The Hotel Nantucket (70)

“Sleep Alright”—Gingersol

“Here Comes the Sun”—The Beatles

“Sexual Healing”—Marvin Gaye

“Summertime”—Kenny Chesney



Lizbet feels like a bubble in a flute of champagne; her outlook is golden and effervescent. It’s as though all of her inspirational memes have come true at once.

First of all, the hotel is thriving. The article written by Wanda Marsh—an eight-year-old kid; you just can’t make this stuff up—started a chain reaction that led to stories about Grace Hadley’s ghost being printed in newspapers across the country! The phone rang nonstop and the website crashed from all the traffic. (Lizbet was tickled by this development, inconvenient though it was. The Hotel Nantucket had broken the internet!) Having a busy hotel feels joyous; it feels like a celebration. Every day when Lizbet walks into the lobby, she’s entering the buzziest, most interesting room on the island.

Guests gather in the lobby for the percolated coffee (the richness of the coffee is mentioned time and again by guests on TravelTattler) and the almond croissants (ditto). They read the paper, start conversations, admire the James Ogilvy photograph, and watch Louie play chess (Louie shows up every morning at seven o’clock sharp, hair combed, glasses polished, little polo shirt buttoned to the top). The chaises by the pool are claimed by ten a.m.; the complimentary shuttles that run to the south shore’s beaches are full. Lizbet has had the piano tuned and every night before his shift, Adam comes in and plays show tunes while the guests enjoy the wine and cheese hour; people make requests, sing along, and slip Adam tips. After dinner, many guests forgo the lines at the Chicken Box and the Gaslight and instead choose to sit on the front porch of the hotel. They light up the fireplace tables, buy s’mores kits from the front desk, and indulge in their gooiest marshmallow dreams.

Lizbet would like to believe the hotel has finally hit its stride, but she knows the reason for the renaissance is…the ghost. But once potential guests have their interest piqued by the story of Grace Hadley, they check out the website and see the driftwood-and-rope canopy beds with the dreamy white sheers, the lavish bouquets of lilies and Dutch hydrangeas, the slipper tubs, the adult pool with the wall of climbing roses, the free minibar, and the carved teak ceiling in the yoga studio, and they think: I’d like to stay here.

The influx of guests includes the poet laureate of New Mexico, a family of ranchers from Montana, a mushroom grower from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, a neurosurgeon from Nashville, the owners of an NHL expansion team, a renowned hip-hop producer, a YouTube phenom, and a prominent editor from one of the Big Five publishing houses in New York City. This editor reads Lizbet’s Blue Book and says she’ll pitch it. She gets Lizbet’s e-mail address.

The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

Lizbet is so busy that hours and even days go by when she forgets to be on the lookout for Shelly Carpenter. Now is when Shelly Carpenter will show up; Lizbet is sure of it—and Lizbet is also sure that if Shelly slipped in under the radar in the past couple of weeks, she was met with exceptional service. Edie, Alessandra, Richie, Zeke, Adam, and Raoul are all at the top of their games.

The only thing going better than Lizbet’s professional life is her love life. Every day Lizbet goes to Mario’s cottage on her lunch hour. They make love and then he cooks for her—composed salads with grilled shrimp and creamy chunks of avocado and a side of the homemade cheddar crackers that they used to serve at the Blue Bistro or, on a rare day of rain, clam chowder and giant popovers pulled straight from the funny little oven. Sometimes Lizbet brings a bathing suit and they swim off of Mario’s front porch, and then she showers and braids her damp hair. When Mario comes in to work at four o’clock, he swings by her office with a double espresso—he figured out that the way to her heart is caffeine—and he often brings her a little gift: a cluster of roses, a perfect quahog shell, a grape Popsicle. He makes her a playlist to replace her breakup playlist. Lizbet closes her office door and they kiss like a couple of teenagers for a few stolen minutes before Lizbet straightens her skirt and Mario his chef’s jacket and they get back to work. When Mario gets home from the bar at night, he sends Lizbet a text: I’m home, Heartbreaker. Or Sweetest dreams, Heartbreaker. He has her in his phone as HB. Breaker, not broken! she thinks. She’s healed. She’s so healed that when she hears that Christina left JJ, she feels only a pang of pity for JJ; she could have told him that relationship would end badly. She considers calling to see if he’s okay but decides it’s best not to. She’s consumed with her romance with JJ’s idol, the man whose picture she gazed at on the wall of JJ’s office for fifteen years. It’s the kind of crazy plot twist that happens only in novels and movies—but she’s living it. She can’t believe how happy she is.

But then.

Then a night comes when Mario doesn’t text when he gets home from work. Lizbet wakes up at three in the morning to use the bathroom, checks her phone, finds nothing. What? she thinks. She can’t fall back to sleep. The room is too hot; her mind is aswirl. Did something happen? Is Mario okay? Should Lizbet call him? Should she go to his cottage? She somehow knows she should do neither. She wonders then why Mario never asks to spend the night at her cottage. She lies awake until the birds start to sing, thinking that this was why Mario said they should be careful. (What he’d meant, of course, was that she should be careful.)