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.”