“I didn’t tell you this earlier because it’s really none of my business, but I recognized the name Bull Richardson because…” Here, Heather draws out a long pause as though she’s the writer creating suspense. Sharon has to admit her interest is piqued. She knows nothing about the Richardsons, really, which is odd, since she’s been inside their home and aboard their boat.
“Yes?” Sharon says.
Heather sighs. “Well, we investigated him for a whistleblower complaint about some environmental fraud.”
Oh my god, how dull, Sharon thinks. But what was she expecting? Heather works for the federal government. “I didn’t realize you investigated private companies.”
“Of course we do,” Heather says. “Theranos. Ring a bell?”
The know-it-all comments are starting to irritate Sharon. “And that’s what you wanted to tell me?”
“I mentioned the name to Skip,” Heather says. Skip, Heather’s longtime (dare Sharon say long-suffering?) boyfriend, has a job that’s even more boring than Heather’s: He works for the IRS. He’s pretty high up—not the top-top job, but close.
“And?” Sharon says.
“He intimated—because of course he can’t come right out and tell me—that Bull Richardson and Sweetwater Distribution might be in their crosshairs as well.”
Environmental fraud and taxes. Sharon is practically asleep.
“I know you’re enamored with the Richardsons,” Heather says.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Sharon snaps. “Leslee throws fun parties.”
“You said she’s shaking up Nantucket and that she and Bull have basically become the grown-up version of prom king and queen.”
Did Sharon say that? She’d had at least three firecracker cocktails on the Fourth of July as well as some champagne, so she was pretty tipsy when she got home, but did she use that phrase—the grown-up version of prom king and queen? She might have.
“Just be careful, please, Sharon,” Heather says.
Sharon doesn’t like it when her older sister tells her what to do; she has never liked it. Sharon is about to toss a snide-adjacent Will do! when she hears a beeping. Heather has already hung up.
She considers what Heather told her. She would never betray her sister’s confidence by going into specifics, but the old Sharon would have called Fast Eddie and intimated that maybe the Richardsons weren’t quite what everyone thought—and Eddie might have mentioned this to his brother-in-law Glenn Daley, and Glenn might have called Rachel McMann, and Rachel would naturally have said something to Dr. Andy, and Dr. Andy would tell his dental hygienist Janice, and the next time Sharon bumped into Celadon Morse at Sea View Farm, Celadon would ask her if it was true that Bull Richardson was a drug lord with connections to the Mob.
Sharon doesn’t call Fast Eddie; Sharon doesn’t repeat what Heather said to anyone. Has the world turned upside down? Sharon has no interest in speculating about Bull and Leslee Richardson. Sharon has become the kind of woman she never understood before—someone who doesn’t need to talk about other people to make her days more interesting because her days are interesting enough as it is.
When Coco gets home from her errands in town, she lugs bags of groceries and a handle of Tito’s up the stairs without crushing the loaf of sourdough and finds Leslee and Lamont in the kitchen; Leslee is making crepes with whipped cream and peaches.
“Oh, hello,” Coco says. There’s a bottle of Laurent-Perrier lounging in an ice bucket. Lamont has a full flute in front of him; Leslee is drinking hers at the stove.
“Hey,” Lamont says.
“Did you remember to get the bread sliced thin?” Leslee asks as she pours crepe batter into a pan sizzling with butter.
“I did,” Coco says. There are so many things assaulting her senses that she’s not sure where to start. First off, Leslee never cooks, yet here she is, whipping up crepes? (Then Coco remembers: Leslee used to be a crepe chef in Vegas. Apparently, a true story.) Second, why are she and Lamont day-drinking together on a weekday? Third, Coco has never failed to get the sourdough sliced thin, so why must Leslee check? “Are you two celebrating something?”
“I just dropped Bull off at the airport,” Leslee says. “He’ll be gone for a week.”
“He… what?” Coco is confused. Neither Bull nor Leslee mentioned another trip.
