The Hotel Nantucket — Chapter no 6

6. Staff Secrets

In her century as a ghost, Grace has developed and honed her EQ; her instincts about people are (nearly) always correct. Grace can sense trouble—it feels as though she’s hearing a wrong note in a song or tasting a wine that has gone off. And while Grace is intrigued by the unexpected arrival of this family, she sees a flashing yellow light of warning when she looks at the mother. Kimber Marsh is lying about something. The children, however, are precious little angels, so cute and odd that Grace would like to cuddle them.

The children run, shouting, into the bunk-room wonderland of suite 114 with the dog following at a trot. The little boy, Louie, scales the ladder to the top bunk closest to the door, then clambers across a rope bridge to the other top bunk. The little girl, Wanda, tucks herself into the swing that looks like a wicker egg and opens her mystery book. Doug the dog stops just inside the threshold of the room and raises his bucket head. He starts to whine.

Oh, snap, Grace thinks. He senses her; animals nearly always do.

“What’s wrong, Dougie?” Wanda says. “Come on.”

Grace floats into the master bedroom, where Kimber Marsh runs a finger along the spines of the books lining the shelves. She’s really quite lovely when she smiles, Grace thinks, though the green and blue hair is unsettling. And something else is off.

Kimber opens the small icebox and pulls out a package of crackers, a tub of smoked bluefish pâté, and—well, it is five o’clock in Greenland—a bottle of cranberry pinot gris from Nantucket Vineyards. She pours the glass of sparkling wine, then drags the cracker through the pâté and shoves it into her mouth. Grace forgives her table manners because she’s so thin and needs to eat.

Then Kimber slips over to the tablet by the bedside and suddenly the room fills with music. It’s Mötley Crüe singing “Home Sweet Home.”

Grace hasn’t heard this song since the early nineties.

Kimber goes into the bathroom with her toiletries and Grace follows cautiously; she has to avoid the mirrors just in case Kimber has, as it was popular to say in the late nineties, “a sixth sense.” (I see dead people.) Kimber glances around, sniffs the Nest candle by the tub (Amalfi lemon and mint), turns on the soft halo light around the mirror, and winks at her reflection. Okay? Grace thinks. Let’s unpack this: Why would a person wink at herself? She’s pulled something off? She doesn’t have a penny to her name but now she and the children and the dog are ensconced in these glorious digs?

Back in the bedroom, Kimber has another cracker and then, from the mess of luggage they brought, she fishes out a red duffel. She unzips it to reveal thick bricks of cash. So she wasn’t bluffing about the money, Grace thinks. As she’s stacking the cash in the safe in the walk-in closet, there’s a knock at the door. Kimber tenses, then creeps out to the living room. She looks through the peephole and smiles.

It’s Grace’s crush Zeke (sigh) holding one of the marble chess sets from the lobby. “Edie said that Louie lost his travel chess set.

She thought he might like to have a board of his own for the room.”

“Thank you!” Kimber said. “How thoughtful.” She holds up a finger.

“Let me get you a little something.”

“No need,” Zeke says. “It’s our pleasure.”

Lizbet has just finished showing the couple from Syracuse around— the woman said she had a “nice” following on Instagram, and Lizbet thought she might help spread the word about the hotel—and she’s been on her feet all day long (what possessed her to wear stilettos?), but when Edie tells her about the family in suite 114, she hustles back to the office. All she can think as she collapses into her chair is that Sweet Edie was duped on day one by some grifter.

She has to go to suite 114.

Lizbet limps down the hall and knocks on the door with a smile on her face that’s so forced, it makes her head ache.

Kimber Marsh opens the door. Thank God Edie warned Lizbet about the hair, because it’s startling. “Ms. Marsh, hello. I’m Lizbet Keaton, the general manager of the hotel.”

“What a beautiful property you have here,” she says. “The kids are in heaven.”

Lizbet had meant to be firm but when the two little towheaded children in glasses tiptoe out of the bunk room, she relents immediately. The girl is holding a book, and the boy clutches a white chess queen. “I spoke with Edie, who checked you in. She told me you’d like to pay in cash, which is fine. I’ll need the first week as a deposit.”

“Yes, of course. One second.” Kimber heads into the bedroom and reappears a moment later with a stack of bills. She counts it out:

thirty-three hundred dollars. “The first week plus five hundred for incidentals. I can pay in advance every Monday if that’s easiest?”

“In advance every Monday works,” Lizbet says, relaxing a bit. If the woman pays in advance, there’s no problem, is there? “We’ll slip an invoice under the door and e-mail it to you as well.”

Kimber Marsh opens her arms and hugs Lizbet, and the children run over and grab Lizbet around the legs. Over Kimber’s shoulder, Lizbet sees the dog. He trots over to sniff Lizbet, then plops down at her aching feet.

At the end of the day, Lizbet calls the staff to her office. Raoul, who is working night bell, agrees to watch the desk.

Lizbet gathers Edie, Alessandra, Zeke, Adam, and Magda, who is trailed by a preppy-looking kid wearing rumpled khakis and a pink oxford shirt rolled up above his elbows.

“Lizbet, let me introduce the newest member of my housekeeping staff, Chadwick Winslow,” Magda says. “I trained him today. The other cleaners won’t be in until the morning.”

“Chad Winslow,” the kid says, shaking Lizbet’s hand.

“That’s right, I remember when you dropped off your résumé. I’m glad this worked out. Welcome.”

Chad dips his head. “Thank you for the chance. I’m grateful.”

Chadwick Winslow sounds like a name straight off the Mayflower manifest, but Lizbet wants to foster diversity and inclusivity across the board. Why shouldn’t a rich-looking dude named Chad be cleaning rooms?

