Allegra didn’t get in anywhere except UMass Dartmouth and Plymouth State because of poor test scores and even worse grades. She decided on UMass Dartmouth, with an eye to transferring to the main campus in Amherst her sophomore year—but instead she flunked out. She returned to Nantucket and went to work for her aunt Barbie at Bayberry Properties, a company owned by Barbie’s husband, Glenn Daley.
Eddie is secretly okay with the fact that Allegra isn’t in college, and not just for the obvious financial reasons. Eddie sees a lot of himself in Allegra. He, too, struggled with traditional book learning. Allegra has common sense, ambition, and enviable social skills. She has started out as the receptionist at Bayberry Properties, but Glenn has been talking about promoting her to office manager sometime in the next year. From there it will only be a matter of time before she pursues her broker’s license. The kid is going to be a success; Eddie is sure of it. He has seen her in action at the office—she is polite, professional, and confident way beyond her years. She’s even nice on the phone when the odious Rachel McMann calls. Rachel used to work at Bayberry Properties, but while Eddie was in jail, she struck out on her own, and she’s had an alarming amount of success, even though she’s the worst gossip on the island.
Glenn Daley, once Eddie’s biggest rival, offered Eddie a desk at Bayberry Properties at Barbie’s insistence. Eddie now sits in the back row against the wall with two other first-year associates, and the three of them split phone duty, although somehow Eddie always ends up getting stuck with the weekend shifts. It’s like starting in the business all over again, but Eddie tries to feel grateful. He should be humbled that Glenn Daley has chosen to claim his convicted felon of a brother-in-law and give him a fresh start.
Eddie shows Grace the invitation. “Look,” he says. “Bart Quinn’s birthday party at the VFW on Halloween!” He tries to tamp down his enthusiasm, but it’s difficult. He’s thrilled that the Quinns haven’t forsaken him. There are others on the island who have either shunned him or given him the stink eye. Philip Meier from Nantucket Bank, for one. Eddie bumped into him at the post office, and Philip walked by Eddie without so much as a hello. And don’t get Eddie started on his former office manager, Eloise Coffin. Eddie would love to key Eloise’s car, but she drives a twelve-year-old Hyundai, so it would hardly be worth it. When Eddie went to jail, it was Eloise who talked to the press.
“Halloween?” Grace says. She takes the invitation from Eddie and puts on her reading glasses. The reading glasses are new since Eddie went to jail, as is all the gray in the part of her hair. One of the infinite number of things Eddie feels guilty about is causing Grace to look middle aged. “I can’t go.”
“You can’t?” Eddie says. He feels a sense of panic. They’ve been invited to a party by the Quinns, which may lead to an invitation to the Quinns’ annual Christmas Eve party. That would really restore Eddie’s social credentials. They have to go. “Why not?”
“I’m working up the alley,” Grace says. “I’m in charge of giving out the candy to the trick-or-treaters. I’ve been doing it for years.”
Doing it for years? The phrase “up the alley” annoys Eddie. “Up the alley” means Academy Hill, the former school that is now fixed-income housing for elders. It’s a hundred yards from the teensy-tiny cottage Grace bought on Lily Street, up Snake Alley. Grace has been volunteering at Academy Hill since Eddie went away. She may have worked there last Halloween and possibly the Halloween before that, but this hardly qualifies as “doing it for years.” However, Eddie holds his tongue. He promised himself in jail that, as far as Grace was concerned, he would be a new man—a kind, patient, and attentive husband. He will not belittle Grace’s charity work. He will not ask her to skip it. But what will he do about the party?
“What will I do about the party?” Eddie asks Grace.
Grace sighs and heads into the minuscule kitchen, where she pulls a bottle of wine from the three-quarter-size fridge. The wine is Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc, which retails for twelve bucks at Hatch’s. The sight of Grace pouring herself an inexpensive bottle of wine in that pathetic kitchen depresses Eddie, though he knows it’s not supposed to. He’s supposed to feel grateful that he’s a free man, that they have a roof over their heads, that they have money to send to Hope at Bucknell. Gone are the days when Eddie and Grace would drink Screaming Eagle cabernet or, on a random Wednesday afternoon, open a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. The worst part is that Grace doesn’t complain; she makes the best of their compromised circumstances. The cottage is barely seven hundred square feet, and a quarter of that is a loft bedroom, which is accessed by a twisty set of stairs. Grace repurposed the back sunroom into a bedroom with a futon, a TV, and a stackable washer and dryer, leaving the loft for the twins. But once Allegra returned home from her failed year at UMass Dartmouth, she said she preferred the only other sleeping space, a narrow, wood-paneled room with a single bed. The room has a door that closes and a bigger closet. It smells of pine sap and stays cool in the summer. It’s kind of like living on a boat, Allegra says.
The house is in town and it does have a pocket garden out back, which Grace has transformed into a verdant oasis—a postage stamp of lush green lawn that she surrounded with flower beds bursting with hydrangeas, lilies, snapdragons, and rosebushes. People cutting through to town on Snake Alley always stop to admire the garden and to comment on the quaint charm of the cottage. It looks like something from a storybook, they say. It looks like the house where the Three Bears live!
Eddie is bound and determined to earn enough money to buy a bigger house. He won’t be able to afford anything as grand as the estate they used to own on Wauwinet Road—they’ll never have a home or waterfront acreage like that again—but something with a bigger kitchen, something with more than one bathroom.
Grace takes a sip of her wine. She has grown to like the New Zealand sauvignon blancs, she says. They’re bright, grassy.
“Take Allegra to the party,” Grace says. “She broke up with Hunter yesterday, and she’s been in her room ever since.”
“She broke up with Hunter?” Eddie says. Hunter Bloch is a broker at Melville Real Estate; Hunter’s father, Hunter Sr., owns the company, and when Allegra and Hunter started dating, Eddie and Barbie and Glenn all got the same gleam in their eye as they fantasized about the two agencies merging, creating the biggest real estate concern on Nantucket. “How come?”
“He was seeing Ina, the Bulgarian receptionist at Two Doors Down, behind Allegra’s back,” Grace says. She raises an eyebrow and lowers her voice. “Frankly, I think it was good for her to get a taste of her own medicine. After what she did to Brick…”
Eddie holds up a hand. “Stop,” he says. “The thing with Brick is ancient history.”
“Two and a half years is ancient history?” Grace says. “Well, I’m sure you’d like to think so.”
Eddie bows his head; he feels a quarrel coming on. Grace was sweet and steadfast while Eddie was in prison. She sent him carefully curated care packages, and she wrote long, newsy letters. She came to visit every week without fail, often with whichever daughter she could wrangle into joining her. But now that Eddie is back at home, Grace’s anger, disappointment, and skepticism float to the surface more often than he would like.
“Brick survived, didn’t he?” Eddie says. He knows that Brick Llewellyn, Allegra’s former beau and the son of Grace and Eddie’s former best friends, Madeline and Trevor, was accepted at Dartmouth, and then he won the Nantucket Golf Club scholarship, which pays his tuition, room, and board for four years. Eddie heard this from Grace, who still talks to Madeline, although their friendship is nothing like it used to be. They used to be closer than sisters. Eddie hasn’t seen or spoken to either of the Llewellyns since being released. If Eddie thought they would resume their weekly family dinners, he was apparently mistaken. The Llewellyns, most likely, want nothing to do with Eddie Pancik, making the fact of the Quinn invitation that much more important.
“I’ll see if Allegra wants to go to the party,” Eddie says.