Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand

Author:Elin Hilderbrand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2019-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

A few days later, Kirby hears from Rajani.

“The Aldworths have taken their boat and their bratty kids to Cuttyhunk,” she says. “They’re paying me to stay at their house with their cat.”

“You’re kidding,” Kirby says. She has had so little contact with Rajani that she knows almost nothing about the family she nannies for; she didn’t know they owned a boat, that their kids were bratty, or that they had a cat. All she knew was that they lived in Chilmark.

“Why don’t you come over?” Rajani says. “We can swim at their private beach and then go to Menemsha for lunch. They left me the keys to their Porsche.”

Kirby doesn’t have to be asked twice. She borrows Patty’s bike and rides all the way out to the address Rajani gave her on Tea Lane. It’s farther away than she thought, but it’s pretty along State Road; she passes rolling farmland and stone walls, ponds and big trees. The landscape is different from Nantucket, where the brush is low and windswept and most of the trees are scrub pines.

Finally, Kirby turns onto Tea Lane and pedals all the way out to the water. At the end of a shell driveway, the house number she’s looking for is carved into a stone. A little farther down, the house itself comes into view. It’s palatial—three stories, with a turret at one end. Around the side is a swimming pool and tennis court. As Kirby is kickstanding her bike, Rajani appears in the entrance, her arms spread wide.

“Welcome to my home,” she says. “Away from home.”

The house is grand. There’s a white piano and leopard-skin rugs and what Kirby thinks is an Andy Warhol hanging in the kitchen next to the fridge, in the same place that another family might hang their children’s crayon drawings. The kitchen is modern. All of the appliances are avocado green, a color that pops against the white tile floor and the pink-and-orange mosaic backsplash.

Kirby follows Rajani outside to the deck. The pool is off to the left. Down three steps and over one small dune is the ocean.

“Are you kidding me?” Kirby says. “You work here every day? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Too busy running after Eric and Randy,” she says. “The demon twins.”

Kirby is stunned. She was wowed by Luke Winslow’s place on Nashaquitsa Pond, and in some ways, she prefers it to this. Who needs a grand piano and leopard-skin rugs and a Warhol in a summer home? Kirby always felt privileged growing up because of their house on Fair Street, right in town, and the mural in the living room, and their long legacy at the Field and Oar Club. But now that she has seen this house and Luke’s house, she understands that Fair Street is nothing special.

“Wanna swim?” Rajani asks.

Kirby strips down to her bikini and races for the water.

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