Chapter Twenty
Lucy
At seven o’clock, all four women descend the forty-seven steps to the waterfront. Vivian clutches four bottles of Allagash, cold from the fridge—Hank’s favorite. Dawn carries a bowl of tortilla chips with salsa. Lucy brings a tote bag with a speaker, plenty of candles, and a lighter. Celeste follows them all, holding the urn tight to her chest. It’s cool enough that they’ve all layered up; Lucy’s in the green sweatshirt she once saved from her dad’s closet.
It’s Wednesday, so the weekend people, with their noisy barbecues and buzzed boating escapades, are mercifully nowhere to be found. The sky is heavy and white, a sharp contrast to the dark green trees fringing the lake. There won’t be a real sunset, not the kind that Hank loved, but there’s nothing they can do about that. Crickets chirp rhythmically off in the distance. When the loon family swims by, it’s not easy to distinguish the babies from the adults—they’ve gotten so big.
Down at the dock, Lucy climbs into the driver’s seat and Vivian unties the ropes, holding them steady. The boat has clearly seen a full summer: The carpet has a new stain from a knocked-over Mason jar, the cup holders have rings of dirt, and most of the aisle is taken up by a tangle of foam noodles and nylon ropes.
Dawn steps into the boat. “Where should I sit?”
Still somewhat on edge, the four of them fall into a dance of deference: The lover makes way for the wife; the New Yorker steps aside for those with better nautical skills. Lucy directs Dawn into the passenger seat to her left, and Celeste into the bow, where Vivian will join her. When it’s Celeste’s turn to climb aboard, she tucks the urn to her chest with her left arm and uses her right hand to steady herself as she approaches the boat.
“Wait,” she says, panicked. “I’m afraid of dropping this.”
“Here, let me help,” Dawn offers, outstretching her arms.
Ever so carefully, Celeste passes the urn over the strip of water between dock and boat and makes sure Dawn has a grip on it before she lets go.
“Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep.” Dawn holds the urn and even helps Celeste climb in.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Celeste nestles the urn into a compartment between the seats. Vivian tosses the ropes into the boat, jumps in, and steps over the snack bowl to sit up front with her mom. Lucy reverses smoothly, conscious of the precious cargo. As she navigates toward the center of Fox Hill Lake—the spot they had ultimately chosen because it meant his spirit would always have a direct view of both their house and the sunset—it hits Lucy that this is really happening. Her chest is tight with nervous anticipation. After she slows to a stop, waves lap steadily against the side of the boat, and the engine rumbles on, but that’s it. The lake is quiet.
“So, how do we do this thing?” Dawn asks.
Vivian pries open a beer bottle. “For starters, here you go.”
“I don’t suppose you happen to have a Sancerre on board?” Celeste asks hopefully. She glances around. “Is there a mini-fridge somewhere?”
“It’s one beer. You’ll find a way to live,” Vivian says, distributing the rest. Then, to Lucy, “Ready?”
She takes a deep breath. After nearly two months of rocky buildup to this moment, she expected to feel some kind of sacred reverence, or a cathartic burst of grief that could give her some kind of closure. Instead, the atmosphere is unsettling.
“Yeah.”
She queues up the playlist she’d put together earlier this summer, starting with John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” The song had initially struck her as thematically appropriate, but here, as Celeste recoils in surprise, she’s painfully aware that the guitar’s plucky twang and John Denver’s earnest voice are too sentimentally campy to serve as tribute to her dad. She lowers the music a little. Vivian slots candles into cup holders and lights each one. The stage has been set.
Lucy wanted to lead the ceremony, which was more than fine by Vivian. She hoped it would offset how hurt she’d been by missing his funeral. This is her first time ever celebrating her dad’s birthday with anything more than a phone call and a mailed gift.
“I thought we could start with a happy-birthday toast,” she says tentatively. “No singing, just…”
They clink drinks, each mumbling, “Happy birthday, Dad” or “Happy birthday, Hank.”
Three expectant faces turn toward Lucy.
