Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
S ylvie hadn’t brought the keys for The House on Nantucket with her to the funeral and wake.
But on an island like Nantucket, where residents were eternally trusting and eager to display that trust, it wasn’t so hard to break into an inn.
Despite having known of his death ahead of time, James Bruckson had left the spare key exactly where it had been all of Sylvie’s life—under the turtle-shaped stone in the back garden.
When she pulled the key up, it glinted in the light of the streetlamp. Graham whistled.
“I feel like we’re breaking and entering,” he said.
“Unfortunately, I own this place.” Sylvie sighed heavily.
Sylvie half expected the key not to work when she put it in the lock.
She half expected it to break. But instead, the doorknob turned easily and welcomed them into the back entrance of The House on Nantucket.
From there, a hallway to the left led to the kitchen, and the hallway directly in front of them brought them to the main living area, where, once upon a time, guests had sat, reading magazines, gossiping, and exchanging stories from their travels.
From there, a mahogany staircase led to the rooms upstairs.
Graham sneezed and laughed at himself. “It’s dusty.”
It was true. The place was far dustier and messier than Sylvie had ever seen it.
This was a surprise, as, previously, her father had hired cleaners to keep The House on Nantucket well-maintained during the non-tourism months.
But maybe the illness and funeral plans had distracted him.
Or perhaps he wanted to make things harder for me, Sylvie thought.
She slid a finger through the dust on the staircase banister and groaned.
“This is disgusting,” she said. She watched Graham’s face to see if he regretted his offer to run The House on Nantucket for the following year.
“It’s certainly something,” Graham said. “But I still haven’t seen a ghost.”
Sylvie laughed, despite herself. “Come on. You can tell me you don’t want to do this.”
Graham raised both hands. “If it helps you, I’m happy to do it.”
His words tugged at her heartstrings. She wanted to rebuke them. “Graham…” We were strangers.
But instead, she said, “What about Mrs. Galloway? Or Frank?”
Mrs. Galloway and Frank had worked at The House on Nantucket since Sylvie was a little girl. Both were hardworking and dedicated to the inn and its many guests. Sylvie’s father had often spoken of them as the only people he could trust.
“Are they too old? Retired, maybe?” Graham suggested.
“Mrs. Galloway was younger than my dad,” Sylvie remembered. “And Frank was her son, so…”
“Huh.” Graham pulled his phone out of his back pocket and searched for them. Based on mutual connections on various social media platforms, he was able to find Frank in just a few minutes. “Lives in Miami,” he said, flashing the photo to Sylvie. “Looks like Mrs. Galloway is there, too.”
Sylvie gripped Graham’s phone and analyzed the photos of these people—people who’d lived and worked beside her father for decades—who, it seemed, were now having hours of exhilarating fun in the sun, day in and day out. “I wonder what happened,” she said.
“Let me ask.” Graham sent Frank a message. It didn’t take long for Frank to write back.
Graham handed over the phone so Sylvie could read.
FRANK: He let us go last year. Gave us a pretty sizable care package, and we decided to flee the cold north and come down here.
FRANK: Heard the old man passed away. Did Sylvie come back? I’d be surprised if she did. That was some bad blood between them.
Sylvie wrinkled her nose and passed the phone back.
Graham wrote back, but Sylvie didn’t care what he said.
“So he fired the people who actually know how to run this place, and he expects me to run it myself?” Sylvie propped her hands on her hips.
Graham pulled a bottle of wine from his backpack and shook it.
“Where did you get that?” Sylvie laughed.
“I stole it from the wake,” he said. “Don’t you think we should drink in this old place? Bring it back to life a little bit? I mean, there’s no way I’ll let you sell it. Not for the Next Generation Nantucket Designers.”
Sylvie filled her lungs with dusty air and thought, This can’t be happening.
But it was. Sylvie led Graham to the kitchen to find a wine opener and wash two glasses with soap and water.
Miraculously, her father hadn’t turned off the electricity or the water.
As Graham poured the glasses, Sylvie dug through one of the back closets to find plastic-wrapped blankets, which she carried to the front porch.