Lizbet leads everyone into the break room, which has been decorated to resemble a 1950s diner; there’s the signature turquoise and orange of a Howard Johnson’s and a lot of chrome and Formica.

It provides a complete psychological separation from the rest of the hotel, which is important when everyone is working six and a half days a week. There’s a bar counter where the staff can sit and eat lunch, a low, curvy sofa with plenty of pillows for napping, a soft- serve ice cream machine, a vintage pinball machine—Hokus Pokus —and a jukebox that gives four plays for a dollar. Lizbet is seriously impressed by the break room, but for the most part, the staff seem nonplussed. Zeke stares at the pinball machine like it’s a Martian spacecraft, and Lizbet can see him wishing there was a TV and a PS5 instead. Edie inspects the songs on the jukebox and says, “I’ve never heard of any of this music. Who’s Joan Jett?”

Lizbet asks everyone to sit and then checks that the door is closed tight.

“First of all, I want to thank you all for your great work today.” She brings her hands together in front of her chest. The incident with JJ and Mario Subiaco that morning in the parking lot feels like three days ago, and Lizbet has to stay to work the night desk. How is she ever going to make it through the summer?

She isn’t, at this rate, and especially not in heels.

“We have guests in suite one fourteen who will be staying for the summer. I just want to remind everyone that although these guests may become very familiar to you over time, you should always treat them with the highest standards of service. And information about all our guests should be held in the strictest confidence.”

“Of course,” Edie says. Everyone else just nods.

Something about Kimber Marsh’s cash felt fishy, and after the children and Doug retreated back to their room, Lizbet had wanted to ask Kimber a question—but she wasn’t sure what that question should be. Was her ex-husband abusive? Was he in the Mob or a drug dealer? Was the family in hiding? In the end, Lizbet said to Kimber, “We’re so glad you’re here. I wrote a Nantucket recommendation guide, which I’m calling the Blue Book. I’ll leave it for you at the desk.” Then Lizbet zipped down to her computer and googled Kimber Marsh of East Seventy-Fourth Street, New York, New York. Nothing relevant came up. Lizbet checked Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—nothing. She tried Kimberly Marsh, Kim Marsh, Kimmy Marsh—still nothing. As far as the internet was concerned, Kimber Marsh didn’t exist. Was that suspicious? Lizbet reasoned that there were lots of people who didn’t use social media.

Or maybe because of the divorce, she had deleted her accounts.

To the staff, Lizbet says, “I’ve advised Ms. Marsh to use the exit next to her suite to walk the dog. The last thing I want to see is that dog strolling through the lobby.”

“I’ll walk the dog for Ms. Marsh if she needs me,” Zeke says.

Edie laughs. “Seriously? This afternoon, that dog was walking you.”

“We bonded,” Zeke says. “It’ll be my pleasure to do that for Ms.

Marsh.”

“He just wants the thousand-dollar bonus,” Adam says.

“About those bonuses,” Lizbet says, and every pair of eyes snaps back to her. “In addition to reading the TravelTattler reviews, Mr.

Darling will be hearing from me about staff performance. And what I’ll be looking for is superlative guest service, of course, but also

selflessness, sacrifice, promptness, consistency, kindness, and teamwork.”

Alessandra, who has been sitting on the sofa with her arms crossed, raises a hand. “Will Mr. Darling be in residence this

summer?”

“Not until August.”

Alessandra frowns, but the rest of the staff look relieved. Adam raises his hand. “Can we get the piano in the lobby tuned?” he asks.

“Sure,” Lizbet says. Until this second, she thought of the piano only as a piece of furniture. “Do you play?”

“I do,” Adam says. He sings out “Welcome to the Hotel Na- antucket!” to the tune of “Hotel California,” and everyone except Alessandra smiles. He has a great voice, a Broadway voice—just like his former GM said in the e-mail.

“I’ll put that on my list,” Lizbet says. She looks around the room.

“Does anyone else have hidden talents?” She pauses. “Or perhaps a secret to share in this safe space?”

She watches every face in the room tense up.

Lizbet smiles. “Just kidding, guys. Thank you for a terrific first day.”

Lizbet isn’t kidding. She wants to nurture intimacy and trust.

During her fifteen seasons at the Deck, Lizbet was a vault for all sorts of sensitive information. She was the first call when Goose’s brother got arrested for a DUI; she sat with Juliette in the restaurant office while Juliette cried about accidentally getting pregnant.

However, Lizbet kept boundaries in place—she was 90 percent boss, 10 percent big sister. Her staffers were a little afraid of her, but that meant she was doing a good job. She wants to create that same

atmosphere here; it’s her strength. She scrutinizes her staff. If they’re hiding anything—as she suspects Kimber Marsh is—she wants to know about it now.

Chad Winslow leaves the staff meeting and drives his brand-new Range Rover back to his parents’ summer house on Eel Point Road.

Secrets? he thinks. There’s no way Lizbet could have heard what happened back in Pennsylvania, but the question made him uncomfortable.

He checks his phone only long enough to see that it’s clogged with texts and snaps from his summer friends, but there’s nothing from Paddy, which is both agonizing and a relief. Chad has texted Paddy every day since he arrived on the island but he’s heard nothing back. Paddy is finished with Chad, hates his guts, will never speak to him again. And the thing is, Chad can’t blame him. As Chad rumbles down the dirt road past the grandest beachfront homes on the island, he recalls Ms. English’s words: I happen to believe, Chadwick, that even the biggest disasters can be cleaned up, and I’ll teach you to believe it too. Chad wants to believe it. He wants to think that if he works hard and keeps his eyes straight ahead, he’ll be able to scour the ugly stain from his life.

Ms. English and Chad spent all day in room 104, which was already impeccably clean. She stripped the sheets off the emperor- size bed and he started from scratch, pulling the fitted sheet tight around the corners. Nothing worse than a rumpled bottom sheet, Ms.