“Instead of any sort of religious ceremony, we thought it would be more appropriate—more him—to stay secular,” she continues. “So, we—I—have a few things lined up, starting with a poem: ‘Warm Summer Sun’ by Mark Twain.”
She and Vivian each have the words on their phones, and they each move closer to their moms so they can see, too. Sound carries out here; their words will wash ashore.
Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.
Their four distinct voices blend into one, blurring their accents. The poem sounded better in her head last week before she heard the singsongy rhythm out loud.
“Next, Celeste…I hoped you might do a reading for us.” She pulls Trouble in Tahiti from her bag and turns down Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind.” On second thought, she kills the music entirely.
Celeste startles. “Oh, really?”
“You wrote this passage about carrying on the memory of someone you love after they die,” Lucy says, feeling shy again. “It really resonated with me.”
“Oh, well, okay.”
Celeste rises and reaches for the book. A sticky note marks the right page.
“So, the premise of this one is that Ellington Fitzgerald III, an oil scion, is on vacation in Tahiti with his wife, Priscilla, when he dies of a sudden brain aneurysm. Their kids and siblings all fly in, and so does Clementine Atwood, a stranger pretending to be a distant cousin in order to get a slice of the will.”
Vivian purses her lips and peers out at the water, annoyed.
“As Clementine spends more time on the island, she begins to fall for a man she meets at a beach bar—only she doesn’t realize he’s actually the private investigator Priscilla hired to sniff out Clementine’s true identity. Anyway, in this scene, Priscilla is reflecting on her enormous loss the morning after her husband’s death.”
Celeste clears her throat and begins to read. Her voice shifts, richer and slower. Each line is delivered stylishly, with intention and warmth. Vivian leans in, listening closely. When she finishes, Celeste is applauded by the smallest audience she’s ever had.
“That was great, Mom,” Vivian says, reaching out to squeeze her hand.
Dawn looks begrudgingly impressed. “Maybe I should start reading your books.”
“I’ll have some sent over to you, whichever ones you want.”
“Thanks.”
“I think you’d like Loved Up in London ,” Lucy suggests; it’s the tamest of the bunch. “And maybe, um, skip Naked in New York . No offense, Celeste, I just—”
“Completely understood.”
“And, Mom? You brought something to read, too,” Lucy prompts.
“Oh, I did, but…should I?” She glances at Celeste. “It’s personal. An old diary entry from the end of our first summer together. I don’t want to read it if it’d make you uncomfortable.”
“Please. I’d actually like to hear it,” Celeste says sincerely.
Lucy and Vivian exchange wild glances. They had hoped for a moment of peace like this, but never fully expected it to come to fruition. They’d assumed Dawn’s history with Hank would be an unforgivable sin to Celeste, not a subject of interest.
Dawn retrieves a journal, pink with a worn-down spine. She removes a glossy five-by-seven used as a bookmark, exhales, and takes the plunge.
August 27, 1989
Dear Diary,
Hank is leaving tomorrow. I hate it. He does, too. Last night, he wanted to plan something special for me so that I’d remember him when he’s gone. (Ha—as if I could forget!)
We went to the market to pick up sandwiches and s’mores supplies and a bottle of wine. When we got to the register, he realized he’d left his wallet at home. I offered to pay for the food, but I didn’t have a fake ID like he did, so that was a bust. I knew Mom and Dad weren’t home, so we swung by the house and snuck out a bottle of white zinfandel, then went over to the Pond. Nothing went according to plan! We forgot a corkscrew. A dog ran off with my sandwich. Mosquitoes ate us alive. The minute our fire got up and running, it started to pour. I mean, it was ridiculous!
We wound up sitting soaking wet in his car, starving, splitting one sandwich and eating soggy marshmallows, sharing a cigarette. I was in flip-flops, so my feet got all muddy and disgusting. But you know what? It was perfect anyway. He pulled off his T-shirt and wiped my feet clean. We grooved along to the radio and kissed, and I was just so happy. It hit me how hard it would be, missing him.
We made plans for staying close: phone calls on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays at nine o’clock, and he’ll visit over his winter break, if not before then. I cried and cried, but he promised we could get through it together.