“That thing in Indo is blowing up,” Leslee says. “He needs to be there in person. Then he’s going to the Philippines afterward to try and drum up some new business.”
Coco made the Richardsons’ bed this morning and folded their pajamas, and she didn’t see a suitcase. It feels like this trip was kept secret from her.
“What about all the dinner reservations I made?” she says. “The tickets for the White Heron Theatre? The passes for the silent disco at the Dreamland? I thought you guys wanted to go to that. Should I cancel?”
Leslee slides a golden-brown crepe onto Lamont’s plate. “Cancel?” she says. “Why would you do that?”
Coco hopes this doesn’t mean what she thinks it means. She tries to catch Lamont’s eye but he’s intent on the bowl of sugared peach slices and ignores her, just as they agreed to do.
Coco puts the groceries away with military precision; she tucks the sourdough into the bread box, folds the reusable shopping bags, and takes the vodka into the party room. Who is Coco kidding? Of course it means what she thinks it means. Bull is away; Lamont will slide into his place. Did Lamont know Bull was leaving? He made love to her earlier that morning; he ran his thumbs over her eyelids, nibbled her earlobe, fell asleep for a few precious minutes spooning her. He’d been extra-sweet, she noted, extra-attentive. He knew he was about to be called in from the bullpen. Or maybe, Coco thinks, he just walked into a full-on champagne-and-crepes ambush.
Coco needs to vent her anger. Should she do a shot from the bottle of vodka? Two shots? Should she take the cue ball off the pool table and hurl it through the plate-glass window?
She wanders over to the jukebox, searches the selections. One song jumps out at her. She presses J12 and after the record drops, it’s as though Linda Ronstadt is there in the room. You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good, baby, you’re no good. Coco sits on the curvy white sofa and belts out the lyrics; in her mind, she’s a karaoke queen, perfectly in tune. Can Lamont and Leslee hear her, and if they can, do they care? When the song is over, Coco goes back out into the hall and hears Lamont and Leslee’s easy banter and Leslee’s laugh, extra-girlish today.
Coco hurries down the stairs and enters Bull’s study. Where is her screenplay? It’s not on his desk. Is she brave enough to venture behind his desk? Yes. She checks the piles on either side of Bull’s desktop computer—financial documents, loads of them. Taped to the top of Bull’s keyboard is a slip of paper that says Email password: SweetH2O888. What kind of idiot leaves the password to his email taped to the computer? No, it’s not stupidity, Coco thinks. It’s that he feels safe here. It’s his home, his office. He trusts anyone who might see it—Leslee, the cleaning staff, Coco.
She’s almost chastened enough to leave without checking his desk drawers. Almost. She rifles through them but doesn’t find her manuscript. She checks the trash. It’s (thankfully) not there either.
She sneaks into the primary suite. Her manuscript isn’t on Bull’s nightstand or on his dresser or in his closet. The library? She looks, but it’s not on the escritoire, the chaise, or any of the shelves; it’s not in the hidden bourbon bar.
He took it with him, she thinks.
Coco imagines Bull at that very moment, tucked into his luxurious pod on Singapore Airlines. He’s got a glass of Dom Pérignon, a tiny bowl of warm, salted nuts. The flight attendant has hung up his sports coat; he’s removed his loafers and put on his slippers. He peruses the menu, chooses the black cod in ginger sauce, then scrolls through the movies on offer. Does he want to watch Oppenheimer again? What about Caddyshack? Both feel like a waste of time. He reaches into his briefcase and pulls out Coco’s script.
He begins to read.
Coco keeps track of how much time Leslee and Lamont spend together. The crepes and champagne are followed by a ride on Decadence. Coco watches them zip off as she washes the frying pan and their whipped-cream-smeared plates; she is Cinderella before the fairy godmother shows up. When they return in the late afternoon, Leslee is golden from the sun; her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She strolls past Coco, who is in one of the beach chaises reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, and says, “We had such a magnificent day. Lamont took me to a place called Whale Island over on Tuckernuck.”