English said. She showed him how to arrange the pillows; she made him take a picture of the finished product as though it were an art

installation. They spent two hours in the bathroom alone, going over all the places on a toilet where bacteria hides, how to find and dispose of stray hairs and clipped nails, how to get water stains off the drinking glasses, and how to fold a towel, which was harder than it looked; Chad folded the same towel sixty-two times, starting over if the edges weren’t straight. They ran through the one hundred points on the checklist, including the tiniest details that Chad never would have thought about—the number of hangers in the closets, whether all the light bulbs worked, and the temperature of the minifridge. Ms.

English gave Chad strict instructions about which of the guests’ belongings it was okay to touch; he was to fold discarded clothes and place them on the surface closest to where he found them. (The guests will always leave their underwear draped over the telephone, Ms. English told him, which made him laugh. He hoped she was kidding.) He was never to touch jewelry, watches, or cash unless it was a checkout and the cash had been left as a tip. He was never to go into the drawers, the closet, or a suitcase.

Obviously, Chad said, and Ms. English had given him a pointed look. Did she think he was a thief? He hadn’t told her how he’d “messed up,” so it was possible she thought he’d stolen something.

That was practically the only thing he hadn’t done.

When Chad pulls into his driveway, he sees his friend Jasper’s Porsche Cayenne parked there, and Jasper, Bryce, and Eric are standing on the front porch.

Chad aims the air-conditioning vents straight at his face and wishes he could disappear.

“Where you been, bruh, snapping you all day, we finally decided to storm the castle but your sister said you weren’t home, and when we asked her where you were, she said she hoped you were bleeding in a ditch.”

“Ouch,” Chad says, though this comes as no surprise. Leith hates

him now.

“She’s cold,” Bryce says.

“And yet so hot,” Eric says.

Chad doesn’t have the energy to flip Eric off for that. He’s more concerned about the sweet green miasma hanging in the air above

his friends.

“You guys smoked up on my porch?”

“We were waiting for you, man. We’re hitting the brewery. You

have to come.”

“I can’t.”

“Whaaaaa?” Eric says. “Band is back together, bruh, come on.

Didn’t you miss us?”

The answer is no. Chad is still friends with these guys—the young princes of Greenwich, Connecticut; Mission Hills, Kansas; and Fisher Island, Florida—only because of their shared past. They threw sand at one another on Children’s Beach, sneaked into R-rated movies at the Dreamland Theater, showed up late to steak night at the Sankaty Head Golf Club with their oxfords half untucked and their eyes bloodshot because they’d smoked out of an apple pipe at Altar Rock.

But thanks to his friendship with Paddy, Chad has gained a modicum of self-awareness. He realizes that the Chad stereotype—passing out in public (like Jasper in front of the Gazebo on Figawi weekend) or stranding a car on the beach (like Eric in his father’s Mercedes at

Fisherman’s)—is not only privileged and elitist but also ridiculous and pathetic.

What do you call a group of Chads? An inheritance.

However, this self-awareness, of which Chad is secretly proud, was tragically lacking on May 22.

Chad is amazed these guys haven’t heard what happened back in Radnor; he half expected his sister, Leith, to spill the beans, even though their parents swore both children to silence “for the sake of the family name.” Still, Chad knows that gossip flows fast along tributaries slicked by money and privilege. How did news of the party not reach these three?

Or maybe it did, and they just don’t care.

The brewery sounds like fun. They can have a couple of cold Whale’s Tales, get some lobster sliders from the food trucks, check out girls, listen to live music, pet other people’s golden retrievers. (No, Chad thinks, no dogs.) He’ll go for an hour, he thinks, to appease them.

But then he recalls how an hour or two at the brewery can easily turn into drinks at the Gazebo, which will then become the four of them lined up in the front row of the Chicken Box, pumping their fists in the air to some cover band singing Coldplay before spilling out onto Dave Street and puking out the back of a cab.

Chad needs to be at work bright and early tomorrow. He will not

show up hungover.

“Good seeing you guys,” Chad says.

“Man, what’s going on?” Bryce says. “You didn’t open a single snap all day and now you won’t go out with us?”

Chad knows his behavior must seem strange. He’s never been the ringleader of this group—that has always been Jasper—but in summers past, he’s gone along for a good time.

“Where were you all day?” Jasper asks.

“I…” Chad says. He could tell these guys he got a job, but there would be follow-up questions like “Where?” and “Why?” Chad is supposed to be having one last summer of carefree leisure before starting at his father’s venture-capital firm, the Brandywine Group, in September. How can Chad explain that not only is he working this summer, he’s a chambermaid? He spent today in rubber gloves, learning about disinfectants. “Maybe I’ll meet you guys later.” He reaches for the doorknob so there can be no mistake: he’s not going anywhere with them.

Eric cracks a big, high smile. “Chad must have himself a lady friend. Look at his ’fit—did he even come home last night?”

Jasper and Bryce start catcalling—“Bros before hos, man, but no worries, we’re gonna dip”; “We’ll hit you up later”—as Chad slips into the cool air of the foyer and closes the door behind him. Leith is coming down the stairs; she flips him off and heads for the kitchen without a word. His sister has recently earned her doctorate in the silent treatment, which hurts because they used to be friends.

A second later, he hears his mother, Whitney. “Chaddy?”

If she’s calling him the world’s worst nickname—Chaddy—then she’s already into the chardonnay. Chad pokes his head into the kitchen and sees Whitney standing at the island with a large, uncorked bottle of Kendall-Jackson in front of her.

She flutters a piece of paper in his direction. “Pretty please,” she says. “Market for Mom?”