When I went home that night, I knew I loved him. Really loved him, not like when I thought I loved Paul Covey in eighth grade because he bought me a Hershey’s chocolate bar for Valentine’s Day. And I have a pretty good hunch he feels the same way, because drying my feet? Wiping my tears? You don’t do that for just anyone. I want to tell him soon, before he goes. The next time I write, I hope I have good news.
Dawn closes the journal, looks down, and tucks her hair behind her ears. Lucy has chills.
“I’m clearly not the writer,” she tells Celeste.
Celeste stares wistfully at the horizon. “That was beautiful. Really. It sounds like you two were…happy.”
Lucy cranes her neck. “What’s that bookmark, a photo?”
Dawn glances at it, laughs to herself, and hands it over. She and Hank look baby-faced and completely smitten, seated at the bar at Foxy Roxy’s. Dawn, with swipes of blue eyeliner and a platinum-blond ponytail, rests her head on Hank’s shoulder. His hand is curled around her waist, holding her close with his fingers hooked through her belt loops.
“This was the summer we met,” she says.
Lucy’s never seen it before. She wants to keep it forever.
Pushing away the lump in her throat, she says, “It’s amazing.”
But the lump doesn’t vanish. Instead, hot tears spring to her eyes.
“I’m sorry, I’ve just never seen…”
When her voice fails her, Vivian sweeps her into a hug. “It’s okay.”
Lucy is still heartbroken over losing her dad. She always will be. In equal measure, though, it pains her to accept who he really was. She’ll forever feel like there’s a hole in her chest, a crucial piece gone missing. But she also feels profoundly, phenomenally lucky, because this nightmare of a summer cemented a real kind of sisterhood between her and Vivian. Lucy is no longer a jealous onlooker, but a friend in the flesh.
Eventually, she pulls herself together enough to share a few of her memories with him: his Fourth of July bonfires and that one Fifth of July boat parade; picking blueberries in rain jackets; spending night after night watching the sun going down.
“I wish we had a better sunset for him tonight, but…Vivian, do you want to say anything?”
She’d told Lucy about not wanting to speak at the service in New York. She hesitates, then stands.
“I know this is the wrong thing to say at a funeral, but this is the weirdest funeral I’ve ever been to—or celebration of life, whatever—so I’m just going to say it: He could be an asshole sometimes.”
Celeste chokes on a sip of beer. Dawn catches Lucy’s eye with an expression that blares, Whoa.
“He lied to all of us. He created a mess.”
“You’re not wrong,” Lucy mutters.
“His intentions were good,” Celeste says. “Mostly.”
Vivian shoots her a look.
“But you’re right, he wasn’t perfect,” Celeste adds.
“He got in his own way. He was selfish,” Dawn says. “Not to pile on…”
“I’m sorry if I’m being too harsh, but someone had to say it,” Vivian says. “But still, I wish I could see him one more time, just to have one real, honest talk about all of this. He owed us that.”
Celeste nods.
“I hate that he’s gone,” she continues. “He didn’t deserve to go so young like that.”
“He didn’t,” Lucy says.
“No,” Dawn agrees.
“And I forgive him.” Vivian’s voice cracks; she blinks up at the graying sky.
Lucy considers it for a moment. “I do, too.”
There’s no visible sun to set, just a sliver of moon glowing faintly through the clouds. A half mile out, the house looks so grand, perched up there on the dark hill. The oversized windows glow gold from within. It’s time to do what they came here for.
“Are we ready?” Lucy asks.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Celeste says, resigned.
“Go ahead,” Dawn says, squeezing Lucy’s arm.
She retrieves the urn from safekeeping and—hands trembling—carefully unscrews the lid. She steps toward the bow, facing the horizon. The water below is a deep slate blue.
“Okay…” she mutters to herself, gazing into the vessel.
Inside, the contents are tree-gray fine dust. A larger-than- life man, his whole being, reduced to this. Tension has forced her shoulders toward her ears; it takes a hefty exhale to relax her frame. Her throat is too dry to say much more.
Vivian takes a step closer. Her arm brushes against Lucy’s.
