Page 13 of Swan Song

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.”

Coco remembers Leslee saying that the house had “issues,” something about climate change and erosion. Bull dismissed that, not because he was a climate denier (Coco hopes) but because, he said, they’d be dead before it mattered.

“I told them the land is vulnerable,” Addison says. “They didn’t seem fazed.”

“But surely there are homes in the twenty-million-dollar range that are better investments?” Andrea says.

“None that were featured on the cover of Town and Country,” Addison says. “Triple Eight has provenance. It’s an icon.”

“Like a society matron on her deathbed,” Delilah says.

“Don’t be morbid—that house has another hundred years, at least,” Phoebe says. “And it has the best views on the island.”

Yes, Andrea thinks. Rumor has it that the deck of 888 Pocomo is one of the few places where you can see the beacons of all three lighthouses at once. Do the Richardsons care about the lighthouses? Do the Richardsons know about the lighthouses?

“So they’re from Australia?” Delilah says.

“He’s Australian, not the wife. She’s from… well, I’m not sure,” Addison says. “Their paperwork had a Perth address. But I didn’t get the sense they were living in Australia. He mentioned Palm Beach, Aspen, and the Caribbean.”

“Where he met Coco!” Andrea says.

“They had dinner at the bar where I was working,” Coco says. “They told me they bounce around a lot.”

“I’ll get the scoop,” Phoebe says. “Addison asked me to take the wife to lunch next week. I guess they want to join the Field and Oar Club.”

“You can’t let her jump ahead on the list, Phoebe,” Delilah says. “Jeffrey and I have been waiting nine long years.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence. Andrea knows how badly Delilah wants to join the Field and Oar. In private conversations, Delilah tells Andrea that she suspects the club’s membership committee is prejudiced against locals. A very awkward situation, as Phoebe sits on that membership committee.

“I won’t, Dee,” Phoebe says. “But you know it helps if you play tennis or sail.”

“Do the Richardsons play tennis or sail?” Delilah asks.

“I’m not sure about tennis,” Addison says. “But Bull told me he’s buying a yacht.”

“So these people are plunking down twenty million on a house—”

“Twenty-two million,” Addison says.

“And who knows how many million on a yacht,” Delilah says. “And they want to join the Field and Oar Club with all the old Nantucket summer families?”

“Well, they have good taste in assistants,” Andrea says, smiling at Coco. They should probably change the subject. Andrea isn’t a stickler for etiquette, but discussing Coco’s employers in front of her seems tacky.

They’re buying a yacht? Coco thinks. Snark must have done very well in Kuala Lumpur. She finishes her champagne. She’s so exhausted, it feels like the space where her brain should be has been filled with bubbles. And yet she’s handling herself okay, she thinks. She’s figured out who’s who: The Chief is Kacy’s father; Kacy’s mother, Andrea, seems like the beleaguered mom in a laundry-detergent commercial. The bald one who wears horn-rimmed glasses and a tailored shirt is Addison; he’s the real estate agent who represented the Richardsons. The glamorous blonde in the flowing white dress with the diamond studs the size of dimes in her ears is his wife, Phoebe. Jeffrey is the farmer; he showed up with a basket of hothouse tomatoes and a bag of hydroponic lettuces, and he’s wearing a T-shirt that says WHO’S YOUR FARMER? (Coco assumes this is meant to be funny/ironic, since it’s him.) His wife is Delilah; she has curly hair and freckles and is wearing a long prairie skirt and a tight white T-shirt. She gives off sexy-earth-mother vibes.

Coco isn’t used to attending dinner parties, especially not with people her mother’s age. Georgi, Coco’s mother, is what the internet would call “broken”—so broken that if you shook her, it would sound like dry beans in a jar. Coco never knew her father. Georgi had a string of boyfriends when Coco was growing up—Sam, Jimmy Pyle, Rodney Fever—until, finally, Kemp, who moved in when Coco was thirteen and who brought his daughter, Bree, and Bree’s four kids with him. Georgi and Kemp didn’t entertain at home; if they had, it would’ve been a reality show. Bree subsisted on cigarettes and Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies. Her kids whined about Georgi’s cooking (it was pretty bad—brown stew, hot-dog casserole), there was always a two-liter bottle of soda on the table, and at some point during the meal, Bree’s baby daddy, Larch, would walk in, grimy from doing oil changes at Valvoline and also sometimes drunk, which was when he and Bree would start fighting.

No, Coco’s family did not entertain at home. Coco used to make herself a bowl of Cap’n Crunch or a grilled cheese and eat in her room, where she either read the classics or watched DVDs from the 1980s and 1990s that she borrowed from her high-school library. Books had raised her (Jane Austen had taught her how to comport herself at a dinner party like this one), and movies allowed her to escape the chaos going on outside her bedroom door.

“Would anyone like more cake?” Andrea asks. “Another glass of champagne?”

“I’d love more champagne, Mrs. Kapenash,” Coco says. “But I can get it—”

“Stay where you are, I’m going in anyway,” Andrea says. “And please, call me Andrea!” She takes Coco’s glass and enters the kitchen to find Kacy leaning up against the counter, engrossed in her phone, texting. Andrea blinks; she didn’t realize Kacy had left the deck.

“Everything okay, honey?” The downside of having all these people here is that Andrea hasn’t had a chance to properly welcome her daughter home. She forgets the champagne for a second and opens her arms for a hug.

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