He takes the list: 8 wagyu steaks, 3 lbs. bluefin tuna, 2 lbs. lobster salad, Comté cheese, truffled potato chips (6 bags).

“This is a lot of food,” he says. “Are we having company?”

Whitney shrugs and casts her eyes down into the golden promise of her wine. “Things for dinner.”

Chad’s father won’t arrive on the island for another few weeks; he’s busy closing a deal. Leith consumes only two things—hard- boiled eggs and Diet Dr Pepper—and Whitney eats even less than that. Yet his mother always stocks the fridge like the offensive line of the Philadelphia Eagles are coming for dinner. When she goes to the trouble of cooking, 90 percent of the food is pitched straight into the trash (neither of Chad’s parents believes in leftovers). But most of the time, Whitney can’t be bothered to cook. Instead, she pours wine, microwaves a bag of popcorn, and gets lost in Netflix or she meets “the girls” at the yacht club, and the groceries sit in the fridge until they grow a slimy film or greenish-gray fur. This never bothered Chad; he never even noticed until Paddy went on a tirade about the “conspicuous waste” of the Winslow household.

He’ll buy three steaks, the cheese, and one bag of potato chips,

he decides.

“I got a job today,” he says.

“You did not.” These are the first words Leith has spoken to him since May 22.

“At the Hotel Nantucket,” Chad says. “Cleaning rooms.”

His mother blinks.

“I wanted to do something,” Chad says. “To make things right.”

“Your father is handling it with the lawyers,” his mother says.

“I wanted to do something. Get an honest job, make my own

money to give to Paddy.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Whitney says.

“Wait,” Leith says. “You’re serious? You’re going to clean rooms at the hotel? You’re going to be a…a…”

“Maid,” Chad says. He watches his sister smile, which is nice because she has such a pretty smile and he hasn’t seen it in a while.

But then she dissolves into hysterical laughter that quickly becomes more hysteria than laughter and finishes as ugly sobs. She takes the closest thing she can find—a coffee mug with a picture of a dachshund on it—and throws it at him, hurling it like she’s trying to get a lacrosse ball into the net for the game-winning goal against a longtime rival. She misses Chad; the mug smashes against the tile floor.

“You! Can’t! Make! Things! Right!” she screams.

Chad leaves the kitchen and heads out the front door with the list clenched in his fist.

His sister is correct—he can’t make things right. But he’s going to die trying.

Since arriving on Nantucket last August and moving into the guest cottage behind her brother’s house on West Chester Street, Magda English has established a tidy and modest routine. She attends the seven-thirty service at the Summer Street church every Sunday morning; she occasionally meets the church ladies (led by the sanctimonious and nearly unbearable Nancy Twine) for afternoons of

“crafting”; and she cooks—soups, stews, and rice dishes, all of them diabolically spicy.

When Magda leaves the staff meeting, she chuckles to herself.

Does anyone have a secret to share in this safe space?

Magda has secrets but she isn’t fool enough to divulge them to people she’s just met, most of whom aren’t old enough to remember the turn of the millennium. She finds it amusing that their new general manager, a woman well into her thirties, is naive enough to believe that any space is “safe.”

If Magda were going to lead by example and share something, it might have been this: She’s thrilled to be working again. Her tidy and modest routine had grown dull; she was bored and more than once she had checked flights back to St. Thomas. She’d retired from cruise ships for good but there was a new resort opening on Lovango Cay and she thought she might head up housekeeping there. But then she’d heard from Xavier, who told her what he’d done —bought a hotel, sight unseen, on the island where she now lives.

Xavier is like a schoolboy doing handstands and backflips to capture Magda’s attention, only in his case, the acrobatics are displays of his wealth—the way he managed to get the renovation done so quickly, the thousand-dollar bonuses for the staff. And sending the orchids that morning! (Vandas are Magda’s favorite flower, as Xavier well knows.) She’d left them on her desk; if she brought them home, she would be asked all kinds of questions that she had no intention of answering.

Magda slips out of the hotel and climbs into her brand-new Jeep Gladiator, which is part Jeep, part pickup truck, and a convertible to boot. Her brother, William, had given her quite a look when she

drove it home from Don Allen Ford; he was certainly wondering how she’d paid for it. She said, “I’ve lived on ships for so long that all I ever dreamed about was a new car, so I splurged.” If he wasn’t exactly satisfied with her explanation, that was his problem.

Magda has errands to do. She stops first at Hatch’s for a fresh bottle of Appleton Estate 21 rum—she constantly seeks out reminders of the Caribbean—and, because she can’t help herself, she also buys a ten-dollar scratch ticket. When she gets back out to her car, she scrapes the silver coating off with a dime from her change purse.

Ha! She’s won five hundred bucks! She’ll go back in to collect it next time.

She considers stopping by Bayberry Properties to see if Fast Eddie has any more listings for her to check out. But she doesn’t like the way Eddie’s sister, Barbie, looks at her, so she decides to send Eddie a text.

Please don’t forget about me, Mr. Pancik, she writes.

To his credit, Eddie responds right away: I could never forget you, Magda! I’ll circle back later this week with a list, as we discussed.

Magda loves William and Ezekiel to pieces but it’s time she got her own place, especially now that it looks like she’s staying.

She has one more errand to run—the Nantucket Meat and Fish Market. Magda wants to get soft-shell crabs; she’ll sauté them in brown butter and serve them with dirty rice and roasted asparagus.

The market is pleasantly chilly and smells like coffee; it houses the only Starbucks concession on the island. Magda heads for the bounty of the long, refrigerated butcher case, where she finds impeccable trays of rib eyes, individual beef Wellingtons, steak tips

in three different marinades, chicken breasts stuffed with spinach and cheese, plump rainbows of vegetable kebabs, baby back ribs, lamb chops, lobster tails, jumbo shrimp cocktails, cilantro-lime salmon, and swordfish steaks as thick as paperback books. The line at the case is four or five people long but Magda doesn’t mind waiting. It’s the first time she’s stopped moving all day.