“We love you, Dad,” she says quietly.
“We really do,” Lucy ekes out. Her whisper sounds like a prayer.
The loon family watches from afar, one clan of lake lovers to the next. Hank’s daughters count down from three. With a simple pour, he is gone, swirling into the waves, swallowed up by the loving arms of Fox Hill Lake.
Vivian
A half hour later, they sit down for Hank’s favorite feast, cheeseburgers and hot dogs. Vivian has finally mastered the barbecue, no help needed. Dawn’s flowers take center stage on the table, and Lucy’s kicked the playlist back on. It’s not a cohesive mix, but neither was he. People are complicated. Vivian is grateful to see all sides of her dad in full technicolor, even if that came too late.
“When do you fly back?” Dawn asks.
Celeste dabs around her lipsticked mouth with a napkin. “Tomorrow.”
“Oh, you aren’t staying?” Lucy asks, a tinge of disappointment in her voice.
“I have a few book signings back-to-back: Boston, New Haven, DC.”
“Fancy,” Dawn says.
Celeste glumly spears a leaf of lettuce. “I’ve gotten used to it. Maybe too used to it. I’m trying to soak everything up this time around, because who knows if there will be any more of these events next summer?”
“Why not?” Lucy asks. “I’d love to go to one.”
Celeste sighs. “The novel I’ve been working on, Pleasure and Spain , hasn’t been going well. I have three hundred pages of straight trash.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Lucy says diplomatically.
“I was never that excited about this book to begin with. I wanted to go with a different idea, but that would’ve required a research trip to New Zealand.”
Dawn lights up. “Ooh, that’d be fun.”
Celeste describes the dream vacation she wanted to take with Hank. They’d visit glow worm caves and bubbling mud pools, explore Marlborough vineyards, climb the volcano on Rangitoto Island, learn about Māori culture in Rotorua. He claimed he wouldn’t be able to take enough time off work for a trip to the other side of the world. Celeste could still go on her own, of course, but it wouldn’t be the same.
“Although,” she says heavily, commanding attention, “I think I might scrap my draft and start from scratch with something new. I think there’s a book here.”
Lucy’s eyes bulge. “What?”
Celeste starts off strangely flustered but regains poise as she explains herself. “Inspired by him. And us. And this summer. It’s been more twisted than anything I could dream up—and trust me, I’ve tried. What would you think if I came back here for a research trip for a few days? Maybe Labor Day weekend?”
Vivian freezes, speechless.
“Oh my gosh, I’d love that,” Lucy says.
Dawn laughs. “You better make me look good.”
“Vivian? What do you think?” Celeste asks.
The spotlight is on her. She knows her opinion counts. She imagines every wild jolt of this roller coaster of a summer—grief, shock, heartbreak, sisterhood, new beginnings—soaped up in a juicy beach read, shelved in people’s homes, tucked into suitcases for summers to come; the inevitable press tour where Jenna Bush Hager or Reese Witherspoon asks about her mother’s inspiration. They’d all be reborn with ridiculous new names: Desdemona, Lavinia, Vesper, Chrysanthemum. Vivian can practically guess the title already: Misery, Marriage, and Maine … Lovers and Liars on Loon Road … The Floozy of Fox Hill …Okay, maybe not that last one. It would be everything. Out in the open. As it should be.
“Mom, that sounds great.”
Dawn shoos Vivian out of the kitchen after dinner. “You cooked, we’ll clean.”
She settles onto the couch with her laptop, scrolling through apartment rentals, while Dawn, Lucy, and Celeste make quick work of clearing plates, rinsing dishes, and wiping down the counter. There isn’t quite enough space for all three of them, so Dawn encourages Celeste to sit this one out, too. Honestly, it’s probably easier for the Websters to maneuver without her worrying about dirty dishwater splashing her white eyelet blouse.
A minute later, Celeste inhales a strangled gasp. “Oh my God.”
That kind of response doesn’t mean much from her. Was the president assassinated? Has Bloomingdale’s begun stocking its fall collections? Equally possible.
“What?” Vivian asks.
Celeste claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God,” she repeats, staring at Vivian.
