Leo has his head between his knees like he’s on a plane that’s going down. “No,” he says.
“No,” Carson says. She’s pressing tissues against her closed eyes. “And I’m not gonna.”
“Would you do it, Rip, please?” Willa says. “We just can’t.”
Rip sighs. “Sure.” He kisses Willa’s forehead, then heads back to the kitchen. Dennis has disappeared, and Rip feels like he let the guy down—he should have been more comforting—and he decides he’ll reach out to him later. He needs to call JP now before he hears the news from someone else, before JP’s girlfriend, Amy, hears it from someone at the salon or JP’s mother, Lucinda, finds out from someone as she’s having lunch on the patio at the Field and Oar Club.
Rip steps outside the kitchen door and nearly trips over a pan filled with water on the flagstone path. Rip empties the water out of the pan and carries it to the kitchen; it has the scorched remains of something stuck to the bottom. He puts it in the sink to soak.
He’s stalling.
When he steps outside again, his hands are shaking. He calls JP’s cell phone but gets his voice mail. Leaving a message isn’t an option. Rip tries to think. Should he call Amy? Amy is a stylist at RJ Miller. She has always been jealous of Vivi. She might offer lukewarm condolences, and that’s not anything Rip wants to hear.
He tries JP’s cell again—again, the call goes to voice mail—and then the ice cream parlor.
JP answers on the first ring. “Good morning, the Cone.” In the background, Rip hears the Rolling Stones singing “Brown Sugar.”
“JP?” Rip says. “It’s Rip.”
“Rip!” JP says. His voice is peppy. He’s probably preparing the shop for a busy summer Saturday, checking inventory, making ten gallons of brownie-batter ice cream, the Cone’s most popular flavor, writing out the specials on the board: Nantucket blackberry sorbet, peach cobbler, and lemon square, with ripples of curd and graham cracker bits. JP has no idea that in the next second, his life will be forever changed.
“I have some bad news,” Rip says. “Tragic news.”
The music stops. “Is it Willa?”
“It’s Vivi, actually,” Rip says. “She’s…well, she was out running and she got hit by a car. On Kingsley. Right at the end of Kingsley.”
“What?” JP says. “Is she okay? Did she break anything? Did she go to the hospital?”
“She’s…” Rip clears his throat. “She’s dead, JP. She died.”
There’s silence.
Rip feels the years fall away. He was only twelve years old when he asked Willa Quinboro to the Valentine’s Day dance at the Nantucket Boys and Girls Club. Willa’s parents had picked them up from the dance on their way home from dinner at Fifty-Six Union. Rip can still remember the smell of Vivi’s perfume mixing with some other intriguing scent that Rip now knows was truffle oil from the fries in a to-go box. JP and Vivi were younger than Rip’s parents by a good ten years and he remembers how loose and fun-loving and…happy they seemed. He’d spent days with them on the beach at Fortieth Pole, where they would grill salmon or chicken for lunch, and football Sundays at their house, when Vivi made hot artichoke dip and pepperoni bread and spicy mixed nuts. Vivi would sit on the arm of JP’s chair, and JP would snake an arm around Vivi’s waist as they yelled and cheered for the Patriots. They were a dynamic couple. Rip had been enthralled by them.
He’d been stunned two years later when Willa tearfully told him that her parents were getting a divorce. For a few weeks, it seemed like the earth had cracked open and the whole family would be sucked down into the crevasse. Carson had gone to see a counselor; Willa spent every waking second she could at Rip’s, even though his parents’ house was as cold as a museum; and Leo, at eight years old, had taken to riding his bike all over the island with Cruz DeSantis committing minor crimes, like stealing lollipops from the bowl at the dry cleaner’s.
JP clears his throat. “Where are my children?” His voice is aggressive, like maybe Rip is holding them hostage.
“They’re here at the house.”
“Can I speak to them?”
“Um…they’re pretty upset right now.”
“Why are you the one who called me?” JP asks. “Why didn’t one of them…”—his voice cracks—“call me?”
“They’re a mess, JP,” Rip says. He rolls his shoulders back and remembers that he’s not twelve years old anymore. He’s a grown man. At the insurance office, Rip handles claims. It’s a job he’s suited for because not much rattles him. Your pipes froze and burst with the thaw and so much water flooded the second floor of your house that it collapsed onto the first? Lightning struck your roof? You totaled your new Range Rover on the way home from the dealership? You drove your boat up onto the jetty and now there’s a three-foot hole in the hull?
No problem, let’s file a claim, Rip says all day every day. We’ll get this fixed.
“They were too upset to call you. The three of them are in shock and so Willa asked me to let you know.”
“Yes, well,” JP says. “Thank you.” He hangs up.
Amy
It’s a Saturday in June at the salon, and Amy arrives early because they have fifteen weddings. “You heard that right,” she said to JP that morning. “Fifteen on the books, and we turned away at least fifteen more.” It’s an all-hands-on-deck day; the energy is high and it is happy. Champagne is popped with the first clients and the music is cranked up—Luke Combs—and Amy can’t complain. She grew up in Alabama and was a Phi Mu at Auburn—LIOB! War Eagle!—so she loves not only country music but also the feel of a sorority house on the day of a big game.
She’s on her fourth client at ten thirty, a mother of the bride, when the receptionist, Brandi, stands discreetly behind Amy’s shoulder and whispers, “JP is on the phone. He says it’s urgent.”
Amy turns a fraction of an inch toward Brandi. “On the phone here? He called the salon?”
“He says he’s been trying your cell.”
“Tell him I’m busy, please. I’ll call when I take a break for lunch.” Her lunch today will be a cheddar scone from Born and Bread stuffed into her mouth in about ten minutes. Amy has been fighting to get rid of fifteen extra pounds since she moved in with JP, and though she’s tried bringing her own salad in a Tupperware for lunch, she keeps losing the battle of wills against the carbs and fat—the bagel boards, the bakery boxes, the cake because it’s always someone’s birthday—that are constantly under her nose here at the salon.
“He sounded…I really think you’d better…”
Amy shakes her head. She does not have time to talk to JP; right now, she feels what Santa Claus must feel on Christmas Eve. The client in Amy’s chair, Mrs. Scaliti, is already upset because Amy started their interaction by calling her by her first name. Now she’s giving Amy a baleful stare while her hair hangs in damp strands around her face. She needs to be at St. Paul’s Episcopal by noon.