The hotel has turned out beautifully, she has to admit; but of course, Xavier never does anything halfway. If you’re not planning on being the best, why do anything at all? Isn’t that what Xavier said the night she met him a million years ago, back when he first bought the cruise line? He’d addressed the staff in the Tropicana theater; everyone had been thrilled, Magda included, because it was an hour of free drinks. Magda can still picture Xavier, upright and self- important in his bespoke suit. That was over thirty years ago now, the night her fortune changed.

Xavier is coming to the island in August. Magda will make sure his suite is spotless.

Just thinking these words makes Magda laugh—which attracts the attention of the young man standing in front of her. He turns around.

“Oh,” he says. “Hey, Ms. English.”

For the love of Pete, Magda thinks. It’s her long shot. She has a hard time coming up with the boy’s name even though she spent all day with him, showing him how to vacuum in neat rows, how to scrub the oyster-shell tiles with an electric toothbrush. They’d covered a surprising amount of ground, though it was immediately clear the child had never so much as cleared his plate from the dinner table. They still have the laundry to tackle—folding a fitted sheet; will he ever master it? They also need time to go over the

sensitive things maids come across—sex toys and props for role- playing, birth control pills, condoms, diaphragms, tubes of lubricant, falsies, and drugs and drug paraphernalia. She doesn’t want him to be shocked.

“Hello…” She can’t for the life of her remember his name. Did she use it today? She must have. Her mind grapples for it the way her hand feels around on her nightstand for her glasses in the dark of

the early morning.

“Chad,” he says.

She starts giggling. She can’t help it. She bows her head and chortles into her cleavage, her body rocking with laughter. It’s so funny, not only her forgetting his name when she was with him all day but also the name itself, Chad, when he appears, outwardly anyway, to be precisely that Nantucket type. A Chad named Chad.

Magda laughs so hard, her stomach muscles ache and tears leak out of the corners of her eyes. Chad is staring at her, as are a couple of other people in line, which begins to sober her, but then Magda catches a glimpse of Chad’s expression and it’s so befuddled that Magda doubles over again. She’s making a ticking noise that doesn’t even sound like laughter, but it’s all she can eke out. She’s probably thirty seconds away from someone calling an ambulance.

Now it’s Chad’s turn to step up to the counter and order. He asks for three Wagyu fillets, and although Magda has known the boy for less than twelve hours, this is exactly what she would have guessed his family eats for dinner. Magda is finally able to catch her breath and compose herself, though little bursts of laughter continue until Chad turns around with his wrapped parcel and smiles uncertainly at her. “See you tomorrow, Ms. English,” he says.

“See you tomorrow, Long Shot,” she says. His smile widens; he can take a little ribbing, and Magda feels a pulse of optimism. She wonders if her gamble might work out after all.

Edie steps out of the meeting and thinks, Is it just me or has this day been three weeks long? She checks her phone.

There’s a Venmo request for five hundred dollars from her ex-

boyfriend.

No, Edie thinks.

This feels like a mistake or a joke, but a chill runs through her.

Graydon is out in the parched, cracked desert of Arizona; he accepted the job with Ritz-Carlton at its Dove Mountain property, the job they applied for together and planned to take together. But then things with Graydon got weird and awful and Edie changed her mind about the Ritz and decided to come home instead. Graydon, who by that point was obsessed with Edie, asked if he could come to Nantucket too—he said he would live with Edie and her mother, Love —but Edie said she didn’t think that was a good idea. What she meant was that she didn’t want Graydon on Nantucket. What she meant was that she wanted to break up. Edie had assumed she would work at the Beach Club like both her parents had, until her mother offhandedly mentioned that the Hotel Nantucket—which had been an eyesore and a blight throughout Edie’s childhood—was undergoing a rumored thirty-million-dollar renovation. Edie wanted to be part of a team restoring a historic hotel to its former glory. And she would be safe; the waters surrounding the island would be nearly amniotic, protecting her from Graydon.

Except that now, here he is in her Venmo requests.

A couple walks across the lobby, dressed for dinner. Edie has nearly forgotten that there are guests in the hotel other than Kimber Marsh, her children, and their pit bull. It’s the Katzens, Edie thinks, on their way to Cru; they wave as they head out the door. If Edie were playing her A-game, she would walk out with the Katzens, chat them up; after all, she had told Lizbet in her interview that the most important aspect of hospitality was making a connection with each and every guest at the hotel. But she does nothing and says nothing because she has a trash fire on her phone. Five hundred dollars!

She walks home to Sunset Hill, thinking there’s no way she’s going to let Graydon blackmail her. She deletes the Venmo request.

He has some nerve!

A text comes in. Edie hopes it’s her mother saying the Tater Tot Hotdish is ready. But when Edie checks, she sees the text is from

Graydon: an emoji of a movie camera.

She has to pay him.

But she can’t. She has a student-loan payment due on June 15 that’s nearly half of her first paycheck.

She won’t pay him! Who will he send the videos to? She’s not famous; the National Enquirer doesn’t care about her. And their mutual friends are woke enough that they’ll realize Graydon is using his white-male privilege to get back at Edie for breaking up with him.

They’ll delete the videos without watching them (she hopes) and cancel Graydon.