Now Vivian’s intrigued. “What?”
It takes her a moment to find her voice. “Lucy, Dawn, come here,” she calls. “You’re not going to believe this.”
Dawn wipes her hand on a dish towel. Lucy sets down the Tupperware.
“I got another email from my lawyer following up on a note he sent after your dad died—I guess it got lost in my inbox. I wasn’t exactly on top of it after, you know.”
“An email about what?” Vivian asks.
Celeste’s eyebrows might as well hit Mars—that’s how stunned she looks. “Trust funds. For…all three of you.”
With a chill, Vivian shuts her laptop. “What?”
“Apparently…” Celeste squints at the screen. “He set them up years ago to kick in after he died.”
Lucy’s jaw drops. “No way.”
Dawn gapes. “Are you serious?”
Vivian grabs her mother’s phone and scans the email. “Oh my God. We all got the same thing.”
Each lump sum is roughly equivalent to the value of the house. She passes it to Lucy. Dawn cranes to see. Overwhelmed, Lucy sinks onto the couch, covers her face, and sobs.
“He—he what? Are you sure?”
“Completely.”
Dawn, equally dazed, rubs circles on her back and sniffles. “I can’t believe this. ”
“It’s real, all right.” Celeste sighs. Inspecting her cuticles, she adds, “And it comes out of my inheritance.”
“You’ll be fine,” Vivian says, not conjuring much sympathy.
Because she will be. There’s more than enough to go around. Hank finally got it right.
“I do have my royalty checks, that’s true,” she says.
Dawn’s mouth twitches in amusement at Celeste’s stiff upper lip in the face of such hardship.
“There you go,” Vivian says, hardly paying attention anymore.
Because now she can afford a lease wherever she wants, even smack-dab in the middle of the trendy, alarmingly expensive blocks of the West Village. She imagines her bar’s write-up in the Times and customers passing by Della to get a more interesting drink around the corner at her place instead. She could make her own stamp on her hometown. This should thrill her, but instead, the news hangs like flat Champagne. She’d gotten used to the idea of starting over in Portland. She’s genuinely looking forward to trying a new kind of life with Lucy. No matter what’s in her bank account, she can’t give up that opportunity.
The Levy women are both quiet on the morning drive to the airport. Vivian is content to let the radio fill the silence as she figures out how to translate her feelings into words. Celeste watches the scenery slip by, slowly morphing from tree-lined Loon Road to bright, open hills dotted with old farmhouses to the scattered businesses along Route 109.
“Thank you for coming up here. Again,” Vivian says.
“Of course.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d actually come back.”
Celeste looks surprised. “Really?”
“I know this isn’t your favorite place, and meeting Dawn couldn’t have been easy.”
“I never really had anything against this place. I was just afraid of what would happen if we ran into her.”
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“No.” A beat later, she adds, “I like her. I like both of them.”
A thought flashes through Vivian’s mind, but she’s too afraid to say it…except, damn it, she wants to be honest with her mother. It’s long overdue.
“I was worried about what it’d be like, having the four of us all together. Partly because I didn’t know how you and Dawn would get along, but also because I knew you and I aren’t like them. We’ve never been best friends. I worried it would be awkward and sad, seeing us compared to them.” She glances over at Celeste, who’s listening with intense stillness. “But I think this was really good for us.”
Celeste swallows. “It was. And I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to fix things between us sooner. It felt like I was one way, and you were another, and as hard as I tried, things were never…”
“Effortless,” Vivian supplies. “We’re no Rory and Lorelai Gilmore.”
“Can I tell you, that show is bullshit? Mothers and daughters don’t act like that. A woman needs friends beyond her teenage daughter to stay sane.”
Vivian laughs, delighted by Celeste’s snarky side now that it’s not aimed at her. “Unrealistic expectations, I agree.”
She pulls up to the curb at the airport and helps Celeste with her luggage. When they hug, she inhales Celeste’s perfume and feels the faint thump of her mother’s heartbeat pulsing against her own. She doesn’t have her dad, or Oscar, or a job, or a place of her own in Portland (yet). But she has this. Right here. Finally.
