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?”