Kacy sets the box down, Andrea eagerly breaks the tape and helps herself to a sugar doughnut while saying to Ed, “I’d suggest having half of one, Ed, and not the chocolate.”
“Oops, sorry, Dad,” Kacy says. “I didn’t mean to bring temptation into the house.” She selects a chocolate doughnut so there’s one less for her father to stare at. “By the way, Coco moves into Triple Eight on Monday.”
“I’m glad the Richardsons were true to their word,” Andrea says.
“Why wouldn’t they be?”
“Well,” Andrea says, “nobody knows them.”
“Phoebe and Addison know them.”
“As clients, sweetheart, not as people.”
“Do you hear yourself?” Kacy asks. “God forbid this island should have some new blood. Would it kill you to welcome them?”
“As a matter of fact,” Andrea says, “Phoebe, Delilah, and I are having lunch with Leslee Richardson next week.”
Kacy isn’t sure why she’s picking a fight with her mother; it’s as though the house is turning her back into a teenager.
Ed breaks a plain doughnut in half and stands up. “I’m going to work,” he says.
When Coco finally comes downstairs at ten thirty, Kacy makes her coffee and offers her a doughnut. She feels bad about sending those pictures of Coco to Isla. It was pathetic.
“I thought we’d go to Great Point today,” she says. “I’ve packed a picnic.”
Coco dunks her sugar doughnut into her coffee and takes a bite. “My god,” she says.
“Downyflake,” Kacy says. “Best in the world. So anyway, I made chicken salad and BLTs—I hope those are okay? And I packed two bottles of rosé, but do you drink rosé? It’s kind of a Nantucket summer thing. I also have beer if you’d rather—”
Coco waves a hand. “I eat and drink it all, but, Kacy, please stop catering to me.”
“It’s no trouble,” Kacy says. “I just want to make sure this weekend is fun for you. Before you start working.”
Coco wipes the sugar from her fingers and reaches for Kacy’s hand. “You’re amazing, Kacy Kapenash. What would I have done if I hadn’t met you?”
“Thankfully,” Kacy says, “we don’t have to worry about that.”
They drive out a winding road, rolling past a farm on the left with fields of flowers and knee-high corn. It’s country, Coco thinks, like Rosebush (but minus the hot rod up on blocks in her next-door neighbor’s yard; the screen door falling off its hinges at her friend Tash’s grandmother’s house; the Rawleys’ Doberman chained up in their yard). Here, they pass weathered split-rail fences, round ponds that glimmer like green glass, a girl riding a bike with a basket on the front and, in the basket, a chocolate Lab puppy. They’re headed out to a lighthouse, Great Point, which is at the end of a long curved arm of sand. It’s a nature preserve, a big deal, apparently, Nantucket’s only true destination. The top of the Jeep is down; the wind is rushing through their hair. The music on Kacy’s playlist—“Love on the Brain,” “Anti-Hero,” “Waking Up in Vegas”—isn’t quite Coco’s taste, but she sings along like a teenage pop queen.
Kacy points to the left. “There’s Pocomo Road.” Coco snaps out of her reverie. There’s no street sign, just a white rock at the corner with POCOMO painted on it. Coco almost asks Kacy to turn down the road. Wouldn’t it be fun to get a peek at the house where Coco will be spending the summer? But Kacy is driving full speed ahead.
At the Wauwinet gatehouse, Kacy pays a hundred and sixty dollars for a beach sticker for her Jeep. The woman working for the Trustees of Reservations—her name tag says PAMELA—has steel-gray hair clipped short and a weathered face and seems utterly humorless. “Kapenash?” she says.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You related to Chief Kapenash?”
“I’m his daughter.” Kacy wonders if this entitles her to a discount or if maybe Pamela will waive the fee altogether, but the woman only frowns more deeply. She must have some kind of grievance against Ed. “Do not go over ten miles an hour, respect all signage, and take your tires down to fifteen pounds, minimum.”
Kacy smiles. “I grew up driving on this beach. I won’t get stuck.” She takes her sticker. “Thanks. I’ll tell my dad I met you.”
“Ask him to do something about the traffic on Old South Road,” Pamela says. “It’s appalling!”
Kacy beats a hasty retreat. She searches for her tire gauge but can’t find it. That’s okay; she can let the air out with her car key, and she’ll just eyeball the tires. She moves around the Jeep, enjoying the satisfying hiss of air being released, the scent of rubber, the tires softening like butter left out in the sun. As she pulls out of the parking lot, Kacy waves to Pamela in the gatehouse, though what she wants to do is flip her off.
Coco drinks in the view. They pass an extremely fancy and beautifully appointed inn. “The Wauwinet,” Kacy says. “Super-bougie.” They hit a sandy road that cuts through the dunes and Kacy shifts the Jeep into four-wheel drive. They bounce around like they’re riding a rodeo horse and Coco grabs the roll bar while Kacy whoops. In another minute, they’re over the dunes and on the most pristine coastline Coco has ever seen. The golden sand stretches uninterrupted in front of them as far as she can see. The ocean is on their right, the dunes topped with swaying eelgrass on their left. Seagulls seem to hover overhead; smaller shorebirds scurry along the waterline, and a few yards off the coast, Coco sees a dark, sleek head.
“What is that?” she says.
Kacy follows Coco’s finger. “Seal.”
“There are seals here?” Coco says.
“Lots of them,” Kacy says.
Ahead in the distance, Coco spies the lighthouse. It’s white with a black top. This is exactly what she dreamed Nantucket would be like.
Kacy hits the gas and they go flying down the beach, sand spraying from the tires. Coco raises her arms over her head and tries to imagine what they look like from above—two women cruising down the beach in a Jeep, leaving tire tracks in their wake, not another soul in sight.
Free.
Later, Kacy will count her mistakes: forgetting the tire gauge, being smug with Pamela, blatantly breaking the speed limit—and drinking so much rosé.
In the moment, however, everything is coming up Kacy. They park just beyond the lighthouse on the very tip of the island. Kacy points out the visible line in the water that marks the cross-rip.
“It feels like we’re standing at the edge of the earth,” Coco says.
Kacy finds a flat spot for a picnic, spreads a blanket, opens the wine. Meanwhile Coco shucks off her shorts and her T-shirt and says, “I’m going in.”
