Chapter Seven
Lucy
Lucy returns to the blare of Fiona Apple’s “Criminal.” In the kitchen, Vivian pulls the cork from a half-empty bottle with a pop and glugs the liquid into a glass.
“Hi,” Vivian says morosely over her shoulder.
She sets the bottle down and lifts her glass. On second thought, she sloshes in another inch of wine. Then another. Even for Vivian, this seems like a lot. She can’t still be reeling from their fight, can she?
“Are you okay?” Lucy asks.
“Never better,” she says bitterly.
Lucy doesn’t want to apologize, exactly. She shouldn’t have to. But now that the worst of her anger has burned off, icing Vivian out would be too uncomfortable.
“I know things got intense earlier…We don’t have to talk about it tonight.”
Vivian is staring off into middle distance, barely listening. “What? Oh, no. Not that.”
Lucy is curious enough to take the bait. “Is something wrong?”
Vivian swallows a long sip. “I just broke up with my boyfriend.”
Without asking, she fills a second glass and hands it over. Lucy assumes it’s expensive—Vivian had a case shipped.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” she asks cautiously.
Vivian wrinkles her nose. “Things have been weird between us ever since Dad died. Today he finally told me why.”
Lucy takes a sip. It could be Franzia, or it could be $300—she has no idea.
“Why?”
Vivian stares into her swirling glass. “He fucked up. He lied to me. And there’s no way to fix this,” she says flatly.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to get into it. It’s nothing good.”
For all of Vivian’s showiness, she can be surprisingly cagey. She’s making a fuss like Lucy is supposed to drag the story out of her, but stonewalls Lucy at every turn.
“Would you still go into business together?”
Vivian deflates. “I couldn’t work with him—not now. But I don’t know enough to open a place on my own.”
Lucy gets an idea. Not a good one, necessarily, but with such an uncertain future, she’s desperate in all kinds of ways: If she lands a job, she’d be heartbroken to lose the house. If she doesn’t, she’ll hit rock bottom. What she needs is time—time to secure a new position, or sway Vivian not to sell, or both.
Before she can talk herself out of it, she blurts, “Your boss gave you lots of time off, right?”
Vivian shudders. “I mean, we’ll see if this changes things, but…for now, yeah.”
“What do you mean?”
Vivian hesitates, clearly weighing how much to share. “We were dating. He’s my…” She grimaces. “Ex, I guess.”
“Huh?”
“Oscar’s my boss.”
Lucy’s eyebrows shoot up, but to her credit, she does her best to swallow the news gamely. After everything her half-sister has thrown her way this summer, this is hardly the most damning.
“You have a terrible poker face,” Vivian says.
Lucy yanks her expression back to neutral territory. “No, I was just…surprised.”
Vivian rolls her eyes. “Sure.”
“I’m sorry.” She chooses her words carefully, knowing she has one shot to get this right. “What if you stay here for the summer? Enjoy the lake. Relax. There’s no rush to figure everything out. And while you’re here, if you don’t need the money for the business immediately, how about you put a pause on selling the house? Just until I figure out my work situation and my mom’s construction is finished.”
Vivian’s mouth falls open. “You want me to hang out here all summer and take the house off the market?”
“It’s already on the market?” Lucy asks, alarmed.
“Not yet, technically. But I can’t stay here for months in the middle of nowhere.”
“This isn’t nowhere.”
“The closest bit of civilization is twenty minutes away—and it’s a funeral home.”
“Exactly, it’s only twenty minutes away.”
“How often do you think I need a funeral home, Lucy? Recent weeks excluded.”
“It’s next to a bank, too.”
“Chase has an app. But…”
Lucy doesn’t dare breathe.
“You’d be here, too?”
She should’ve thought this through more carefully. She couldn’t bear if Vivian stayed but kicked Lucy out.
“Well,” she says slowly, “for July, at least. I could leave in August if you’d like.”
“If you haven’t noticed, we make bad roommates.”
Lucy bites her lip. “I know.”
“We don’t like each other. I mean, sorry to sound like a bitch, but it’s the truth.”
“I know.”
“And you think that’s a good idea? The two of us here together?”
“It can’t get much worse.”
She’s relieved when Vivian laughs. Feeling brave, she adds, “Look, you’re not working right now. I’m unemployed. We could finally get to know each other. We don’t have to be best friends—”
“No,” Vivian agrees swiftly.
That stings.
“But maybe we can try making up for lost time. Aren’t you at least a little bit curious what would’ve happened if we’d grown up together?”
Lucy knows she’s setting herself up for rejection and humiliation. She’s essentially flailing around naked, pulling her heart out, and waving it around in front of her half-sister’s face.
Vivian looks away. “I guess.”
Vivian puts Lucy on edge and brings out the very worst in her: jealousy, pettiness, self-esteem demolished by a wrecking ball. But as brutal as living together all summer would be, it’s also Lucy’s last hope of saving the house and all the memories within it—that is, if she can convince Vivian to see it through her eyes and land a good job soon. She isn’t sure which is more daunting.
“I’m going to sell this place eventually, you know,” Vivian warns.
“Okay,” Lucy says plainly, though it’s a gut punch. At least she’ll know she tried.
“And the money—I’m sorry, but I stand by what I said earlier.”
“Understood.”
“You can’t bug me all summer about changing my mind.”
“I won’t.”
Vivian stares into her glass, then looks up at Lucy. “What the hell, I’m in.”