“I’m going to the beach,” she says.
The south shore is foggy, which turns Kacy’s introspective beach walk into a whole mood. She meanders along the water’s edge as the waves crash, then froth around her feet. Seagulls cry out; sandpipers scurry along in a V formation. There’s a guy surf-casting and when Kacy passes, he gives her an appraising look. If this were a rom-com he might say, Why the long face?
Kacy keeps going. What if she brought Isla as her plus-one to her father’s dinner? That has long been the fantasy, that Isla would show up and declare her love and Kacy could introduce her to her parents, to Eric and Avalon. This is my girlfriend, Dr. Isla Quintanilla. They would be impressed with Isla—a brilliant neonatologist, so well educated, from an important Mexico City family.
Why has Kacy been keeping you from us? Andrea would ask.
Isla was engaged, Kacy would answer. But her fiancé has fallen in love with someone else and taken down his wedding Pinterest page, so… here she is!
It’s wrong. Isla should have left Rondo, not the other way around. Isla wants to come to Nantucket now because she’s been dumped. Kacy is her backup, her plan B, her second choice.
Kacy is getting what she wants, but not for the right reason. And the reason matters.
She pulls out her phone and texts Isla: Don’t come.
Immediately, Kacy’s phone rings. She declines the call.
When Eddie enters his office on Main Street, his sister, Barbie, gives him a wide-eyed-closed-mouth look. Something is up.
What? he mouths.
She points to the partition between their two desks. Eddie peeks around the corner and sees Bull Richardson sitting in the chair meant for clients.
Eddie is spooked. Everyone on earth has a cell phone; there’s no excuse for showing up anywhere unannounced. This is an ambush. Bull is here to tell Eddie that he’s out of the deal.
Eddie is about to back out of the office when Bull spins in his chair, cranes his neck, and sees Eddie. He jumps to his feet. “Edward!” he says, thrusting out a hand.
What can Eddie do but shake it? “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Please sit,” Bull says and Eddie thinks, This is my office, I’ll sit when I’m good and ready. Also, he hates being called Edward; it reminds him of his grandmother and his high-school principal, Dr. Lewicki.
Eddie takes off his panama hat and settles into his chair. Sexy indifference, he thinks. The original idea for purchasing Jeanne Jackson’s property was his, but no biggie. Easy come, easy go. He’ll be glad to be rid of the stress because, you know, in real estate development, there’s always stress. It’s almost worth the eight million he would have made to have it go away, ha-ha-ha. He’ll handle this with grace. Bull will not be able to call him inelegant.
Bull leans forward in his chair and lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “I think we should cut Addison out of the deal.”
Eddie blinks. “Addison?”
“There’s something a little slippery about the bloke,” Bull says. “Are you aware that his nickname around town is Wheeler Dealer?”
Of course Eddie knows this. It was Eddie’s brother-in-law Glenn Daley who gave Addison the nickname a million years ago. These days, Wheeler Dealer is a term of affection and respect for Addison.
“What am I missing?” Eddie says. “Did something happen?”
“Phoebe and Addison just aren’t the people I thought they were,” Bull says. “Leslee and I made a large financial gesture that would benefit their son—”
“The donation to the boarding school,” Eddie says, thinking, See, Addison does tell me things.
“Precisely,” Bull says. “But when it came time for Phoebe and Addison to reciprocate, they didn’t deliver. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to do business with a fella like that.”
Eddie isn’t sure what the Wheelers promised the Richardsons and he doesn’t care. “Addison and I are a package deal,” Eddie says. “I heard you at the garden party last week telling Addison the two of you should dump me. I heard the things you said about me, Bull.”
Bull says, “Well, then, I guess the person who’s leaving the deal is me. Have fun financing this by yourself, mate. You can kiss my money goodbye.” Bull gets to his feet so rapidly, his chair topples over behind him. Inelegant, Eddie thinks.
Barbie appears in the doorway, resting-bitch face in place. “I’ll see you out, Mr. Richardson.”
Eddie sets Bull’s chair upright, then all but collapses into his own. Addison—he has to call Addison! They can get a loan from Nantucket Bank as long as they’re partnered up. They should have done this in the first place; what were they thinking?
But before Eddie calls Addison, there’s someone else he needs to talk to. He dials Blond Sharon.
“Hey, bae,” he says. “Do you know what happened between the Richardsons and Phoebe and Addison?”
There’s a pause. “It’s confidential,” Sharon says. Then she laughs. “But it’s too good to keep secret. Sit down.”
35. Cruel Summer
When Coco steps in the door from Meat and Fish with a pink drink for Leslee and a container of sesame noodles for Bull, she hears Leslee screaming for Bull, and not just screaming but crying.
Someone is dead, Coco thinks, and her stomach drops even though the last thing she wants to do is feel sorry for the Richardsons. Who could it be? Neither Bull nor Leslee has ever mentioned brothers, sisters, or cousins. Coco has mentally placed Leslee’s family members on some dusty acres in Nevada with the sound of machine-gun fire reverberating in a tin building. Bull’s family she pictures in a similarly dusty Australian outback, two elderly parents waiting for the tour bus to pass through. They don’t talk about friends they grew up with, college roommates, work colleagues, people they’ve met on vacation. They’ve had no houseguests. The Richardsons seem to exist in a bubble, the here and the now, this house, the connections they’ve made this summer.
Has something happened to someone Coco knows? She moves to the plate-glass window and sees Lamont bent over the stern of Hedonism; he’s fiddling with the back gate, which he complains is janky. He ordered a replacement but it won’t arrive for six weeks. The broken gate technically makes the boat unsafe, though Bull told Lamont not to worry about it. When Lamont told Coco that he was indeed worried about it, Coco said, “I know I should be a good girlfriend and commiserate. How about this—the Meat and Fish Market is once again out of Bull’s favorite pretzels. They won’t have more until Tuesday.”
Lamont stared at her. “You just called yourself my girlfriend.”
Coco tucked her hair behind her ears; it was finally long enough to do that. What she nearly said was that she liked him so much, she felt like more than a girlfriend. But because their relationship was secret, she also felt like less than a girlfriend. She almost wanted to get caught by Bull and Leslee. Would they really fire them? Coco doubted it. Bull and Leslee and Lamont and Coco were like a family, one no more dysfunctional than the family Coco grew up in.
Coco checks the Nantucket Current to see if there’s any breaking news about an untimely death or accident—nope. She heads downstairs—she has books to switch out in the library—and hears Leslee sobbing and Bull murmuring, then Leslee lets out a blood-freezing shriek and Coco thinks, I will not get pulled into their drama.
In the library, she replaces Life After Life by Kate Atkinson and takes May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes, geniuses both, in her humble opinion. When she’s back in the hall, she hears a door close. She turns around to see Bull leaving the primary suite.
