Page 34 of Swan Song

Leslee glances up. “You know, you remind me of myself when I was your age.”

“Seriously?” Coco says. She takes in Leslee’s polished countenance, her ease in this giant, beautiful home on the water. Coco thinks about the house she grew up in: vinyl siding the color of margarine, wall-to-wall carpet, the pond out back with its skin of green algae.

“Seriously,” Leslee says. She studies Coco’s face as though searching for something—traces of her younger self, perhaps. Coco is so unsettled that she forgets what they were just talking about. Something important… it was…

“Days off?” Coco says. The imaginary Kacy sitting next to her approves. Stand up for yourself!

“You won’t have any days off, per se,” Leslee says. “After all, we don’t take days off from living. But I assure you, you’ll have plenty of downtime. You can lie on the beach here, I’m having a hot tub installed in the new garden—”

“I’ll be free to leave the property, though, right?” Coco has a vision of herself chained to Triple Eight like the Rawleys’ Doberman back in Rosebush. “I’d like to see my friends.”

“You’ve made friends here already?” Leslee says. “Are we talking about ‘Susan Geraghty, the librarian’?” She uses air quotes and Coco breaks into a light sweat. Does Leslee know that Ms. Geraghty never set foot on Nantucket?

“I’m friends with Kacy Kapenash,” Coco says. “Her father is the chief of police.”

“How funny!” Leslee says. “I had lunch with her mother yesterday.” She pauses. “How well do you know the Kapenashes?”

“I’ve been staying with them this past week.”

Leslee’s perfectly shaped eyebrows rise almost imperceptibly. “You have?”

There’s a knock on the library door. “Entrez!” Leslee calls out like a character in a play.

Lamont pokes his head in. “The boat is ready to go,” he says. “We have time to zip around for a while before our reservation.”

“Wonderful,” Leslee says. She beams at Coco. “I thought we’d go for a boat ride, then up to the Wauwinet for lunch on the patio.”

“That sounds amazing!” Coco says. The Wauwinet is the bougie place she and Kacy passed on the way to Great Point. Coco doesn’t have anything to wear to a lunch like that… except for her new dress. She hadn’t planned on wearing it so soon, but oh, well. It might not be so bad not having a set day off if her job entails going on boat cruises and having elegant lunches.

“Just let me finish with Coco and change my clothes and I’ll be right out,” Leslee says.

“Take your time—I’m at your disposal,” Lamont says, then closes the door.

Leslee looks at Coco and all but smacks her lips. “I love it when he says that.”

Oh god, Coco thinks. She’s not sure she can stomach watching Leslee throw herself at Lamont all morning.

“I should probably change as well,” Coco says, looking down at her cutoffs.

“Absolutely,” Leslee says. “I hope the shorts fit. I had to guess at sizes.”

Is Coco supposed to wear her uniform to lunch?

Leslee pulls a cardboard box from behind the escritoire. “Your first priority today is to get these delivered.”

Coco peers into the box. It’s filled with peony-pink envelopes. (The pink is becoming a lot, Coco thinks.) The top one is addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Addison Wheeler on Polpis Road.

“I thought…” Coco nearly says, I thought we were going on a boat ride and to lunch, but suddenly she understands that the we doesn’t include her. The we is Leslee and Lamont only. “I’ll take these to the post office, then. I’ll need stamps. How are we handling money for things like this?”

“For provisions, you’ll have one of my credit cards,” Leslee says. “I don’t check the statements—I could care less—but of course Bull does.”

Coco nods. “Of course.” Does Leslee think Coco might take her credit card and go on a spending spree around town?

“If you want to buy yourself lunch while you’re on the clock, please do,” Leslee says. “That means a sandwich from Something Natural or a quick stop at NanTaco, not rosé and oysters at Cru.”

Coco can’t keep herself from giving Leslee a look. “I understand reasonable expectations for lunch.”

“Of course you do!” Leslee says, holding her gaze. “It’s just… we don’t really know you. Bull said he checked the references you gave him, but sometimes he tells me he’s done things just to make me feel better when he’s really let them slide. It would be very easy for someone like you to take advantage of us.”

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