The Hotel Nantucket (11)

“If you call the hotels directly, they can pull up my performance records.”

“You have the experience I’m looking for,” Lizbet says. “High-end luxury hotels with a discerning clientele.”

“May I ask what kind of pay you’re offering?”

“We pay twenty-five dollars an hour,” Lizbet says. “Though, because of your experience, I can bump you to twenty-seven fifty and make you the front-desk manager.”

No! Grace thinks. She needs to get this little witchy-witch out of here. Grace blows cold air down the back of Alessandra’s neck.

Alessandra doesn’t even blink. Figures.

“The hours are pretty brutal,” Lizbet says. “One and a half days off every two weeks.”

“A day off? What’s that?”

“Ha!” Lizbet says. “You’re too good to be true.”

Grace has a feeling this is precisely the case.



Staff of five, Lizbet thinks as she takes a bite of the apple, bacon, and white cheddar grilled cheese on cranberry-studded sourdough that Alessandra brought her. Alessandra interviewed well, though her résumé has holes in it. There’s a recent year-long period that’s unaccounted for, but it’s possible Alessandra was traveling between jobs; she seems cultured, into art and languages. And she said she’d studied romance languages in Palo Alto—“Palo Alto” is a wink-wink reference to Stanford, but if Alessandra went to Stanford, wouldn’t that be plastered across the top of her résumé? Lizbet decides to overlook these things. Mack Petersen down at the Beach Club basically offered Alessandra a job, but Lizbet snapped her up!

Alessandra seemed to know a great deal about Shelly Carpenter. Alessandra could be their secret weapon.



What an improvement! Grace thinks when she sets eyes on the final candidate of the day. Ezekiel English, twenty-four years old, is, as the kids say, a smoke-show. (It’s another piece of slang Grace doesn’t love, though she can see how it applies now. She’s feeling a little warm in her robe, and she pulls open the collar.)

Zeke gives Lizbet a dazzling smile and shakes her hand. “Hey, I’m Zeke English, what’s good?”

“The sandwich I just finished was good,” Lizbet says. “If that’s what you mean?”

“Sorry, I’m a little nervous,” Zeke says. “Thanks for having me in.”

How adorable! Grace thinks. He’s nervous.

“Please, have a seat,” Lizbet says. “I met your aunt Magda this morning.”

“Yeah,” Zeke says. “Aunt Magda’s the bomb. She moved in with us last September…” Zeke bows his head, and when he raises it again, his eyes are bright with tears. He clears his throat. “My mom died of a brain aneurysm. Aunt Magda cooks for us and…just generally makes everything better.” He wipes a tear with the back of his hand, and before Grace can stop herself, she flies down to give his broad shoulders a squeeze. She loves a man who isn’t afraid to show his emotions. The hug seems to revive Zeke a bit (or maybe Grace is giving herself too much credit?), because he sits up straighter and laughs. “Am I blowing this interview or what?”

Lizbet leans forward. “I’m interested in hiring human beings,” she says. “Not robots. You experienced a profound loss.” She takes a breath. “Let’s start over. Hi, Zeke, welcome! How long have you lived on Nantucket?”

“My whole life, born and raised.”

“Where else have you worked on the island?” Lizbet asks.

“I’ve been teaching at the surf school out in Cisco since I was fifteen,” Zeke says.

He’s a surfer! Grace thinks. Well, it’s official: Zeke is her crush. She wonders if he would be interested in a ghost with the figure of a nineteen-year-old but the wisdom of someone much older. (She’s kidding! The scene in that nineties movie at the potter’s wheel would—sadly—never happen in real life.)

“That’s a fun job,” Lizbet says. “Why make the switch to hospitality?”

Zeke laughs. “My dad told me it was time to grow up. He said I could either work here or work for him. He was the electrician on this renovation.”

“Yes,” Lizbet says. “William and his crew did a wonderful job.”

Zeke says, “I couldn’t believe it when I heard someone was fixing it up. It had always seemed like a lost cause. You know, my friends and I used to party here in high school.”

O! M! G! Grace thinks. Zeke is one of her high-school partiers all grown up!

“Some strange stuff happened this one night,” Zeke says. “A ghost’s face appeared on this chick’s phone.” He pauses. “So then this place got a reputation for being haunted, and we stopped coming.”

Lizbet gives him an indulgent smile. “Don’t worry, we did an exorcism when we renovated.”

Ha-ha, Grace thinks. She considers floating Zeke’s résumé off the desk to prove just how wrong Lizbet is, but she doesn’t want to show off. Yet.



Lizbet likes Zeke—he’s a lovely boy, just as Magda promised—though Lizbet worries he might be a bit surfer-dude laid-back for the job. What if it takes him fifteen minutes to get bags to a room instead of Shelly Carpenter’s prescribed five minutes? She sighs. Women will go crazy when they see him…he’s a dead ringer for Regé-Jean Page. And she’s already hired Magda, and his father is their electrical contractor, so she can’t not hire him. Lizbet will just have to train him and Adam and Raoul that bags go directly to the room within five minutes! And she would like to train Zeke not to mention the ghost to anyone. Can she get away with that?