Winter Solstice (Winter #4)(11)

Most cold calls are rentals. People who are in the market to sell already have a broker, and if they are no longer on favorable terms with that broker, they hire that broker’s worst enemy. (Eddie got plenty of clients this way in his previous life, people defecting from Addison Wheeler and, yes, Glenn Daley.) People in the market to buy are usually referred to a broker by their financial adviser or the guy they play squash with, or they use the broker who helped them when they were merely renters.

It’s exceedingly rare that someone cold-calls looking to buy, and buy big, but that’s exactly what happens when Eddie picks up the phone.

The woman introduces herself as Masha.

“Masha?” Eddie says. The name sounds vaguely Russian, which unfortunately leads Eddie to think about his crew of call girl housecleaners, who have all been banished back to Kyrgyzstan. “M-a-s-h-a?”

“No, Masha,” the woman says. “Like, ‘Masha, Masha, Masha.’” Pause. “From The Brady Bunch.”

“Oh, Marcia,” Eddie says. The woman’s accent is straight out of Jeremiah Burke High School in Dorchester and Eddie knows not to get his hopes up. People from Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Brockton, and Fall River don’t buy houses on Nantucket. People from those towns generally don’t come to Nantucket at all because they don’t like paying sixteen dollars for a turkey sandwich, nine dollars for a Bud Light, or five dollars for a gallon of gas. “My name is Eddie, Marcia. Eddie Pancik. What can I help you with today?”

“My husband, Raja, and I…”

Raja sounds vaguely Indian, and Eddie wonders if Raja is a tech millionaire or, possibly, a professor of astrophysics at MIT. But then Eddie calculates in Marcia’s muscular accent and realizes the husband’s name is Roger.

“Yes?” Eddie says patiently, though he can already tell this woman will be spending her summer vacation at the Shady Rest Motel up-beach in Revere. All is not lost for Marcia and Roger, however; there is an excellent clam shack near the Shady Rest.

“We won Powerball,” Marcia says. “The lottery? So now we want to buy a house on Nantucket. We want to look at everything you’ve got between ten and fifteen million.”

Eddie takes a second to clear his throat. “Well, all right, then,” he says. His hopes feel like soap bubbles, iridescent and delicate. He waits for them to pop, one by one. Marcia and Roger won Powerball, and out of the twenty-something real estate agencies on Nantucket they have called Bayberry Properties and reached Eddie Pancik on the phone to find them a ten-to-fifteen-million-dollar house. What are the chances? Eddie reminds himself that there are phonies and fakers out there—unsophisticated pranksters and more-nefarious Talented Mr. Ripley types. But this Marcia sounds earnest, her accent genuine. Eddie grew up on Purchase Street in New Bedford; he should know. “Let’s schedule a day for you to visit, and I’ll set up the appointments.”


As soon as Eddie hangs up the phone, he Googles the names. Roger and Marcia Christy of East Boston pop up right away in a sidebar of the Boston Herald. The couple won $132 million from a lottery ticket that they bought from Lanzilli Groceria in Orient Heights near Constitution Beach.

They’re for real! Eddie thinks. A hundred thirty-two million. If they took the payout, they probably ended up with eighty million, and after paying 40 percent in taxes, they’re left with forty-eight million. So a ten-to-fifteen-million-dollar investment in real estate seems reasonable. The Christys are coming to Nantucket next Friday for the weekend, and Eddie will set up at least six houses for them to look at. He will take them to lunch someplace charming but modest—either the Nantucket Pharmacy lunch counter or Something Natural. He will chauffeur them around in Barbie’s new Escalade, since Eddie and Grace are sharing a sixteen-year-old Jeep Cherokee that has a weird, persistent smell of old popcorn.

Eddie rubs his hands together. If he can sell the Powerball Christys a house, he will officially be back.

He tells Allegra he’s taking lunch—normally, he works right through it—but he’s too excited to eat, so instead he decides to go for a walk. It’s a crisp, beautiful fall day on Nantucket. The trees on Main Street are ablaze with color, but the first frost has yet to arrive, so all the chrysanthemums and dahlias in the window boxes are still blooming. If the Christys could see Nantucket right now, today, they would buy in a heartbeat. This is the most charming island in the world, in Eddie’s opinion—a whole different planet from East Boston. The homes in town are not just aesthetically pleasing; they’re old, they have architectural integrity, they contain stories—stories of the whaling heyday, captains and crews, men lost at sea, men returned safely to loved ones, stories of Quakers and Unitarians, Native Americans and Cape Verdeans, stories of love, betrayal, death, achievement, failure, hope, faith, family. Eddie tears up a little, thinking about how lucky he is to live in so authentic and singular a place. Most people think real estate is a business about property and therefore money, but Eddie would argue that real estate is a business about people.

And about money.

His tears are partially those of relief. If he can split the difference and sell the Christys a house for twelve-five, he’ll get a $375,000 commission, a third of which will go to the office, still leaving him with a quarter of a million dollars.

Breathing room. He might even be in a position to start house hunting himself.

He considers walking home to Lily Street to tell Grace the news, but he’s torn. On the one hand, he has vowed to be more open and emotionally available to Grace, to share what’s going on in his “interior life,” and right now what he’s feeling is cautiously optimistic. But on the other hand, Eddie is superstitious. He feels that as soon as he discloses the prospect of good news, it will evaporate. The Christys will cancel their trip on Friday, saying they have decided to buy on Martha’s Vineyard instead. Or they will have done further exploring on the Internet and decide to go with a different real estate company, most likely Addison Wheeler or, the worst-case scenario, Rachel McMann. There are a million things that can go wrong, Eddie knows. He decides to wait and tell Grace after he spends the day with the Christys.