swung, and a brawl ensued. Vivi blamed Peter—he had always been an odd, aggressive kid, and Leo was a sweetheart, a peacemaker who got along with everyone. What had Peter said to start the fight?
“Something stupid,” Leo told Vivi. “He’s a bully.”
The stench of this incident had never really gone away; hence, conversation with the Bridgemans was a challenge. Vivi used to talk to Zach about books—they went through a simultaneous obsession with Greg Iles, then with Attica Locke—but at some point, Pamela made a snarky comment and Vivi realized that Pamela found the book conversations tiresome. If they didn’t talk about books or about the boys, there was little to say.
What captured Vivi’s attention was the way the Bridgemans’ presence seemed to fluster Carson. She tripped on the rubber mat beneath her feet, tried to right herself, and crashed into a row of glassware.
“Oh, shi…zzle,” she said, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Hey, guys. What can I get you? To drink?”
“Hey.” Pamela offered Carson a nonsmile smile. “May we see a menu?”
“I’ll have a Maker’s Mark over ice, please,” Zach said.
“One Maker’s on the rocks,” Carson said. “And what about you, Pamela?”
“Menu?” Pamela said.
“Of course!” Carson said. She pulled a menu out of a slot and a couple of them fell to the floor, which she ignored.
“I didn’t realize you were still working here,” Pamela said. “I thought maybe you’d moved on to bigger and better things.”
Vivi nearly choked on her wine. Who said things like that? Well, Pamela Bonham Bridgeman did.
Carson withdrew a couple of inches. “I used to be a barback. Now I’m…head bartender!”
“Good for you,” Zach said.
“I’ll have a Diet Coke,” Pamela said.
“Coming right up,” Carson said. “Will you two be having dinner?”
Pamela laughed. “I didn’t come here just for a Diet Coke.”
Vivi wanted to pipe up and say, Can you please be nice? We’re all family here.
“Right, of course not,” Carson said. “Let me get your drinks and then I’ll take your order.”
Carson’s hands shook as she poured the bourbon; some spilled over the side of the glass, but she wiped the glass down with a bar towel and handed the glass to Zach, saying, “Oh, you need a menu too.”
Pamela put on her reading glasses. Pamela’s most distinctive feature was her hair. It was an unusual shade of dark red with an iconic stripe of white-blond in the front. She never wore makeup, and her skin still looked pretty good. (It was a pathetic habit of Vivi’s to evaluate the appearance of other women to see if they were faring better or worse than Vivi herself. She had thought that by fifty, she would no longer care how she looked, but she’d been wrong. When did that happen? Sixty-five? Seventy-five? Eighty-five?)
Pamela leaned into her husband. “We’ll share.”
Dennis, perhaps noticing the Bridgemans’ intimacy, bumped shoulders with Vivi and whispered, “She’s doing real good.”
No—well. She’s doing really well, Vivi thought. But she had stopped correcting Dennis’s grammar long ago. It would have been a full-time job.
“Yes!” Vivi said, too brightly. “She is.” She eased away from Dennis and admitted to herself that the relationship was on its last, very weary pair of legs. She flagged down Carson. “Excuse me, most outstanding barkeep, may I please have another glass of wine?”
The second time Vivi visited Carson at the Oystercatcher was three days ago, right after Vivi had gotten two pieces of extraordinary news. She had received her first ever starred McQuaid review for her forthcoming novel, Golden Girl. And, as if that weren’t enough, Tanya Price of Great Morning USA had liked the book so much that she wanted to interview Vivi on national television.
I need a drink! Vivi thought. She was elated that the book was getting this kind of major attention, but she was anxious as well. The book had…baggage.
Vivi overheard the Oystercatcher’s manager, Nikki, say there was a two-hour wait for a table. The bar was three-deep; Vivi hadn’t a prayer of getting a seat. She hung back and watched her daughter. What a difference a few weeks had made. Carson was the leading lady in the night’s production—taking drink orders, shaking up cocktails over her shoulder like she was playing a percussion instrument, setting out platters of oysters and cherrystones on crushed ice, calling back to the kitchen for extra horseradish, high-fiving her customers, ringing the bell every time someone threw a tip in the bucket on the bar. The live music hadn’t yet started, but there was a 1980s playlist