“Just be sure not to miss Joe’s grilled shrimp po’boy special on Wednesdays.” The Chief clicks his beer can against Zara’s wineglass. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to dance with my wife.”
The Chief finds Andrea with Phoebe and Delilah. Andrea is trying to pick a grandmother name. Phoebe says, “We’re basically the same age and Reed hasn’t even started high school. I’ll be a hundred before I’m a grandmother.”
The Chief says, “I’m taking Granny for a spin on the dance floor.”
The band plays “Stand by Me,” and Ed holds Andrea close.
“You did it, Chief,” she says. When she looks up at him, her eyes are shining. “Thirty-five years of service, none of it easy.”
“The worthwhile things never are,” the Chief says. He gazes around the dance floor to see Eric and Avalon, Kacy and Stacy, Coco and Lamont, Blond Sharon and Romeo, Delilah and Jeffrey, Addison and Phoebe. Addison raises his cocktail to Ed over Phoebe’s head, and Ed thinks, Is it okay if I get in my feelings now? Even grouchy old Pamela from the Wauwinet gatehouse has shown up to wish Ed well.
When the song is over, the Oystercatcher staff roll out an ice cream cake from the Juice Bar. The top of the cake says Thank you, Chief Kapenash. Andrea whispers, “People wanted to make toasts but I told them you’d hate that.”
“You know me too well,” Ed says.
“That I do,” she says. “So don’t go crazy on the cake.”
“Actually,” the Chief says, “I think I’m going to walk down to the water. I need a breather.” He kisses Andrea’s forehead. “I love you.”
“I love you,” Andrea says. “And for the record, I can’t wait to be sick of you.”
The Chief wanders down the boardwalk that leads from the Oystercatcher to the shore of Jetties Beach. There are a few beachgoers, people who understand that the best part of the summer are these golden September days. Ed waves and smiles, though his face feels numb and his chest is tight. He breathes in through his nose, focusing on the sun as it sinks into the water, shooting orange and pink feathers across the sky. Down the shore to the left, the Chief watches a young man taking down blue, green, and canary-yellow umbrellas at the Beach Club. He watches the steamship glide out of the harbor. Its stacked white decks remind him of a wedding cake.
Suddenly… he’s in the garden of the Chanticleer cutting into his own wedding cake. It has a basket weave and is garnished with sugared cranberries. He feeds a piece to Andrea, nicely, neatly, but she has a rebellious streak and smashes her piece into the Chief’s face, to the boisterous delight of her Italian uncles.
“Ed!” Andrea cries. “Someone call 911! Is Stu Vick still here?”
The Chief strolls the docks of the Boat Basin. Eric has brought him out to show off his new fishing boat, Beautiful Day. The Chief sits in the fighting chair and thinks how smart his son is to have started this charter business. Every day, he gets to work on the water.
The Chief is cruising down the Milestone Road, ten thirty on a Saturday night in November. He cuts left into the moors, and as he nears Gibbs Pond, he sees the Jeeps lined up, then he hears the music, and finally he gets close enough to see the blaze of a bonfire and the silhouettes of teenagers. He sighs. How many high-school parties has he broken up over the years? Hundreds. He turns on his lights and blasts the siren for just a second, and the kids scatter. The Chief steps out of the car, announces that the fire must be extinguished and nobody who has been drinking should drive. Hobby Alistair, captain of the football team, stays to put out the fire, then lopes over to shake the Chief’s hand.
Sorry, Chief, he says.
Ed says, Nice win against Barnstable today, son.
It’s late June and the Chief is out in Sconset. All of the tiny cottages are blanketed in pink and red roses. Every year it’s a fairy tale come to life, a village enchanted, all the more magical because it’s fleeting. Ed nearly stops to take a picture, but how silly is that, a grown man photographing a place he’s lived most of his adult life as though he’s a tourist.
“Daddy!” Kacy says. “Dad, we’re all right here. Just stay with us, please, please stay.”
The Chief is supervising a house move out on Madaket Road when he gets a call from Jennifer Speed, the dispatcher. You’re needed at the hospital pronto, Chief.
Can it wait? the Chief asks. I’m in the middle of something here.
Andrea is in labor, Jennifer says. Contractions are two minutes apart.
Ed hops into his car, throws on his lights and siren. They’re going to have a baby.
When he gets to the hospital, the person in the delivery room isn’t Andrea. It’s… Avalon. She gives birth to a boy, his grandson, the next Edward Kapenash. They’re calling him Teddy.
“Dad,” Eric says. “We love you.”
They love him. He’s been lucky to live with so much love, day in and day out.
But there’s another reason he’s been lucky, one that is every bit as powerful as the people in his life—and that is this island.
The pearlescent gray of the south shore in the fog.
The flock of sheep that graze in the hidden meadows of Quaise.
Wading into the chilly water of Polpis Harbor with his rake on the first day of family scalloping season.
Main Street at five in the morning after a blizzard, the cobblestones blanketed in snow, the whole town immaculate, white, silent.
The first glimpse of spring during Daffodil Festival: mild sunshine on his face as he drives a 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire in the classic-car parade, the taste of a deviled egg, everyone wearing their yellow and green, buoyant with the knowledge that another season is beginning, summer is on its way.
It seems like nothing short of a miracle: He found a home on this island, thirty miles out to sea.
Nantucket.
Acknowledgments
It’s a daunting task to thank everyone who contributes to my work in a regular year, never mind this year, when I have come to the end of an era. Swan Song marks the last of my Nantucket-based summer novels (for now—there may very well be another one or two somewhere down the road!).
I want to start by thanking you, my readers. It is no secret that Elin Hilderbrand readers are the most devoted in all of publishing. You have trusted me with your summer reading hours, and I am grateful. I want to give a shout-out to a few longtime readers who have become friends: Jessica Jackson, Lizz and Elaine Backler, the entire Bello family, Derek White, Tara Fox, Mary Parker, Eileen Bratton, Deena Dick, Kim Ritzke and the late Jennifer Wells, Lisa Hitt, and the reader named Katherine who handed me a letter at the Oxford Exchange in Tampa, a letter so meaningful that I read it whenever I do a speaking engagement. A writer does her work alone, but because of all of you, I have never felt alone, and my work has always had purpose—to entertain, certainly, but also to give you an all-expenses-paid mental vacation to one of the most magical places in the world.
Next I’d like to thank my editor, the amazing Judy Clain, for her sharp eye, her keen insight and intelligence, her attention to detail, and her enthusiasm. She edited this novel so brilliantly that all I can say is I don’t know how she does it. I also must thank the great Reagan Arthur, who edited twenty of my novels (from Barefoot through 28 Summers). It is not an exaggeration to say that without Judy and Reagan, there would be no Elin.
Thank you to my incredible publisher, Little, Brown. Back in January of 2007, Michael Pietsch stood up at a media luncheon and told everyone that Little, Brown was going to “bring Elin Hilderbrand to the world.” At the time I thought, Now, there’s some hyperbole. But that is what happened. I owe my career to Michael, who led by dynamic example, and to the following people at L,B, both the past and present: Terry Adams, Craig Young, Bruce Nichols, Karen Torres, Ashley Marudas, Danielle Finnegan, Brandon Kelly, Asya Muchnick, Jayne Yaffe Kemp, Karen Landry, Bryan Christian, Lauren Hesse, Sabrina Callahan, my darling Mario Pulice, Annie Martin, Tracy Roe, and my beloved publicist, Katharine Myers.
