A thousand questions began to spin in Will’s head, but it was Lizzy who was able to articulate the first one.
“You can just… call the FBI?” she asked.
Lydia rolled her eyes again. “It’s on their website. Duh.”
Will opened his mouth, ready with further questions. He wanted to know the details, to organize the information in a way that made sense.
But then he closed it again. He didn’t need to control this. All that mattered was that Tristan was in jail. And for now, that was enough.
So instead, he raised his mug to Lydia. “Well done.”
Lydia smiled smugly. “Thank you.”
Everyone watched, dumbfounded, as they clinked their coffee mugs together and gave each other a nod. Will took a sip of his, while Lydia paused to study him unabashedly.
Then her head cocked to the side. “Are you seriously a natural blond?”
The stillness was broken as the kitchen erupted in yelling again: Mrs. Bennet telling Lydia she was being inappropriate, Lydia telling her mother that it was a good question, and Kitty telling them both to stop yelling. To her credit, Mary kept her head down, still reading her book.
The sound was deafening, the scene chaotic. After a minute, Lizzy turned to Will and groaned. “This is chaos.”
He smiled down at her. Jesus, he loved this woman. No caveats or disclaimers. No deadlines or half-life. And the realization slowly dissolved the knot of tension in his chest.
“That’s all right,” he said, leaning down to kiss the corner of her mouth. “Some people don’t mind a mess.”
EPILOGUE
Memorial Day weekend arrived in East Hampton the same way it had every year before. By Friday afternoon, a long line of cars stretched down Montauk Highway all the way back to New York City, the beaches were crowded with Manhattanites, and the businesses along Main Street were bustling. Still, by eight p.m. the town had settled into its normal pace, and a sense of calm lay over everything.
Well, except for the party currently raging on the field outside the Village Hall.
“I LOVE THIS SONG!” Mrs. Bennet yelled over the guitar solo of the Friday night headliner, the Eazy E Street Band, a Bruce Springsteen and NWA cover group.
To the surprise of everyone, except maybe Hank Donato, the inaugural HamptonFest was a roaring success. Some of the initial plans had to be scaled back, of course—Marv refused to revise the village’s noise ordinances so no acts were allowed to play past nine p.m., and Taylor Swift was unavailable to headline this year. But thanks to a sizable anonymous donation, a few generous sponsors, and partnerships with various local businesses whose tables nowlined the periphery of the field, HamptonFest was kicking off with almost the entire town in attendance.
Lizzy stood to the side of the stage, sipping her beer as the band’s guitar solo led to a DJ scratch, then the opening licks of “Born in the U.S.A.” The crowd cheered, with Mrs. Bennet and Donna Donato front and center, screaming at the lead singer. Even Lizzy had to admit that he looked strikingly like Bruce Springsteen himself, except for the thick gold chain and L.A. Dodgers baseball cap. Her mother didn’t seem to notice a difference, though. In fact, the way her hands were flailing behind her back now could only mean one thing…
Beside Lizzy, Jane winced. “Is she going to throw her bra onstage?”
“Let her have this,” Lizzy said, patting Jane’s arm. “She’s earned it.”
Jane smiled.
“Do you think anyone here realizes that this song is actually about the futility of war and a scathing critique of the country’s treatment of veterans and the working class under Reagan?” Mary murmured from where she stood a few feet away. Her hair was a deep shade of green now. It matched herThere Is No Planet BT-shirt.
Lizzy’s head tilted to the side, watching as a very drunk Marv tried to balance his ex-wife on his shoulders so she could see the stage.
“Nope,” she replied.
Mary snorted a laugh.
After her arrest last year, and the subsequent fallout, the truth about Tristan’s lack of effort toward securing Gretna Island slowly came out—helped by Tristan’s very public trial for felony insurance fraud and tax evasion. And while he was currently serving five years in prison, Hank begrudgingly gave up his dream of holding HamptonFest on the island.
Oddly enough, that motivated Green Justice to become one of the main sponsors of the revamped festival, securing the space around Village Hall and ensuring that all food waste was composted.
Where exactly Green Justice got the money to support such a festival was one of the worst-kept secrets in East Hampton.
Lizzy wasn’t sure if it was out of boredom, spite, or actual altruism that made Vivienne Pierce write a personal check to Green Justice. Her ex-husband had finally been forced to honor their prenup, and Vivienne was awarded their Midtown penthouse and their French bulldog, Sha-Diamond, in the settlement. Afterward, she promptly sold the apartment and everything in it—except the dog, who never left her side—and donated a portion of the profits to the one organization she knew her oil tycoon ex-husband would hate: Mary’s ecoterrorist organization. Now she was in Zermatt with Rainer, a Swiss-German ski instructor. Apparently, he saved her life after she slipped getting off a chairlift this past winter. They’d been inseparable ever since.
