The Hotel Nantucket (64)

Chad closes his eyes. The best part about working with Bibi is that he never has time to think about Paddy or wonder if Paddy is healed enough to go back to mowing lawns and look over the grass, striped with diagonal lines, and feel proud of his handiwork.



Normally, Chad is done with work around five, but today he and Ms. English don’t finish until after six. Lizbet has let them know that the boats are up and running again, and there are some pretty unhappy people waiting in the lobby for their rooms to be ready. From the five checkouts combined, there are sixty-five dollars in tips, which Ms. English presses into Chad’s hand, despite his protests.

“I don’t want it,” he says. “You take it.”

This makes Ms. English laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous, Long Shot.”

Chad stuffs the bills into the front pocket of his khakis. “I’ll give it to Bibi tomorrow.”

“To Bibi?” Ms. English says. “She didn’t earn it. She got a day off.”

But she needs it, Chad thinks.

“I hope you and Bibi aren’t getting romantically involved,” Ms. English says. “I don’t want to have to worry about you two alone in the rooms.”

Chad feels his face redden. The idea of fooling around with Bibi in one of the rooms makes him very uncomfortable. He wishes Ms. English hadn’t said that; he’s afraid it will be all he thinks about tomorrow, and if he’s awkward around Bibi, she’ll notice.

“No way,” he says. “Nothing like that.”

“But you brought her peaches,” Ms. English says, and she winks.



Chad has no interest in going home to face his father, so he delays the inevitable with a drive through town. It’s a summer evening on Nantucket and there are couples strolling into galleries for openings and a well-dressed mob crowding the hostess lectern at the Boarding House. Chad sees a group of—well, for lack of a better term—Chads walking right down the middle of the street, cutting off traffic without any consideration for the drivers, heading (he’s certain) to drink at the Gazebo, where they will order their vodka sodas and talk trash about their father’s boats, their golf handicaps, and girls.

Chad used to be one of those guys but he isn’t any longer, and he’s glad. He loops around and heads for home.

He’s driving out Eel Point Road when something catches his eye. It’s the gunmetal-gray Jeep Gladiator that Ms. English drives, parked in the driveway of number 133. The house is huge, even bigger than the Winslows’ home, and it’s closer to the water. Chad slows down. He’s pretty sure his parents considered buying number 133 as an investment property and renting it out for fifty or sixty grand a week until they eventually gifted it to Leith or Chad.

He watches Ms. English climb out of the Gladiator.

He comes to a stop and nearly calls to her. His Range Rover is hidden by the tall decorative grasses around the mailbox. What is Ms. English doing at number 133?

A dude wearing a panama hat and a wheat-colored linen suit comes out of the house and shakes Ms. English’s hand. He holds open the door and she steps inside.

Chad takes a beat to absorb this. Ms. English must be interviewing to clean number 133. A side hustle.

Chad drives off, feeling queasy—and the worst is yet to come.



When Chad pulls into his own driveway, he sees his father’s Jaguar.

He finds Paul Winslow on the back porch in a rattan chair, sunglasses perched on top of his bald head, eyes closed, gin and tonic on the table next to him. He’s dressed in shorts, a polo shirt, and Top-Siders, which is what he wears all summer long except when they go out for dinner; for that, Paul favors pants printed with whales, lobsters, or flamingos. Chad gets it—his father works in the pressure-cooker environment of venture capital, and these six weeks are his time to relax. If Paul lets off steam by wearing flamingo pants, fine. He deserves to enjoy the things his money has bought—the pool, their private beach, the view of Nantucket Sound.

Chad doesn’t hear anyone else in the house and he realizes his mother’s Lexus wasn’t in the driveway. He takes a step backward and Paul’s eyes open.

“Hey, hey, hey, son!” Paul says, rising to his feet and offering a hand as though Chad is a client. “I’ve been waiting for you. Where’ve you been?”

“Hey, Dad,” Chad says. He feels like a bluefish gutted with a gaff. What he wouldn’t give to wriggle free of this moment. “Where are Mom and Leith?”

“They’re at the salon,” Paul says, “getting gussied up for dinner.”

Dinner, Chad thinks. In the garden at the Chanticleer, which is their tradition the first night Paul arrives on island. Chad completely spaced about it. He can’t believe things in their family have just gone back to normal after what happened in May, but maybe enough time has passed that they all feel they can just move on—or his parents do. Leith will hate him forever, he’s pretty sure.

“I was at work, actually,” Chad says. “I got a job at the Hotel Nantucket, cleaning rooms.”

His father’s face shows no surprise, so Chad’s mother must have prepped him. Paul sits and extends a hand to indicate that Chad should take the seat next to his. “Let’s talk that through for a minute, shall we?” Paul’s tone of voice has switched to executive mode, and seeing no option, Chad sits. “Can I get you a beer, son?”