“Fine! You can go back to pretending to read your book now.”
He didn’t take the bait. “Where are you going?”
“I need to run an errand. Time sensitive. I’ll see you later.”
He tucked the book under his arm. “I’ll come with you. I like boats.”
“Sorry, next time. Gotta go,” Olivia said. Even if she didn’tfind Zack insufferable, she couldn’t risk anyone else learning that Marigold had gone AWOL.
“Oh, come on. Let me come. It’s the least you can do, given how much time I’m devoting to the longest wedding in history.”
“Um,Ididn’t ask you to be the best man. And anyway, I’m sure you’ll use this whole weekend as clickbait for your little blog. I can see the headline now: ‘Why Rich People Are Even Worse Than You Think.’?”
“I don’t have any time for the blog these days,” Zack said with the trademark grin that made Olivia like him less each time she met him. “I’m working on a book. But don’t worry—I won’t use any of your real names in my chapter on conspicuous consumption and liberal hypocrisy.”
Olivia snorted. “You didn’t seem that bothered when you helped yourself to two hundred dollars’ worth of seafood last night.”
“Better than letting it go to waste. Now come on, let me come with you. It’ll be faster. I can drop you off so you don’t have to worry about docking.”
Olivia thought for a moment. If she didn’t beat the ferry to the mainland, then she might have to make a run for it to reach Marigold before she got into a taxi. Every second would count.
“Fine,” she said with a sigh. “Come on.”
Despite the fact that the boat had already drifted a few feet from the pier, Zack managed to hop in with impressive ease.
“Hold on,” she said, putting the boat into gear. She turned sharply away from the dock and then accelerated as quickly as she dared. Unlike Marigold, Olivia couldn’t afford to have a reckless driving ticket on her record.
Zack settled into the seat next to her. “Don’t you have one ofthose floaty key chain things?” he asked, gesturing at the ignition. “What if it falls in the water?”
“We have one for the main set of keys. Marigold lost those last week. This is just the backup key, for emergencies.
“And what’s the ‘emergency’?”
“Just some wedding stuff.”
“So you’re not sneaking off to see a client or something?”
Actually, that wasn’t a terrible cover story. Perhaps she should let Zack believe she was frantic about work rather than intercepting a runaway bride. As they passed the buoys that marked the no-wake zone, Olivia pulled back on the gearshift and the boat leaped forward. Despite everything, she smiled—the rush never got old.
“Something I promised my mother I’d handle.” It was true, in a sense. Olivia was the only person besides Bill who knew the truth—a secret she’d never wanted to carry to begin with, but that she now would fight to protect, no matter the cost.
It had been a sunny day six months ago, at her parents’ apartment in the city.
“No,” Olivia said emphatically. “Absolutely not.”
Lulu and Bill exchangedI told you solooks, although Olivia wasn’t sure who was blaming whom. They were perched on the uncomfortable kitchen stools the interior designer had bought when they’d redone their penthouse a few years earlier. Everyone hated them, but there was an unspoken rule against complaining, though Olivia was unsure whether this was to protect the reputation of the designer or Bill’s ego since he’d been the one who’d insisted on redecorating in the first place. That seemed to be their family’s modus operandi these days—unspoken rules,unarticulated feelings. Sometimes Olivia found herself thinking wistfully about the old days, back in their one-bedroom apartment, where there was no space for secrets. Where she could glean her mother’s mood from the way Lulu closed the front door, whether she hung up her coat on the hook or tossed it over the back of the couch.
But now Lulu and Bill were trying to change the rules. They wanted to bring Olivia into their inner circle for the express purpose of excluding Marigold.
“We’ll tell her after the wedding,” Lulu said. “We don’t want to ruin this special time.”
“Don’t you think she’ll notice that you’re not going to chemo?” Olivia asked.
Lulu cocked her head and gave Olivia a knowing smile. They were all deeply familiar with Marigold’s ability to ignore anything she didn’t want to deal with, from a pile of dirty clothes on her bedroom floor to the sudden cessation in her mother’s bimonthly trips to Sloan Kettering and the days of illness that always followed.
“Fine,” Olivia conceded. “Maybe she won’t notice right away. But she’ll never forgive you when she finds out. She deserves to know the truth.”
“She’s not as strong as you are, Olly-pop,” Bill said, using his special nickname for Olivia.
