He looks at Rip and says, “What the hell happened? What happened?”
Rip blinks. Dennis and Vivi have been dating for a few years; he’s the only guy Vivi has dated since she and JP split. Dennis is a few inches shorter than Rip and built like a fireplug—he’s solid, stocky. When Vivi first started dating him, Rip didn’t quite get it. Dennis is a tradesman who tells dirty jokes; he has a thick Southie accent and a freezer full of venison. He’d gotten drunk at Rip and Willa’s wedding and given a long-winded toast, which everyone at the Field and Oar Club suffered through because they were too polite to tell him to sit down.
Willa once said, “Dennis clearly isn’t Mr. Right, but he’s Mr. Right Now. Mom likes him. She doesn’t need someone complicated; she’s complicated enough all by herself.”
But in the past year, Rip has grown quite fond of Dennis. The insurance office’s furnace went on the fritz in January, and Rip had called Dennis at six o’clock on a Tuesday evening. He’d shown up right away and stayed until almost midnight to get it up and running. Rip and Dennis were alone in the office for those hours and Dennis told great stories about hunting ducks over on Tuckernuck and about the Datsun 240Z he’d restored in high school before he was even old enough to drive.
Rip had gone home and woken Willa up just to tell her with wonderment, “Dennis is actually pretty cool.”
“She got hit by a car at the end of Kingsley while she was running,” Rip says to Dennis now. “I’m so sorry, man. I am just so…sorry.” The words feel wrong in his mouth, like he’s chewing on gristle.
Dennis’s face crumples and he bends over, hands on knees, and starts sucking in air like he’s just finished a dozen wind sprints on the practice field. Rip wants to vaporize. He can’t even add something about how much Vivi cared for Dennis because Willa told Rip that her mother had broken up with Dennis a couple of weeks earlier.
At that second, Willa calls from the other room, “Rip?”
Rip puts a gentle hand on Dennis’s shoulder and goes to his wife.
“Dennis is here,” he says.
“Who else have you told?”
“Just Pamela,” he says. “I told her to call my parents.” The elder Bonhams are on a Mediterranean cruise.
“I need to make a list,” Willa says. “Mom’s agent, her editor, her publicist. There’s going to have to be some kind of formal announcement made by her publishing house. I need to find out if there’s a will and who’s allowed to access her bank accounts.”
“Babe,” Rip says. “There’s time for that later. You’re in shock right now.”
Willa stares at him. Her pretty face is blank; her brown eyes are glazed over. “I am in shock.”
There’s a niggling thought in Rip’s mind. “Have you told your father?”
Willa gasps. “Oh my God.”
She has not told her father.
Willa’s eyes widen and she turns around to look at Carson and Leo, who are sodden heaps on the sofa. “Did either of you text Dad?” Willa asks. “Or call him?”
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,