It was fifty-five degrees. They sat under blankets on creaking rocking chairs and watched the dark street.
The rain had stopped, and clouds sped apart to reveal an inky night speckled with stars.
Sylvie drank wine and listened to the rocking chairs and the sounds of the people milling in and out of her father’s wake.
She wondered if Graham was thinking about the last time they’d seen one another.
But before she had a chance to say a thing, Graham spoke. “My wife died.”
Sylvie stopped her chair from rocking and turned to look at him. The moon illuminated his cheeks and made his eyes glint. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.
“I’m so sorry, Graham,” she said.
I’d thought he’d gotten divorced. But Graham wasn’t the type to get divorced. He was a lover. He fought for what he wanted.
“When did it happen?” Sylvie asked.
“About a year ago,” Graham said. “It was a car accident. Stupid because we barely ever used the car. We didn’t need to in the city. We could have taken the train.”
Sylvie gave him a curious look, and Graham filled in the blank.
“We lived in Chicago,” he said.
“Wow.” Sylvie never would have imagined Graham in Chicago. She’d half expected him to say that he and his wife had been in Manhattan—just a few blocks from her, living their happier lives alongside her grimmer one. But they’d been half the continent away.
She couldn’t believe he’d lost his wife. She couldn’t believe Graham had been forced through such trials.
“That’s terrible, Graham,” she said finally.
But she also wondered, Why is he telling me this?
“I lost my will for a while,” Graham admitted. “I couldn’t fight anymore. I was invited to protests all over the place. I was asked to speak. But instead, I found myself back here, where it all began. And you know what? It’s a mess here. It’s so much worse than how we left it.”
Sylvie sniffed. “A couple of kids couldn’t make a mark on a place like this. It’s too money driven. Nobody took us seriously.”
“No.” Graham shook his head. “But we’re not kids anymore.”
Sylvie eyed him, wondering if seeing her again had rebooted his idealism.
Idealism was a dangerous thing. She wanted to point out that Graham had been arrested just the other day.
She guessed that after he’d been taken away in the cop car, construction had barreled on as though he’d never been there.
She wanted to ask him what the point of any of this was?
“We don’t have to make any plans right now,” Graham assured her.
Sylvie hung her head. She wasn’t sure she was up for any of it: The House on Nantucket, Graham, environmental protests, love, death. Her biggest problem was only recently that her boyfriend had fallen in love with someone else. Mike! He seemed like a stranger now.
“What about you?” Graham asked, turning to look at her.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you ever get married?” Graham asked. “Did you ever fall in love?”
Sylvie suddenly felt as though she was majorly flawed. “I’ve been in love. I’m just falling out of love with someone, actually. The breakup took me off guard.” She bit her lip. “Everything right now is catching me off guard.”
Graham touched his chest. “Let’s take it one day at a time.”
The intensity in Graham’s eyes made Sylvie look away.
Moments of silence passed. Sylvie listened to the creak of the old inn as the wind rushed against it. Abstractly, she thought about her upcoming trip to Alabama, the award ceremony in Washington, DC, and all the events from her “normal” life that now seemed impossible.
Everything felt too heavy. Too hard.
She had to get out of there.
“I’d better go back to my hotel.” She got up and turned to look over at the house where her father had raised her—another beast she’d have to enter soon.
Graham looked surprised but fixed his face soon after. “I get it,” he said. “It’s been a crazy day. Can I walk you?”
Sylvie wanted to say no. But the hotel wasn’t far, and it was a gorgeous night to walk alongside the first man she’d ever loved—even if it broke her heart.
So that was what they did. They locked up the hotel and wandered through the darkness until they reached her hotel foyer, where they gazed into each other’s eyes and said, “Wow. What a night.” Sylvie thought it perhaps best if she called the whole thing off immediately.
But before she could, Graham said, “Should I pick you up for our dinner with Hilary Salt?”
Sylvie hesitated. Was the dinner with Hilary really worth it to her?
But Graham urged, “I think she could really help us.”
Something in his eyes pushed Sylvie to say yes.