But what if Graydon sends the videos to her mother? Can Edie risk that? Love had had Edie when she was forty. Now she’s sixty- two years old, and although she tries to stay current—she knows

who Billie Eilish and Doja Cat are—she doesn’t quite understand the new sexual norms or the ways that Gen Z live their lives on their phones. Love probably doesn’t think that Edie’s still a virgin, but as close as they are, they never discuss sex. Nooooooo! (Edie binged the second season of Euphoria with her bedroom door not only closed but locked.) If Love saw Edie in the videos that Edie had allowed Graydon to take, she would die inside. Edie is Love’s pride and joy, her prize and treasure, and her obsession with Edie has grown only more intense since Vance died. The worst thing would be if Love blamed herself for those videos, thinking that she didn’t raise Edie right or set a good example.

Edie Venmos Graydon the five hundred dollars, which is most of what she has in her bank account—it’s her graduation money. She wants to scream into the beautiful June afternoon, but she’s afraid one of her neighbors on Sunset Hill will hear her.

She gets another text. From Graydon, of course. Ty! it says. With the thumbs-up emoji.

The last person to leave the break room is the one Grace most wants to see leave: Alessandra Powell. Grace hovers above as Alessandra drops four quarters into the jukebox (these are quarters that Grace watched Alessandra lift from petty cash) and picks songs —all of them the devil-worshipping heavy metal of the 1980s. Wow, Grace hasn’t missed this music at all. She tries to spook Alessandra, positioning herself so that her figure in the white robe and Minnesota Twins cap might be reflected in the Plexiglas of the pinball machine that Alessandra has started playing. Grace does a little headbanging

dance to amuse herself and get Alessandra’s attention. Does Alessandra see her? No; she remains wholly focused on keeping the silver ball in play. Grace blows cold air down the back of Alessandra’s neck, but she doesn’t seem to notice that either. This can mean only one thing—the girl has demons inside her. Grace can practically hear their taunts: You can’t scare us! Nothing scares us!

A second later, Grace realizes she’s not the only one suspicious of Alessandra. There’s someone else lurking just inside the door.

Lizbet isn’t worried about the private life of Zeke or Adam or Chad or Edie, and she certainly isn’t worried about Magda.

Alessandra is another story.

Right before the staff meeting, Mack Petersen from the Nantucket Beach Club called to congratulate Lizbet on opening day and ask how things were going. Mack did this in good faith despite the fact that they’re direct competitors—Lizbet knows Mack from her days at the Deck. She couldn’t keep herself from bragging, “I have Sweet Edie on my desk.”

“You know I’m envious. She’s my godchild.”

“And I ended up hiring that woman Alessandra? The one who had

been working in Italy?”

Mack said, “I’m not sure who you mean.”

“Wasn’t she supposed to interview with you? Alessandra Powell?

For your front desk?”

Mack said, “I didn’t have any front-desk positions open this year.

The only position I hired someone for was night bell. I got lucky and nearly my entire staff from last year returned.”

“Oh,” Lizbet said. She was stymied for a second. Hadn’t Alessandra said she was interviewing with Mack at the Beach Club?

She had. She told Lizbet that Mack had basically offered her a position on the desk! “Well, let’s hope I get that lucky next year.”

Alessandra had lied, and that didn’t feel great. Lizbet should have been more guarded during their interview, but Alessandra had charmed her—bringing Lizbet a sandwich when she knew she was interviewing right before lunch. How canny! How clever! (How manipulative!) And then she’d dodged the questions about her references. This manager retired, this one died, there is no one in all of Europe who can vouch for my performance. Lizbet had called all four of the hotels listed on the résumé, and only at one hotel—the Grand Hotel Tremezzo—had she found someone who could verify that yes, Alessandra Powell had worked there for two years, but no, nobody was around at that moment who had known Alessandra personally. Lizbet left messages at the other three hotels and is waiting for them to call back—though what is she going to do now?

Fire Alessandra? The woman is exceedingly professional on the desk, and she’s stunning to look at. She’s beautiful enough to get away with murder.

Lizbet is about to start her shift on the night desk (they need a night auditor!) when she realizes she saw everyone on her staff leave the hotel except Alessandra.

Lizbet cracks open the door to the break room. Alessandra is standing at the pinball machine gyrating her hips like she’s making love to the thing, and the machine is dinging and flashing its lights like it’s enjoying it. The jukebox is playing “Same Old Situation” by Mötley Crüe, which Lizbet hasn’t heard since she listened to 92 KQRS back in the Twin Cities growing up.

When the game is over—Alessandra must be pretty good, because it lasts longer than half the men Lizbet has been with—and the song changes to “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC (nearly every song on the jukebox is from the previous century), Alessandra steps up to the soft-serve ice cream machine and swirls herself a gigantic bowl of chocolate. She digs in like she hasn’t eaten in days.

“Hey,” Lizbet says, stepping into the room.

Alessandra blinks. Her wavy apricot-colored hair falls over one shoulder.

“We haven’t really had a chance to chat,” Lizbet says.

“Chat?” Alessandra says. Her spoon hovers over the peak of ice cream.

Lizbet considers confronting Alessandra with her lie about Mack and the Beach Club, but she doesn’t, because the fact is, she can’t afford for Alessandra to get defensive and quit. “I thought maybe we could get to know each other a little?” Lizbet hears how hokey this sounds, even pandering, as though she’s sucking up to the most popular girl at school. Can we please be friends? She changes tacks. “Would you like me to call you an Uber? Where are you living?”

“I don’t need an Uber, I can walk. I’m living on Hulbert Avenue.”

Hulbert Avenue? Lizbet thinks. That’s the most exclusive address in town; all of those homes front the harbor. “Nice,” Lizbet says. “Are you renting on Hulbert?”

“I have a friend with a house,” Alessandra says.

“I didn’t realize you knew anyone here.”

“It’s a new friend.” Alessandra holds Lizbet’s gaze and licks ice cream off the back of her spoon. “Someone I met on the boat over here.”

