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.