These words land, and in that instant, the Chief knows in his heart that Cruz DeSantis didn’t hit the woman. Someone else hit her and ran, probably only a few seconds before Cruz found her.

“I’ll release the car this afternoon,” the Chief says.

“Thank you, Ed,” Joe says, and the men shake hands.

Vivi

Vivi is relaxing on the velvet chaise when Martha enters through the green door, holding her clipboard. “There are some lovely posts on your memorial Facebook page,” she says. “Would you like to take a look?”

“Are they all lovely?” Vivi asks. If there’s one thing she’s learned about Facebook, it’s that people think it’s just fine to post things that they would never dream of saying to someone’s face. In recent years, Vivi had become something of an online manners stickler: If you don’t have something nice to say, keep scrolling!

“Well,” Martha says.

Vivi’s interest is piqued. She takes the clipboard.

Vivian Howe Memorial Facebook page

Please share your thoughts and memories of Vivian Howe below. We encourage you all to stay positive! Vivian’s family and close friends will look at this page as a way to seek solace from her readers. Thank you.

This past winter, I was diagnosed with stage two triple-positive intraductal carcinoma and underwent eighteen rounds of chemotherapy at MD Anderson in Houston. I brought a Vivian Howe novel to each of my three-hour appointments. My chemo nurses always asked how I was enjoying the book and this gave us something to chat about other than my cancer. I will always be grateful to Vivian Howe for being “with” me in my darkest hours.—Crista J., Katy, TX

VIVIAN HOWE IS A QUEEN! REST IN PEACE, VIVI!—Megan R., Wiscasset, ME

I don’t even want to read Golden Girl because when I do, I won’t have any more Vivi to read and that’s when the loss of her will sink in. Is anyone else feeling that way?—Lloret A., Bowmore, Scotland

Reply: Me too!—Taffy H., Kalamazoo, MI

Reply: Me too! —Beth H., Sharon, MA

“So far so good,” Vivi says.

Hello! While I’m sad about the loss of one of my favorite authors, I would also like to offer a suggestion. Please will someone go back into Ms. Howe’s novels and fix the copyediting mistakes? On page 201, line 21 of The Photographer it says “Truman” where it should say “Davis.” Also, I’ve long been shocked that the copyeditor let the interrobangs stay throughout Ms. Howe’s work. For those of you who don’t know, an interrobang is an unorthodox combination of question mark and exclamation point. How did this happen?!!!??? (You can see from my example how unseemly this looks.) Thank you, and my sympathies to the family.—Pauline F., Homestead, FL

Reply: “Interrobang” sounds like what happens when one of my kids knocks on the door while I’m having sex with my husband. (Sorry, couldn’t resist. I like to think this is a Vivi-type joke.)—Kerry H., Grand Island, NE

“She’s right,” Vivi says. “That is the kind of joke I would make.”

Martha says nothing.

Hello, I’m new to Facebook as of right this minute. I was wondering if anyone knows how to get ahold of someone in Vivi’s family? I’m not some weirdo stalker, I promise. I went to Parma High School with Vivi from 1983 to 1987. She was my girlfriend for eleven months. I haven’t seen her since August of ’87 but I heard from the sister of my former bandmate that she passed away suddenly and I’d like to express my condolences and share my memories with the family. I also just found out that she’s a writer, and kind of famous. (I don’t read much.) I went on Amazon and read the description of her book that’s coming out next month and I would like to talk to her family about that as well. So if anyone here can help, I’d appreciate it. I don’t have a Facebook page (this is my coworker’s page I’m writing from now) but my name is Brett Caspian and I’m the GM of the Holiday Inn by the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. You can call the front desk and ask for me. I’m sorry about Vivi. She was a special girl.

Oh no! Vivi thinks. Nooooooo! Brett Caspian found out about the book.

Vivi’s hunch had been correct: Brett didn’t know she was a writer. He knows now only because someone told him she died. His bandmate’s sister—Roy’s sister Renata, if Vivi had to guess. Aaaaaaaah! She realizes how naive she was to think that Brett would never hear about this book. The whole world is connected; everybody knows everything, thanks to the internet. Brett isn’t on Facebook but that doesn’t mean he lives in a cabin in the woods or in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest. He’s the GM at a Holiday Inn in Knoxville, Tennessee. (This seems so random. If Vivi had to guess what Brett was doing with his life, she would have said he was working on a production crew doing lights and sound for the bands they’d loved—Foreigner, Blue Öyster Cult—on their summer-outdoor-venue-reunion tours.)

Brett doesn’t sound angry in the message. He doesn’t sound like he hates her.

But he will—if he reads Golden Girl.

Vivi remembers how Brett used to wait on a bench and smoke every time she went into B. Dalton at the Parmatown Mall. He wouldn’t even set foot in the bookstore.

There’s no way he’ll read Golden Girl.

Vivi hands the clipboard back to Martha with a smile. “Better than I expected!” she says.

Willa

Willa and Rip are moving for the summer. They’re leaving their house on Quaker Road—purchased just after their wedding with help from the elder Bonhams—for a cottage situated on the beach at the entrance to Smith’s Point. Their house on Quaker Road is forty-five hundred square feet and has five bedrooms. The cottage is tiny; it’s a dollhouse. It used to be the “summer residence” for Rip’s grandparents, and Willa and Rip would ride their bikes there when they were in middle school and high school. Rip’s grandmother would serve them lemonade garnished with fresh mint, but they had to drink it at the picnic table on the deck because the house was too small for them all to hang out inside. The cottage is called Wee Bit. It has a teensy-tiny sitting room, one wall of which is a galley kitchen, a bedroom that is big enough to hold one bed and one nightstand, and a powder room with a sink and toilet. There’s a deck with a picnic table and a gas grill that Rip’s grandfather splurged on sometime in the mid-1990s, and three stairs down, there’s a flagstone patio in front of an outdoor shower. Beyond the deck and the shower are dunes with a path that cuts over and onto the beach.

After Rip’s grandparents went into assisted living, Wee Bit sat unused. Nobody in the Bonham family wanted to stay there. They were a tall family; Chas and Rip couldn’t even stand to their full height unless they were right in the center of the room where the ceiling peaked. Both of Rip’s grandparents passed away over that winter and Rip officially inherited the cottage. It was infested with mice and everything was mildewed. The floor in the sitting room was rotted; the bathroom was unspeakable. Willa thought that they could—maybe—use the cottage as a staging area if they ever wanted to throw a beach party, but Rip was set on living there.