Whaaaa? Lizbet thinks. Alessandra met someone on the boat and now has a place to live on Hulbert? “Wow, lucky you,” Lizbet says.

Her voice sounds a little arch, so she tries to soften it. “How was your first day?”

Alessandra gives Lizbet a pointed look that seems to say, Please go away and leave me to my ice cream. “It was a day.”

Lizbet changes into white jeans, a hydrangea-blue blouse, and—ahh —a pair of running shoes. She steps out to the desk and observes evening settling over the lobby. Golden, syrupy sunlight pours in through the open front doors, and guests head out to dinner— though, of course, not as many guests as Lizbet would like. The lobby feels a bit like a badly attended party. What can she do to increase occupancy? The hotel isn’t cheap—it shouldn’t be cheap— but it’s slightly less expensive than their competitors are. Lizbet decides to reach out to every media outlet, all those places that fawningly covered the Deck. It would be nice to have some help from Xavier, but he doesn’t seem concerned that their numbers are low.

He cares only about the fifth key.

Kimber Marsh’s son, Louie (the name completely suits the little dude; in his seersucker shorts and pressed white polo, he’s both cute and formal, like a child king), wanders into the lobby alone, settles at one of the chessboards, and begins moving pieces. Lizbet watches him for a second, wondering if Kimber will appear. Mr. and Mrs. Stamm from room 303 stop by him on their way out the door.

“You really know what you’re doing,” Mr. Stamm says to Louie.

“How old are you?”

Louie doesn’t look up. “Six and a half.”

Mr. Stamm chuckles and says to his wife, “A prodigy.”

Louie moves his white rook and says, “Checkmate.” He turns to Mr. Stamm. “Do you want to play?”

Mr. Stamm laughs. “I’m on my way out right now, but maybe tomorrow, how about that?”

Louie shrugs and the Stamms leave. Lizbet considers going over and offering to play with Louie, but then she sees the break-room door open and Alessandra slip out. Lizbet gets a nutty idea that she immediately dismisses. She’s losing her mind; she’s been at the hotel for nearly twelve hours and she has to last until midnight.

But…she deserves a quick break, and she’s the boss, so there’s no one to stop her.

Alessandra heads down the front stairs and pulls a bike off the rack—it’s one of the hotel bikes; has she asked if she can use it?

Lizbet approaches Raoul, who is posted by the front door and has the upright bearing of a guard at Buckingham Palace. “Do you mind watching the desk for twenty minutes or so while I get some air?”

“Not at all,” Raoul says. Raoul has an old-school gallantry that Lizbet just adores and she briefly congratulates herself on a good

hire.

“Little Louie is inside playing chess and I don’t see his mother, so if you don’t mind keeping an eye on him?” She winces. “I know

you’re not a babysitter.”

“Happy to,” Raoul says.

“Do you play chess?” Lizbet asks.

“I do, actually,” Raoul says. “If it’s quiet, maybe I’ll let him beat me.”

“Terrific! Thank you!” Lizbet watches Alessandra pedal off down Easton Street. “I’ll be right back.”

Lizbet also grabs a hotel bike—they’re brand-new white Treks; Xavier bought a fleet of thirty-five—and takes off behind Alessandra.

She savors the wind in her face, the softness of the air, and the gilded tone of the lowering sun, trying to ignore the fact that what she’s doing is completely unhinged. She’s following Alessandra home. If someone were filming this from above, they would see two women—in identical outfits!—one surreptitiously pursuing the other.

The tail of Lizbet’s blue blouse billows out behind her. She hums the Wicked Witch’s theme music in her head.

Alessandra goes all the way down Easton, past Great Point Properties, past the entrance to Children’s Beach, past the White Elephant, and Lizbet trails at a distance. She catches a whiff of garlic and butter coming from the Brant Point Grill and her stomach rumbles; she hasn’t eaten a thing all day. Alessandra passes all the grand waterfront homes on the right and takes the curved left turn onto Hulbert before the Coast Guard Station and the Brant Point Light. Lizbet follows. A few cars pass, and Lizbet is afraid she’ll see someone she knows. A bunch of customers from the Deck live on

Hulbert; she and JJ used to be invited out here to private pool parties and croquet matches all the time. They’d become friends with two couples, the Bicks and the Laytons, both of whom live in this neighborhood. The Bicks’ house, which has a tennis court, is up ahead and…Alessandra slows down.

There’s no way that Alessandra is living at the Bicks’ house, is there? Michael and Heidi are the quintessential golden couple— they’re both tall, lean, and blond—and they have four young towheaded children. Maybe Alessandra has struck some kind of deal where she watches the kids in the evenings in exchange for housing? But that doesn’t feel quite right. Heidi has a full-time nanny.

And something about the way Alessandra said, I have a friend with a house…a new friend. Someone I met on the boat was sexual in nature. Lizbet thought Alessandra was intimating that she’d met a guy on the boat, the guy invited her back to his house, and now she’s living there.

Alessandra stops, swings her leg off her bike, and turns around.

“Are you following me?” she says.

Lizbet’s foot slips off the pedal and the bike wobbles, but Lizbet pulls the handlebars straight, hits the brakes, and doesn’t crash.

She has no idea what to say. She considers chastising Alessandra for taking a hotel bike without asking, but that seems petty. “I saw you head out and I decided I could use a ride as well.

It’s such a beautiful evening and I have to work the desk tonight.”

Lizbet glances at the Bicks’ house. The gate to the tennis court is ajar and there’s a racket lying on the bench, so the Bicks must be back on island. Lizbet dearly hopes they aren’t watching this exchange from their window. She started out the day strong, but now

she has devolved into some kind of psycho-boss who follows her employees home. With great awkwardness, Lizbet wheels her bike around. “See you tomorrow.” She pedals away, fighting the urge to check where Alessandra is headed. She tells herself it’s none of her business.

