on autopilot, not committing much of it to memory. Hitching the boat to the car is complicated, and if they miss a step—say, forgetting to secure the right straps or locking the latch into place—they’ll be in serious trouble: expensive danger for them, the boat, and the car, not to mention everyone else on the road. She doesn’t want to seem like a useless city girl in front of Lucy.
Thankfully, Lucy takes the lead on backing the truck up to the trailer. She maneuvers the car into place on her first try. Show-off. Hands on hips, Vivian stares at the equipment, willing it to make sense.
“So, this…socket? It definitely has to get winched down onto that knobby thing,” she says, gesturing to two heavy items currently parked three feet apart.
“…Yeah.”
It’s like there’s a neon sign flashing over Vivian that spells out “clueless.”
Lucy flicks through her phone. “Here, watch this. Years ago, Dad had me record him doing this whole thing.”
He did that for Lucy but not Vivian? She takes the phone and hits play. The video shakes slightly along with her hands. There’s a little more hair around his temples and fewer lines crinkling across his forehead than when she saw him last; this was probably filmed five years ago. He’s in swim trunks and a T-shirt, an outfit that never looked quite natural on him. She grew up accustomed to his suits and ties. She watches Hank demonstrating how to flip the lock into place and how to transmit the car’s brake signals to the back end of the trailer.
On screen, he says, “?’Kay, Luce? You wanna get a close-up of this next part?”
“Yep, recording this for posterity,” she says, like she’s only humoring him, like she doesn’t believe she’ll ever need to replay this.
“For people watching from the future, keep in mind: This is a real demonstration coming to you from 2020, not an outtake from Green Acres .”
It hurts to hear their ease together. When Vivian thinks Lucy isn’t watching, she hastily wipes away a tear.