Coco opens her eyes and there, on the tray table in front of her, is a bowl of clam chowder with two packets of oyster crackers. Coco turns her head to see the chick with the good hair. She’s taken the aisle seat, leaving the seat between them open. She too has a bowl of chowder in front of her.
Coco straightens up. “You got this for me?”
“One little-known fact about Nantucket is that ferry chowder is the best chowder.” The chick blows on a spoonful and smiles at Coco. “I take it this is your first time to the island?”
Not at all, Coco thinks. I’m a regular at the Field and Oar. “Is it that obvious?” She opens a package of crackers, dumps them into her soup, and watches the fragrant steam rise. “Thank you for this. You’re very kind.”
“I hope Talbot Sweeney didn’t freak you out. He’s the old guard, the kind of person who gives Nantucketers a reputation for being snooty. I’m Kacy, by the way.”
Coco offers her hand, a gesture that feels hokey and old-fashioned but also like what’s maybe expected? “I’m Coco. Do you live on the island?”
“Born and raised,” Kacy says. “But I’ve been living in California for years. I’m just going back for the summer. My family is there.” She pauses. “How about you? Are you… visiting? Going for work?”
“Work,” Coco says. “A couple who just bought a house on Nantucket hired me to be their ‘personal concierge.’” She uses air quotes so Kacy won’t think she’s a total douchebag.
“Nice,” Kacy says. “Where’s the house?”
“On Nantucket,” Coco says. Did she forget to mention that part?
Kacy laughs. “Right, but where on Nantucket? Squam? Monomoy?”
Squam? Coco thinks. Monomoy? Can you use that in a sentence, please? “I’m not really sure.” She takes a spoonful of soup; it’s so delicious, her eyelids flutter closed. “I feel like such a charity case.”
Kacy laughs. “It’s just soup.”
The best and worst thing about Nantucket, Kacy thinks when she gets to the ferry, is that it never changes. She spies the summer people with their battered boat shoes, needlepoint belts, and natural ease and the day-trippers in CAPE COD T-shirts and Keen sandals.
Kacy is surprised to find an outlier behind her in line, a young woman with retro-punk-rock hair, piercings, and tattoos. Kacy immediately thinks of that old jingle from Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong. Talbot Sweeney gives the girl a hard time about her bag; she seems uncomfortable, disoriented, or, at the very least, uninitiated. Kacy decides to do the welcoming thing and buys the girl a chowder.
Coco is shy at first, or maybe just hungry. She devours her soup and both packets of crackers, down to the dust. But then she loosens up and tells Kacy that the personal-assistant job she’s accepted comes with housing, but just that morning, her employers told her the housing wasn’t available yet.
“What?” Kacy says. “So where are you going to stay?”
“I’m not sure,” Coco says. “A hotel, I guess. Unless you have any friends with a flophouse? I’m kind of on a budget and I didn’t anticipate this…”
“Of course you didn’t,” Kacy says. “What’s the couple’s name?”
“The Richardsons.”
Kacy doesn’t know them, though they might know her; she has one of the most recognizable last names on the island. “I’ve never heard of them,” she says. “But they’re new and I’ve been gone for a while.”
Coco waves a hand. “You were so cool to buy me this chowder, I don’t expect you to solve my housing issue. I was an idiot for not confirming with this couple. I’ll figure something out. I’m just happy that someone on this boat is being friendly instead of looking at me like I have fleas.” She tucks the cracker wrappers and her napkin into her empty bowl. “So what were you doing in California?”
Over the course of the boat ride, Kacy spills her guts about her job in the NICU, her clandestine affair with Isla, Isla’s engagement to Dr. Rondo, losing Little G—and Coco says all the right things. Wow, you’re such a hero, talk about making a difference every single day when you go to work; I can totally see how you and Isla fell in love, I can’t believe the fiancé created a Pinterest board, that’s so funny; I’m so sorry, your heart must be broken, I understand why you came home.
Kacy laughs. “I can’t believe I unloaded all that when I literally just met you.”
“Sometimes that’s easiest, right?” Coco says. “Believe me, I’m the last person who’s going to judge you.”
The ferry slows down, and the captain announces that they’re entering Nantucket Harbor.
“Let’s go up top,” Kacy says. “We want your first time seeing the island to be memorable.”
Coco follows Kacy to the top deck. Kacy points out the Nantucket Beach Club, where green, blue, and yellow umbrellas are lined up in rows. Next to that is a beach bar called the Oystercatcher. Coco sees kids building sandcastles, a gentleman flying a kite; she catches the scent of fried seafood on the breeze.
“That’s Brant Point Lighthouse,” Kacy says. Her voice is thick. “The white steeple is the Congregational church, and the clock tower is the Unitarian church.” She wipes a finger under each eye. “I’m not sure why I’m getting so emotional. I guess it’s just being… home. I haven’t been home since the Christmas before last, and it’s been forever since I was here in the summer. I forgot how pretty it is.”
It’s more than pretty, Coco thinks. Sailboats in the harbor bob on colorful buoys. The row of summer cottages fronting the water all have gray shingles and crisp white trim, window boxes bursting with spring flowers, snapping flags. Coco didn’t have a clear picture of what Nantucket would look like, but it’s everything she wanted it to be: classic, charming, a freaking postcard.
She doesn’t belong here. Like, at all.
She thought it was a good thing that the Richardsons were new to the island—they could all be new together!—but now she sees the downside. The Richardsons don’t know a soul, and neither does Coco.
Except now, she knows Kacy.
They disembark side by side, and when Kacy’s feet hit the wharf, she thinks, I’m home. The NICU; her apartment on Filbert Street; the cable cars; the Golden Gate emerging from the fog in the morning; Coit Tower; casual carpool; Crissy Field, where she used to run on the weekends; Hog Island Oyster Company in the Ferry Building… and Isla’s liquid brown eyes, her beauty mark, her nimble hands—all of it seems very, very far away.
Kacy receives a text from her father: Here. She spies the black Suburban pulling into the parking lot; it’s impossible to miss. But Kacy can’t just abandon Coco, can she? “Take my number, Coco,” she says. “Keep in touch, okay? Let me know where you end up staying.”
“I’ll figure it out,” Coco says. “I always do. And hey, Kacy, thanks for the chowder—it meant a lot.”
Kacy walks toward her dad’s car, but she’s hesitant to leave. Coco was such a good listener, exactly what Kacy needed. She can’t imagine explaining about Isla to either of her parents, and after being gone seven years, Kacy doesn’t have many friends left here.
Romeo from the Steamship, whom Kacy has known for eons, helps her roll her suitcases over to her father’s car. Romeo must have a speeding-ticket fine he wants reduced, she thinks, because he never helps anyone.
Kacy opens the passenger-side door and sees her dad, the Chief. He looks older, grayer, and way more exhausted than she remembers. But then he smiles. “Hey, you,” he says. “Hop in before someone writes a letter to the editor about how I blocked traffic.”
Kacy climbs up into her seat and gives him a fierce hug; she doesn’t care who has to wait. She could have been coming back to Nantucket under very different circumstances, ones that are almost impossible to imagine. Ed Kapenash is a strong, solid, unimpeachable human, the kind of man who deserves a statue at the top of Main Street. Kacy feels ashamed of her recent transgressions—conducting an affair with Isla when she was engaged to someone else, running away from a job she was good at in a place where she was needed. She could go further down this rabbit hole, but as they’re navigating their way out of the parking lot, Kacy spies Coco standing by the luggage carts looking… well, the word that comes to mind is forlorn.