When she arrives back at the desk, she finds Raoul and Louie deeply involved in a chess match. Raoul looks up with wide eyes.

“The kid is whupping my butt. Fair and square.”

Lizbet nods, preoccupied with her embarrassment. What must Alessandra think of her? It’s mortifying—and yet Lizbet still feels that something isn’t right, something bigger than lying about an interview (that could be seen as strategic) and bigger than taking a bike without asking (who cares; she’ll bring it back tomorrow). Once Lizbet assures herself that nothing pressing needs her attention, she retrieves her cell phone from her office and surreptitiously slides it next to her computer, even though this is, by her own decree, forbidden. She sends a text to Heidi Bick: Hey, girl, just thinking of you. Are you on island? Now that I’m not working at the Deck, we can actually go out to dinner this summer! Let me know when you’re free so we can catch up.

She hits Send and takes a breath. Then she decides to place another ad for a night auditor in the Nantucket Standard classifieds —she won’t be able to go anywhere or do anything until she hires someone. This time, she lists the pay: $25 per hour, plus possible bonuses! Hopefully, that will do the trick.

Suddenly, a young woman is at the desk, holding out a white cardboard box. It’s Beatriz from the Blue Bar.

“Chef asked me to deliver this to you with his compliments,” she says.

Chef, Lizbet thinks. Mario Subiaco. She recalls that morning, JJ’s proposal, the fruit frenzy on the zebrawood cutting board, and the cocktail. She could really use that cocktail now.

“Thank you!” Lizbet says. She opens the top of the box and nearly swoons.

“It’s called the bakery box,” Beatriz says. “One of Chef’s specialties. Clockwise, you have homemade pizza rolls, gougères filled with béchamel, and two favorites from the Blue Bistro—savory rosemary and onion doughnuts and pretzel bread served with his signature honey mustard.”

Sweet lightning! Lizbet thinks. “This looks…amazing.”

“Chef wanted to be sure you ate something delicious today,”

Beatriz says, and she vanishes through the door that leads back into the bar. Lizbet hears laughter and chatter and Nat King Cole singing “Unforgettable.” It sounds…fun. And lively. Lizbet feels a pang; despite her bravado, she misses the restaurant business.

She isn’t sure where to start—she wants to inhale the whole box of goodies, but she picks up one of the two glistening, golden-brown doughnuts because she has heard stories about them. Gah! The doughnut is so good that Lizbet’s eyelids flutter closed and she has to keep herself from moaning. Next, she nibbles the end of one of the flaky triangular pizza rolls and finds it chock-full of crumbled sausage and pepperoni in a sauce that’s slightly spicy. It’s so insanely delicious that she feels guilty. She casts a glance at Raoul

and Louie. Raoul stands up and announces, “I should get back to my post.” Louie returns the pieces to their home squares. Raoul swings by the desk and says, “That kid is something else. I thought I would let him win and he killed me.”

Oh so reluctantly, Lizbet offers Raoul the box. “Would you like a doughnut or some pretzel bread?” She dearly hopes he doesn’t take a gougère, because there are only three.

Raoul waves the box away. “Thank you, but I don’t eat carbs.”

Ha! Brilliant! Raoul heads back to the bell stand and Lizbet absconds with her box of treasure to her office but keeps an eye on Louie through the doorway. He starts another game against himself, but then Wanda appears, holding a notebook and a pencil, and says, “Mom wants you back in the suite, Louie, come on.”

“In a minute,” Louie says. “I’m playing.”

Wanda puts her hands on her hips like an aggrieved mother. “You have a board in the room.” Louie sighs, then follows his sister down the hall.

Lizbet pops a gougère into her mouth and it explodes with creamy béchamel. Not bad, Subiaco, she thinks. She remembers the night fifteen years earlier when JJ asked her to help him with some recipe development. He was trying to perfect an oyster pan roast, and Lizbet sat on a high stool in the kitchen at the Deck while JJ hand- fed her a plump, briny raw oyster, then a spoonful of the pan sauce (cream, bacon, thyme). This led to their first kiss, which led to them dating, then sleeping together, then, at the end of the summer, living together, and then to them buying the cottage on Bear Street and running the restaurant side by side until she discovered the

pornographic texts on his phone. If anyone knows the dangers of being seduced by food, it’s Lizbet Keaton.

And yet…she tears off a hunk of pretzel bread and swipes it lavishly through the honey mustard. She can’t stop.

She decides to take a picture of the bakery box and send it to JJ; he’ll be jealous and think she’s gloating (she is). But when Lizbet picks up her phone, she sees a text from Heidi Bick.

Hey, girl, sorry, I was scooping Hayford from jiu-jitsu practice. I’m still in Greenwich, I leave for the island a week from Friday after the kids finish school. Michael has been up there for a couple months already working on a top secret project that requires complete silence, which cannot, of course, be found at home. I’m free any night after the eighteenth—it will def be Michael’s turn to hang with the kids! Maybe you can get us into the Blue Bar? I heard it’s going to be the new hot spot! Love u xoxo Lizbet blinks. Heidi is back in Connecticut with the kids, and Michael has been on the island for a couple of months “working on a top secret project”? That doesn’t mean he’s sleeping with her front- desk manager, Lizbet tells herself. Being cheated on has destroyed Lizbet’s faith in humanity; she automatically thinks the worst of everyone. It wasn’t clear that Alessandra was pulling into the Bicks’ house; that was just where she stopped to confront Lizbet. It was as if she had eyes in the back of her head. It was a little scary, to be honest.

Lizbet said she wanted to know everyone’s secrets, but she understands now that she doesn’t. She pops another gougère into her mouth. She doesn’t at all.