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.