Ed Kapenash glances at his daughter. He can’t get over how elegant and mature she seems—and yet he can still see the little girl in pink ballerina pajamas. He recalls the year she made her own slime, when the house was filled with glue and borax; he remembers the glasses and the braces, the bloody nose from catching a basketball with her face at the Boys and Girls Club. He pictures her on the lifeguard stand at Nobadeer in her red tank suit, a stripe of zinc down her nose. He thinks about the day he and Andrea took her to Logan Airport. Kacy had finished her master’s in nursing at Boston College and accepted a job in San Francisco, and he and Andrea had been equal parts proud and heartbroken. So far away, they thought. They’d never see her. For the most part, this has been true. They fly to San Francisco for a week every fall; Kacy comes home for holidays when her schedule allows. But it isn’t the same. Eric and his girlfriend, Avalon, are always around, meeting the Chief and Andrea at the Anglers’ Club for Friday appetizers, coming for dinner every week. Chloe and Finn, the twins Ed and Andrea adopted after Andrea’s cousin Tess and her husband, Greg, died, are both in college. Chloe insisted that the Chief join Snapchat, and thanks to this, he can follow the twins’ every move; he probably knows more about their lives than he wants to. Only Kacy remains a mystery.
She’s home now, Ed thinks. She’s in his car; her luggage is in the back, and boxes have arrived at the house. She’s moving home for the summer, taking a leave of absence from UCSF.
“Why?” Ed asked Andrea. “Did something happen?”
“All she told me was that she wanted to come home for a while. She didn’t offer anything else. You know Kacy.”
You don’t give up your life and move across the country for no reason. Was it because of work? Ed wondered. Or a relationship?
Ed knows Kacy is gay, though she never officially came out to him—she’d told her mother and asked Andrea to tell Ed. In some ways, this was a relief. Ed isn’t much for dramatic emotional moments in his personal life; he gets enough of that on the job. But he does wonder why Kacy wasn’t comfortable telling him. Did she think he’d disapprove? Andrea handled the whole thing with great equanimity. There might have been a single beat where Andrea had to let go of whatever vision she’d held for Kacy’s future—a traditional husband and family. But hey, she said, there could still be a wedding, still be babies. Andrea told Ed that she’d always suspected Kacy was gay, and Ed thought, Really? In high school, Kacy had boyfriends—admittedly nobody serious, but she’d gone to both the junior prom and senior banquet with a terrific kid named Lamont Oakley.
Now Kacy says, “I have a strange request. Feel free to say no.”
She’s smart, Ed thinks. He’s so happy to see her, he would say yes to nearly anything. “What’s up?”
“I met this girl on the boat,” Kacy says. “She has a job as a personal concierge with some wealthy couple who just bought a house here, but wires got crossed and the house isn’t ready and this girl has nowhere to stay. Would it be all right if she crashed with us for a few days?”
“Oh.” Ed isn’t sure what to say. He just got his daughter back after seven years, and Andrea is planning a family dinner for tonight with Eric and Avalon. Selfishly, Ed wants Kacy to himself, and wouldn’t it be weird, celebrating her return with a complete stranger? He’s about to pass the buck—You’ll have to ask your mother—but he can see Kacy practically vibrating with anticipation.
“We have room, right? Chloe and Finn…”
Right. Chloe and Finn are both abroad this summer—Chloe in Florence, Finn in Dublin—so their rooms are vacant. Ed reminds himself that it’s Kacy’s nature to help people. He clears his throat. “A few days?”
“Four days,” Kacy says. “Max.”
“I’m agreeing to this without consulting your mother—”
Kacy hops out of the car before he can finish his sentence. “Thanks, Dad!”
The Chief swings his car back into the melee of the Steamship parking lot, blocking the cars that are trying to exit. The Chief hears a horn and looks over to see a kid with blond floppy bangs sitting behind the wheel of a silver Range Rover (license plate: BEAST) flipping him off. The Chief sighs. Summer, he thinks, has officially begun.
Kacy and her new friend approach. The friend is smaller than Kacy, with short dark hair, a pierced nose, and a fair number of tattoos. The Chief’s first thought is that she looks like she works at a carnival or plays acoustic guitar at a coffeehouse. But he won’t stereotype; he’ll just smile and hope for the best.
The friend climbs into the back seat and moves her sunglasses up into the bird’s nest of her hair—her eyes are a startling glacier blue. The Chief wonders if this is a love interest. Would Kacy pick up a girl she just met on the ferry and bring her home? Ed chastises himself. Kacy is allowed to have friends who are women.
“I’m Coco,” the girl says.
“Ed Kapenash, nice to meet you.”
Coco eyes all the bells and whistles inside Ed’s SUV—the scanner, the screen, the lights. “Are you…”
“Chief of police,” Ed says, and Coco gets that Uh-oh look that Ed has seen thousands of times. Mentioning his job title tends to be a conversation killer. “Sorry to hear about your housing. Who is it you’re working for?”
“The Richardsons?” Coco says. “Bull and Leslee.”
“Don’t know them,” Ed says, then laughs. “Though in my line of work, that’s probably a good thing.”
5. The Castaways
“The Richardsons?” Addison says that night at dinner. “They’re my clients.”
Ha! Andrea thinks. What does Ed say each and every day? It’s a small island. She catches his eye and can tell he’s thinking what she’s thinking: Thank god Addison knows the couple Kacy’s new friend is working for. Thank god they actually exist and that Coco isn’t some con artist preying on our daughter’s kindness.
Andrea wasn’t exactly overjoyed when Ed showed up from the ferry with an extra person, one who was evidently staying with them for a “few days.” She tried not to let either her dismay or her irritation show on her face. It wasn’t a big deal, Andrea told herself. They had plenty of space. Roll with it.
“So nice to meet you, Coco,” Andrea said. “Let’s get you settled in Chloe’s room.”
Because dinner was no longer just family, Andrea invited Addison and Phoebe and Jeffrey and Delilah too. The more the merrier; why not make it a party? They could eat out on the back deck. She doubled the ingredients for her lobster mac and cheese, Kacy’s favorite dinner; she made an extra batch of garlic knots. Phoebe showed up with half a case of champagne, and Delilah picked up a Triple Chocolate Mountain ice cream cake from the Juice Bar.
They all gather on the back deck, and Andrea is impressed when Coco is able to remember everyone’s name. And what a coincidence that Coco will be working for Addison’s clients.
“He’s been talking about this couple nonstop,” Phoebe says. “Bull and Leslee Richardson.”
“Bull?” Andrea says.
“Short for Bulfinch,” Addison says.
Andrea rolls her eyes. She tends to be judgmental where names are concerned; Nantucket has a lot of offenders when it comes to using last names as pretentious first names. “Who names a child Bulfinch?”
“He’s Australian,” Addison says as though that explains it. “He’s a charismatic guy, one of those larger-than-life types. Personable, engaging—”
“And loaded, obviously,” Phoebe says. “These are the people who came in with a full-price offer on Triple Eight Pocomo Road.”
“I thought Fast Eddie was going to kiss me,” Addison says. “He’s had that house on the market since before the pandemic.”
Jeffrey clears his throat. “They know that property is compromised, I hope? The water levels in the harbor—”
Delilah turns to Coco. “You’ll have to excuse my husband. We own a farm and he’s the consummate environmentalist.”
