The Hotel Nantucket (20)

Edie’s mouth drops open and she looks at Zeke and then Adam—but it’s clear they’re both expecting her to handle this. “Is this Doug?” Edie chirps.

Kimber’s expression brightens. “Yes. I put the muzzle on him in the minivan, which he was not happy about. He’s a sweet couch hippo, but he can act up around strangers.”

He can act up around strangers, so why not bring him to a resort where there will be strangers around constantly? Edie starts to sweat. When you want to spend the summer on Nantucket with your children and your dog, you rent a house. Why didn’t Kimber Marsh rent a house? It’s possible she couldn’t find a suitable rental at the last minute. Or maybe she didn’t want the upkeep. Maybe she wanted a pool, a wellness center, and room service. There could be lots of reasons, but one thing has become clear: Edie needs to speak to Lizbet. She’s too anxious to gauge Alessandra’s reaction. “Will you take Ms. Marsh and the children to their suite?” Edie says to Adam. “I’m going to call Lizbet.”

“What about the dog?” Zeke asks. “Take him?”

All Edie can picture is Doug jumping up on the sumptuous white bed, chewing on the rope and driftwood frame, clawing at the white sheers, peeing on the Annie Selke rug. She gets the shivers. She figures the Faraway turned the Marshes down not because of the cash but because of the dog. “Would you and Doug wait outside for two seconds until I speak to Lizbet?”

Zeke looks put out; the dog quite obviously wants to follow the rest of the family but Zeke shepherds him back outside. Edie glances at Alessandra, who offers ice-cap eyes. She’s not going to help. Okay, fine. Edie pops into the back office and tries Lizbet again, and this time Lizbet answers.

“Lizbet?” Edie says. “We’ve had our first walkins! It’s a woman named Kimber Marsh and her two children. They want to stay for the entire summer and they’re paying cash.”

“Please tell me you got a credit card, Edie,” Lizbet says.

“She’s going through a divorce, so both her cards are frozen. She said she’ll give us the first week plus five hundred for incidentals—”

“Oh no, Edie!”

Only now does Edie realize how absurd this sounds, and she’s barely started. “I upgraded her to suite one fourteen because it was empty.”

“You upgraded her,” Lizbet says. “For the entire summer? Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Those family suites are just sitting vacant.”

“They’ll fill up,” Lizbet says. “And when they do, we’ll lose room revenue on your eleven-week upgrade.”

Edie has messed this whole thing up. If this were role-playing back in college, she would get nothing but “feedback for improvement.” Here in the real world, she might get fired, and she hasn’t even told Lizbet the worst part.

“Also,” Edie says, “she has a pit bull. His name is Doug.”

“What?” Lizbet says.

Edie kisses her dream of this week’s thousand-dollar bonus goodbye.





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 paté, 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 paté 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 M?tley 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?