Chapter 5
Chapter Five
From upstairs at the Greenaway house, Nora buzzed with anticipation.
She could hear the string quintet, could hear the clinking glasses and the conversations and the laughter that swirled over the jewel-lit pool.
Already, Mona was fast asleep, attached to her body like a koala.
But the other children, led by Henry, refused to calm down.
Henry pulled board games from the top of the closet, ordering Sarah and Felix to sit so that they could play.
Sarah had a feather boa laced around her neck, and she was shimmying her hips and telling Felix that they needed to put on a play.
Henry, exasperated, threw the game to the floor and said, “You people need to listen up.”
Exhaustion mixed with annoyance in Nora’s stomach. “Henry,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “Maybe not everyone wants to play the game.”
Henry scowled at her. “They don’t know what they want! That’s the problem.”
Nora forced herself to remain calm, although she felt a smile on her lips.
Henry was so like his father: argumentative, desirous of only what he felt was important.
The other children sometimes looked to him for guidance.
But more often, they ignored him, choosing to follow their childish wiles instead.
“I’ll play the game with you,” Nora offered, hoping that the semi-complicated instructions would make at least Henry sleepy.
Henry settled on the carpet to pull the game out of its box.
As soon as he’d set up the little figurines, Felix leaped on the board, snapping it in half and tossing the figurines to all corners of the playroom.
Nora yelped, “Felix! Stop that!” But Felix was overjoyed and cackling, pointing at Henry.
Although he was four years younger than his older brother, it seemed he knew how to best him.
Henry’s cheeks were inflamed. “You don’t know what you’ve done!”
All this chaos woke Mona up and sent Nora into a tizzy. For the first time since she’d come to the Greenaway house, she yelled at the Greenaway children to calm down and “be kind to one another.” They blinked at her, surprised at her outburst. Mona continued to cry louder.
It took nearly an hour after that for Mona to fall asleep again.
By then, Sarah was curled up on the sofa, sleeping, while Henry and Felix played a half-inspired game of fencing with two foam swords.
Nora crept to the window, Mona still latched around her neck, and peered into the night, hoping to find Max in the chaos.
Maybe he’d already met another young woman, someone who would fit his dreams for the night.
Perhaps he’d already forgotten the letter.
When the kids were safely in their bedrooms and fast asleep, Nora went to her bedroom and pulled a sleek black dress from the back of the closet.
She styled her hair in messy, wild curls and added a touch of lipstick, which she’d stolen from her Aunt Cynthia’s enormous collection of expensive makeup.
She wanted to feel older than sixteen. She wanted to feel like she belonged in the world outside that window.
She wanted Max to look at her and feel something.
On the walk down the stairs, she pulsated with adrenaline.
Her aunt and uncle had explicitly told her not to attend their party.
They wanted her upstairs, tending to the children, which was her job and the reason that they kept her at the Greenaway house to begin with.
But she reminded herself that this was no kind of life, not without taking a few risks.
Outside, everyone glowed from the turquoise light of the pool and the moon's creamy light. Drunken and smiling, they flirted with one another, told stories, smoked cigarettes, and drank from slender flutes of champagne. These were not the sorts of people Nora’s parents ever would have found themselves among.
Nora felt as though she’d stepped into the pages of The Great Gatsby, a book she’d had to read at school last year.
Everything was iconic. Everything felt empty and apt to break.
It took her a little while to find Max. Five minutes into her quest, she half-gave up on him and considered whether she should return upstairs and go to bed.
But it was then that she spotted him, lingering behind the same bar where he’d hidden the letter.
They locked eyes, and warmth flooded through Nora.
Frightened at that moment, she realized how inexperienced she was in matters of the heart.
Back in New Hampshire, she’d only kissed one boy, ever.
She and her old friends from home had had all kinds of schemes to get boyfriends during junior and senior year.
But Nora could hardly picture the faces of the boys she’d once traced the names of in her journal.
Max approached her with two glasses of champagne.
Nora felt at once like a very adult and very worthy person.
She could see from Max’s smile that she looked pretty, too.
She accepted the flute and thanked him. A strange part of her remembered that she’d only lived in Nantucket a little more than a week, and her parents had died only a few weeks ago.
Was this too soon to live a different kind of life?
But she clinked her glass with Max’s and whispered, “Why are you here?” She could think about her worries later.
Max beckoned for her to follow him to the outer edge of the party, where, he said, it was easier to people-watch without being spotted themselves.
“Neither of us is supposed to be here,” he said under his breath, offering her a crooked smile.
“But you’re working the party,” she pointed out.
Max raised his eyebrows. “I was supposed to set up and go home. But my boss always says that we should take advantage of as much as we can, especially when it comes to the Greenaways.”
Nora tilted her head, trying to read in his tone what he meant.
She guessed that Max had very little money, that people like her aunt and uncle were spectacles to him—people to take from because they wouldn’t notice, given that they had so much themselves.
Nora was so caught up in her thoughts that she accidentally drank her champagne too quickly, then stared dully down at the empty flute, her thoughts spiraling.
She’d never really drunk alcohol before.
She didn’t want to share that with Max, either.
“How old are you?” she asked, when Max replaced her first flute with another, which he fetched from the tray of a passing server.
“I’m seventeen,” Max said. “You?”
