three times down below,” Martha says. “But you should be judicious.”
“This feels like some kind of fairy tale,” Vivi says. “Am I really dead?”
“Yes, dear.”
Vivi takes in the expert tying of Martha’s Hermès scarf. “That looks so effortless, I would have guessed you were French.”
“Well, thank you. I’m not.”
“What did you do when you were alive?”
“I was a senior vice president at FedEx.”
“Go, Martha!” Vivi says. “Lady boss!”
Martha says, “I can’t be flattered, Vivian. You will not be revived at the hospital. You’re dead. I’m granting you the summer to watch over your children and three nudges because you met such a random and sudden end. And because I like your books. You have a lot of fans up here.” Now it sounds like Martha is the one trying to do the flattering.
“Who hit me?” Vivi asks. “It wasn’t Cruz, was it?” This is too awful to even contemplate. He’s such a good kid, so brilliant, going to Dartmouth on a full ride. He’s good at everything—science, math, English. Instead of writing an essay for his college application, he wrote a poem called “Sacrifice,” about his father, Joe. Vivi’s feelings for Cruz DeSantis are just as tender and protective as they are for her own kids.
Martha shakes her head. “That, I can’t tell you.”
Martha can’t tell her because it’s not allowed or because she doesn’t know? But whatever the answer, Vivi has a more pressing question. “What happens when the summer is over?”
“You join the choir,” Martha says.
“The choir?”
“Of angels.”
“But I can’t sing,” Vivi says.
Martha releases a belly laugh. “Don’t worry,” she says. “You’ll learn. Now, come along. It’s time to go.”
“Go where?”
“To the greenroom. Please close your eyes.”
Vivi regards Martha with suspicion. “I’d rather not.”
“You’re going to have to learn to trust me,” Martha says. “I’m your Person.”
Vivi waits a beat. What choice does she have? She closes her eyes.
When she opens them, she’s in a room with one wall missing; it feels like the kind of shoebox diorama that kids make in school. Vivi blinks as she looks around; there’s a lot to take in.
The crown molding and all the trim in the room is painted green, and the wallpaper is printed with eye-popping green and white vertical stripes. There are layered rugs on the floor—a neutral sisal underneath and a gorgeous silk Persian on top. A Moroccan lantern shaped like a genie’s bottle hangs from the ceiling; it’s polished brass and punctured with tiny holes that cast an intricate lacy pattern of light on the ceiling. This might be—no, it definitely is the coolest, most eclectic room Vivi has ever been in. There’s a long green velvet chaise, two peach silk soufflé chairs, a coffee table that looks like a giant white enamel bean, leather pouf ottomans, two dwarf orange trees in copper pots, and a huge black-and-white photograph on the wall that Vivi identifies as a David Yarrow Western scene.
“This is the boho-chic room of my dreams,” Vivi says.
“Yes, I know,” Martha says. “We scoured your Instagram.”
Vivi laughs. She can’t believe it! This really is heaven! She would have loved a room like this in Money Pit (a velvet chaise! orange trees!), but it just didn’t make sense in a Nantucket house, and Vivi had never saved enough to buy a pied-à-terre in New York or Paris.
There’s a wall of books because every perfect room has a wall of books, at least in Vivi’s opinion. Vivi strides over to check the titles. Cloudstreet, by Tim Winton; Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison; White Fur, by Jardine Libaire; and—oh, baby—Adultery and Other Choices, by Andre Dubus, who might be the writer Vivi loves most.
“My favorites,” Vivi says.
“Naturally.”
Adjacent to the bookshelves is a green door. “Is this Benjamin Moore’s Parsley Snips?” she asks. She’s referring to the paint color.
“It is.”
Gah! Vivi is in love with this room. “Where does the door lead to?”
“For me to know and you to find out,” Martha says. “Don’t be a snoop or I’ll end your viewing window early.” Martha opens the door and slips through before Vivi can peek at what’s behind.
Viewing window, Vivi thinks. She moves to the edge of the room, and it is like standing at a large open window. Vivi can gaze into her old life from here. She can do more than gaze—she swoops right down into the action.
At Money Pit, Vivi finds her three children in the sitting room clinging to one another on the turquoise tweed sofa that they call “the Girv,” short for its