She looked at him as though he were a moron, and he realized that was the point. Kelley was dying and Bart was depressed; Mitzi needed a happy distraction. Still, Kelley worries the party will put too much pressure on Bart. He doesn’t like being the center of attention. He didn’t want any kind of celebration when he came home from Afghanistan, and there he was, a war hero. Kelley himself would have taken the Chamber of Commerce up on their offer of a parade, but Bart said he couldn’t stand to be honored when half of his fellow Marines had been killed by the Bely.

Mitzi was inviting everyone they knew to the VFW. It would be a Halloween version of their Christmas Eve party. Once Kelley realized that, he turned to Mitzi and said, “Why don’t we just throw our Christmas Eve party as usual?”

“But that’s so far away,” Mitzi said. Before Kelley could chide her for being as impatient as a child, she kissed his forehead and said, “And you’re feeling good now.”

That was when Kelley understood that Mitzi didn’t think Kelley would make it to the holidays. She didn’t think he would make it two more months. Wow. Well, he would show her! There was no greater motivation for doing anything—including staying alive—than being able to tell your spouse: I told you so.

There followed some days, however, when Kelley feared that Mitzi was right. He felt he could barely keep breathing for another hour, much less two more months.

Now he has decided to follow Bart’s lead and just nod along when Mitzi talks about the party. It will be fun. Sort of. Kelley will have to attend in his wheelchair, but if he takes pain medication, he should be able to stay alert. He won’t be out on the dance floor—yes, Mitzi hired a band, some operation called Maxxtone that Kevin recommended—but it’ll be fun to see people.

“The caterer suggested a mashed potato bar,” Mitzi says. “It’s a thing. They make a big pot of mashed potatoes, and then there are dishes of toppings—scallions, cheddar cheese, sour cream, bacon…”

“Bacon?” Kelley says, perking up. “You agreed to bacon?”

“I know it’s your favorite,” Mitzi says.

“Was my favorite,” Kelley says. Does he have to remind Mitzi that she forbids him from eating bacon—as well as sausage, ham, pulled pork, hamburger, meatballs of any kind, veal chops, marbled steak, dark-meat chicken, and “fatty” fish such as salmon?

“I’ve had a talk with Laura—” Mitzi says.

“Lara,” Kelley says. “Her name is Lara. Not Laura. You have to pronounce it correctly or she gets upset.”

Mitzi nods, though Kelley is certain she didn’t process the correction. “Laura seems to think it’s fine for you to eat the foods you love. She was very persuasive.”

“You mean, you agree with her?” Kelley says.

“Yes,” Mitzi says, and she gives Kelley another lovely kiss. “I want you to be happy.”

She’s given up on me, Kelley thinks. If she doesn’t care if I eat bacon, then I really must be a lost cause.

Maybe Mitzi has fallen in love with the caterer. Maybe the caterer is one of these hipster types with a man bun.

“There are going to be glass apothecary jars filled with candy,” Mitzi says. “Jawbreakers, caramels, Necco wafers, Pixy Stix. It seemed like a natural fit at a Halloween party.”

“But it’s not a Halloween party,” Kelley says. “It’s a birthday party. We aren’t wearing costumes.” He pauses. They had better not be wearing costumes! What would he go as? Man Sitting on Death’s Door?

“I might wear a costume, since I’m the hostess,” Mitzi says. She stands up. “I’d like to wear my gold roller-disco outfit, the one with the matching headband and wristbands. Do you know the one I mean?”

“Um?” Kelley says. He knows exactly the one Mitzi means, because it was this very outfit that Kelley set on fire in their bathtub after Mitzi left Kelley for George Umbrau, the Winter Street Inn Santa Claus, nearly three years earlier.

“You do know the one, right?” Mitzi asks. “I mean, I only had one gold jumpsuit.” She opens the door to their closet. “But I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. Where could it be?”

Kelley is not too sick to recognize the right course of action. He leans back into his pillows, closes his eyes, and pretends to be asleep.

EDDIE

Finally Eddie’s job of working the phones pays off!

It’s the lowest job on the real estate office totem pole. On a normal day Eddie fields calls, each more inane and frustrating than the last. People call looking to rent a house for the first two weeks of August. They would like it to sleep eight and be on the beach or within short walking distance, and their budget is five thousand dollars. Total. On a good day Eddie responds to such a query with “Do you have any wiggle room with the price? If not, then how about the number of bedrooms or the location? I have a lovely upside-down house in Tom Nevers that sleeps six and rents for forty-five hundred a week. It’s a short drive from the beach. It just came on the market for the two weeks you’re looking at.” On his bad days Eddie says, “The kind of house you’re describing, ma’am/sir, would rent for nearly ten times your budgeted amount. Large beachfront rentals in August start at twenty thousand dollars a week. That’s where they start.” Eddie then pauses, waiting for the caller to hang up.

Most cold calls are rentals. People who are in the market to sell already have a broker, and if they are no longer on favorable terms with that broker, they hire that broker’s worst enemy. (Eddie got plenty of clients this way in his previous life, people defecting from Addison Wheeler and, yes, Glenn Daley.) People in the market to buy are usually referred to a broker by their financial adviser or the guy they play squash with, or they use the broker who helped them when they were merely renters.

It’s exceedingly rare that someone cold-calls looking to buy, and buy big, but that’s exactly what happens when Eddie picks up the phone.

The woman introduces herself as Masha.

“Masha?” Eddie says. The name sounds vaguely Russian, which unfortunately leads Eddie to think about his crew of call girl housecleaners, who have all been banished back to Kyrgyzstan. “M-a-s-h-a?”

“No, Masha,” the woman says. “Like, ‘Masha, Masha, Masha.’” Pause. “From The Brady Bunch.”

“Oh, Marcia,” Eddie says. The woman’s accent is straight out of Jeremiah Burke High School in Dorchester and Eddie knows not to get his hopes up. People from Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Brockton, and Fall River don’t buy houses on Nantucket. People from those towns generally don’t come to Nantucket at all because they don’t like paying sixteen dollars for a turkey sandwich, nine dollars for a Bud Light, or five dollars for a gallon of gas. “My name is Eddie, Marcia. Eddie Pancik. What can I help you with today?”

“My husband, Raja, and I…”

Raja sounds vaguely Indian, and Eddie wonders if Raja is a tech millionaire or, possibly, a professor of astrophysics at MIT. But then Eddie calculates in Marcia’s muscular accent and realizes the husband’s name is Roger.

“Yes?” Eddie says patiently, though he can already tell this woman will be spending her summer vacation at the Shady Rest Motel up-beach in Revere. All is not lost for Marcia and Roger, however; there is an excellent clam shack near the Shady Rest.

“We won Powerball,” Marcia says. “The lottery? So now we want to buy a house on Nantucket. We want to look at everything you’ve got between ten and fifteen million.”

Eddie takes a second to clear his throat. “Well, all right, then,” he says. His hopes feel like soap bubbles, iridescent and delicate. He waits for them to pop, one by one. Marcia and Roger won Powerball, and out of the twenty-something real estate agencies on Nantucket they have called Bayberry Properties and reached Eddie Pancik on the phone to find them a ten-to-fifteen-million-dollar house. What are the chances? Eddie reminds himself that there are phonies and fakers out there—unsophisticated pranksters and more-nefarious Talented Mr. Ripley types. But this Marcia sounds earnest, her accent genuine. Eddie grew up on Purchase Street in New Bedford; he should know. “Let’s schedule a day for you to visit, and I’ll set up the appointments.”