“Seventeen,” Nora lied. And then she fixed it. “I mean, sixteen.”
“Nowhere near old enough to drink that champagne,” Max said with a wink.
“No.” She swallowed. “Are you going to tell on me?”
“Are you going to tell on me?” Max turned it back on her.
Nora felt a blush crawl up her neck and across her cheeks. She couldn’t remember any flirtation back in New Hampshire being like this. She considered that Max was simply bored, that he wanted someone to people-watch with.
“There are whispers about you in town,” Max said finally.
Nora raised her eyebrows. She’d hardly left the Greenaway house, let alone imagined what people in town were saying about her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
But Max offered it up anyway. “They’re saying that you’re related to the Greenaways? That you’re not just a nanny, hired for the summer?”
Nora took a soft breath. “Cynthia is my aunt. But I didn’t know her very well till recently. She’s my mother’s sister. I mean, she was. My parents died.”
Max’s sharp features softened. He looked like he didn’t know what to say. A bonfire was lit on the beach not far from there, and his eyes were illuminated, flashing with orange.
“They didn’t say that,” Max offered. “And I feel like a fool. I hate that it happened to you.”
Nora couldn’t breathe for a moment. She wondered if she’d done the right thing, telling Max the truth.
Then again, save for the maids and the cooks, she didn’t have a single friend around here.
Maybe she needed someone to support her story, to carry it the way she had to. Maybe she needed to be known.
She was also glad that he hadn’t simply said “I’m sorry” like everyone else. She’d heard it so frequently that it had begun to lose its meaning.
Max slid his fingers through hers and tugged her to the opposite edge of the party. “Let’s get some cake or something,” he said. “They always have great cake at these things.”
Nora forced herself to smile. When they reached the cake table, she watched as Max slid not one but two slices of the beautiful, frosting-covered cake onto two plates.
“Two?” she asked, laughing.
“They can afford it,” Max said.
Carrying their cake and their champagne back to the shadows near the bonfire, Nora felt a sense of optimism she hadn’t allowed herself in weeks.
The air smelled of burning wood and salty air on the miles of white sand.
It also smelled of expensive perfume and cologne, jealousy, and shame—but these weren’t of her concern. Not yet.
“It seems like you come to a lot of these parties,” Nora said, settling on the sand beside Max to eat her cake.
“I’ve been helping Mikey out with their parties for a few years,” Max explained.
“There’s always a pattern. Every year, someone spots Cynthia and Everett fighting by the Nantucket pier.
Not long after that, a party is announced, and they invite their fanciest and richest friends.
Sometimes they do it twice a year. We get paid okay to set up for them.
But I mostly do it for the spectacle and the stories. ”
Nora grinned. Now, she felt as though Max was Tom, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, here to soak up all the drama and the scandal.
Maybe he planned to write about it someday.
The idea that she might end up in Max’s book one day thrilled her.
She’d always wanted to be remembered by one of her boyfriends—if she ever had a boyfriend.
It wasn’t that Max was going to be her boyfriend, she reminded herself.
“I can’t believe you’re related to them,” Max said under his breath, his eyes enormous. “I mean, you’re related to Cynthia by blood. Maybe that makes more sense. But your uncle…” He sipped his champagne. “He’s something else.”
Nora was intrigued. “What do you mean?”
Max furrowed his brow. He suddenly looked both seventeen and twenty-five at once, as though he carried wisdom she couldn’t comprehend. “You must know that your uncle surrounds himself with tremendously powerful and wealthy men.”
“I guess so,” Nora said. She remembered seeing her Uncle Everett at her parents’ wake, how he’d sat, drank scotch on Gwen’s sofa, and waited for her to be ready to go. He’d eventually eaten a turkey sandwich with swiss cheese, just like everybody else had.
Was he really so extraordinary?
“You don’t get as wealthy as these folks do without being involved in something sort of sinister,” Max continued.
“What do you mean by powerful? What kinds of power do they have? What do they control?” she asked.
Max grimaced. “I don’t want to get into specifics here.”
Nora wondered if she’d shown how naive she was by asking such specific questions at this party full of powerful people. She swallowed the lump in her throat.
“I just want to warn you to be careful,” Max said. “I know you’re watching his kids and probably keeping to yourself. I know you’re smart and that you have good instincts.”
“You don’t know me at all,” Nora pointed out.
Max laughed. “I feel like I do already. Don’t you feel that way about me?”
Nora searched her heart for an answer and eventually admitted she did. “But I can’t explain it.”
“We don’t need to explain it,” Max said gently. “But we need to stick together through this, all right? Because there is no end to what these people think they can control.”
It was then, as Nora gazed up at him, fear and anxiety throttling through her chest, that Max pressed a kiss onto her lips—a gentle yet impactful kiss that rocked her to the core.
When he pulled back, she kept her eyes closed for a full ten seconds, savoring it.
When she’d found Max’s letter, had she secretly believed that this was a possibility?
Had she imagined that she and Max would have a romantic rendezvous?
But when she opened her eyes again, Max was on his feet, beckoning for her to join him.
Abandoning their plates and empty glasses on a table by the pool, they sped into the inky-black night that filled the bluffs just beyond.
They ran until they could hardly hear the music from the party. They ran until their thighs screamed.