Lucy
On the last quiet day of the summer, the Thursday before Labor Day, Lucy and Vivian set out chips and salsa and wine on the back deck as the afternoon tips into evening. Soon Fox Hill Lake will fill up with weekend people, families on vacation, hordes of boats towing tubers and water-skiers and blasting Springsteen for one final hurrah. There will be barbecues, bonfires, backyard parties toasting to the end of season. Celeste will arrive, notebook in hand, ready to spill the secrets that could never stay contained in this house with no walls.
Then the leaves will crackle into brilliant shades of flame red and butternut yellow; the air will turn crisp; people will pull out their boats and docks, leaving the water bare. The lake will freeze over, then thaw, and when it’s finally hot again, Lucy will be able to take Celeste’s manuscript down those forty-seven steps, sit in the boat, and turn the pages that tell the story of their lives.
But before that, Lucy will be living somewhere new: a one-bedroom rental in the heart of Portland, not far from Vivian’s, the perfect place for her to thrive until she’s ready to put down more permanent roots. The apartment brims with charm. It has the loveliest herringbone floors, a working fireplace, a quaint reading nook flanked by built-in bookshelves, and even a modest scrap of a backyard. The move-in date is October 1. Harrison already offered to let Lucy stay at his place for as many September nights as she’d like to cut down on the commute time to her new job. She starts Tuesday. She can’t wait.
Vivian uncorks a bottle of prosecco with a festive pop! and fills up two flutes—real glassware, not the old plastic standbys. She finally bought a whole array of wineglasses in various shapes and sizes to keep in the kitchen now that they’ll both be spending a lot more time here. They’ll never toss the ugly plastic cups and Mason jars; those are part of the house. But it’s healthy for them to curate a new generation of family keepsakes to live beside the old. Already, they stuck that old photo of Hank and Dawn on the fridge and propped up a signed copy of The Mistress in the Mountains on the mantel. Soon they’ll hang a few of Vivian’s watercolors, and stock the kitchen cabinet with locally handcrafted mugs. They’ll find a few throw pillows for the couch and decide it’s a good place for drinking wine after all.
“I might place an order for the bar. What do you think of this bottle?” Vivian asks.
She secured a lease for her business—a cozy space on a cobblestone street just blocks from Portland’s waterfront. It’s really happening.
Lucy takes a small sip. “It’s fizzy.”
Vivian waits for more.
“And very nice,” Lucy adds.
Vivian has so much to teach her. “Oh, hold on, I have one more thing.”
She darts back inside. Lucy hears her scrambling all the way up to the third floor. A minute later, she returns, holding something behind her back.
“There’s something I had to make right.”
“Yeah?”
Vivian thrusts a rolled-up copy of the New York Times into Lucy’s hands. “Section A, page 14. It’s at the bottom.”
Lucy looks up blankly, but Vivian’s eager expression doesn’t give much away. Intrigued, she slides the paper out of its plastic sleeve and flips through the flimsy newsprint until she lands in the right place. There’s a list of corrections. One leaps out at her immediately.
The obituary of Henry “Hank” Levy, the private wealth manager from Manhattan who died on June 16, omitted the name of his older daughter, Lucy Webster.
She carefully sets the paper aside before wrapping Vivian into a long hug, too overcome to speak. It’s only one sentence, but it means so much. When she finally steps back, even Vivian has welled up.
“Thank you,” Lucy whispers.
Vivian nods. “Of course.”
Lucy puts the paper back together carefully and carries it into the house for safekeeping. Maybe they’ll frame the correction. It could go on the mantel. She settles back into the Adirondack chair and kicks up her feet on the footstool between them. The sky is morphing into a pale golden glow. Wisps of clouds swirl delicately across the horizon. Somewhere between here and there, Lucy believes their dad is watching this, too. The family of four loons, all grown up now, swims past their house, illuminated by a ray of the setting sun. Lucy isn’t quite sure where loons go to hibernate for the winter, but she knows they’ll be back here next summer—as will she and Vivian, together, for July and August and any other time they please, for countless years to come.