The eggs sizzle. Patrick grabs a wooden spoon. The eggs have to be soft and creamy; otherwise they will not be suitable for this quality of caviar.

Ava and Kevin think he and Jen are food snobs. Kevin’s favorite food is the ACK Mack pizza from Sophie T’s—located across the street from the Bar—and if it’s a day old, so much the better.

The house phone rings again. Jen is desperate. Patrick likes that at first—he likes the idea of his wife regretting her decision to leave and calling to beg his forgiveness. He moves the eggs around in the pan like an artist dabbing paint on a canvas. He will tell Jen he is about to eat the caviar.

“Hello?” he says.

“Patrick?” a voice says. It’s Gary Grimstead. “Man, I need you to sit down.”

KELLEY

After the news that Mitzi is leaving him and that he will be getting divorced again sinks in, Kelley does the only thing he can do: he drives to Hatch’s and buys a bottle of Wild Turkey and a pack of Camels. Then, once back at the inn, he grabs a couple of Cokes from the complimentary guest fridge and heads to his bedroom, where he locks himself in.

It’s noon on Christmas Eve. He pours himself a drink and smokes his first cigarette in over two decades. It makes him cough. According to Mitzi, alcohol and tobacco are poison, and he is sure to be on death’s door any second.

But right now, it feels good. Or not good, exactly, but rebellious and exciting, which is the most he can hope for.

Inspection of the bedroom leads Kelley to understand that Mitzi has been planning this exodus for a while. She packed only two suitcases to take with her, but every single one of her belongings is gone with the exception of two things. The first is her Mrs. Claus dress, which is probably two or three inches too short for a woman Mitzi’s age but which she insisted on wearing to their party every year anyway. Kelley is confused. She ran off with Santa Claus but neglected to pack her matching outfit? Then he remembers her words: I was hoping to make it through Christmas, but it didn’t work out that way.

So she left the Mrs.-Claus-as-street-worker dress here, just in case.

The other item hanging in the closet is a gold lamé jumpsuit, which Mitzi used to wear to the roller disco and which Kelley hilariously squeezed himself into one long-ago Halloween. Mitzi must have shipped all her other clothes to Lenox. Kelley had noticed her packing up large boxes, but he’d assumed they were Christmas gifts for Bart.

Bart. Kelley has alerted Kevin, Patrick, Ava, and even Margaret about Mitzi’s departure, but he has no way to reach Bart other than e-mailing him, which seems cruel. A phone call is in order, surely? He is, after all, the one who will be most affected. Kelley lights another cigarette; he is smoking defiantly, without even a window cracked open. The room will stink for all eternity; as an innkeeper, Kelley knows this.

Kelley wonders for a second if, perhaps, Mitzi has already broken the news to Bart. Mother and son do share an unusual and possibly unhealthy intimacy, or so Kelley always thought. She was never a mother the way Margaret was a mother, back when Margaret was a mother and not the most famous newsperson in America. Margaret stuck firmly to rules and boundaries—no kids slept in their bed, ever; there were no sleepovers without communication between Margaret and the other parents; there was no grade below a B; and there was a list of rotating chores, the schedule for which was taped to the refrigerator and adhered to. Margaret loved the kids, but she didn’t pander to them. Mitzi is another story. She never reprimanded Bart growing up; if he misbehaved, there was always a long, philosophical inquiry as to why Bart bit another child / went into the ocean without telling Mitzi / got drunk at the age of fourteen and threw up inside Ava’s piano. Mitzi used to walk around naked in front of Bart; she used to tell him when she was menstruating. Kelley wouldn’t be surprised if Mitzi had confided her affair to Bart—even years earlier.

Kelley is so incensed by this thought that he pours himself another Wild Turkey and logs on to his computer.

Mitzi has always been the one to keep up the Winter Street Inn Facebook page, but now Kelley takes matters into his own hands. He posts (to all 1,114 of their page’s “friends”): In light of my recent discovery that my wife, Mitzi, has been conducting an affair with George (Santa Claus) for the past twelve years, tonight’s party at the Winter Street Inn is canceled.

And will be canceled for the foreseeable future, he thinks. He’s going to sell the inn. God, what a relief it will be—financially and emotionally. He will list it for four million but accept three-five. He will call Eddie Pancik on the twenty-sixth; everyone on island calls him Fast Eddie, which Kelley hopes means Eddie Pancik will sell the inn quickly.

But why wait for Eddie Pancik? Kelley wonders as he finishes his drink. He goes back onto the Winter Street Inn Facebook page. His post of a few minutes earlier hasn’t garnered any “likes,” only one comment from Mrs. Gabler, who was Bart’s kindergarten teacher and who is the first person to arrive at the Christmas party every year.

Mrs. Gabler’s comment says: Is this some kind of crank call?

Crank call? Mrs. Gabler is elderly and confused. At the party, she drinks only cognac, and Kelley always keeps a bottle of Rémy Martin on hand just for her. Extravagances abound!

Kelley feels embarrassed that no one else has liked his post, but, of course, who would like it? There should be an option to dislike a post. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this?

On their Facebook page, Kelley sees, are happy photos of Christmas Eves past, and now that Kelley looks closer, he sees that nearly all the photos on the page include George in his Santa suit, and most of them have Mitzi in the slutty Mrs. Claus dress and her high black-suede boots. There are several photos of George and Mitzi together. This is disgusting! How did Kelley not notice this before?

He posts again: Winter Street Inn FSBO. $4M. Please call…

He feels better than he has in eons! He pours himself another drink and considers another cigarette but demurs. What else can he do?

He slips the gold lamé jumpsuit off the hanger. He is going to light it on fire. Not in the bedroom—with his luck, the whole house will go up in flames—but in the bathroom. In the bathtub, where the fire will be contained. The claw-foot porcelain tub with antique fixtures that Mitzi insisted on during the renovation, and which cost him four thousand dollars.

For a while, he had believed it was the best four thousand dollars he’d ever spent. He can remember dozens of times when Mitzi would lie in the tub for one of her scented baths—jasmine in the summer, sandalwood in the winter. She would pile her honey-colored curls on top of her head in a bun, and she would read poetry. Poetry was made for the bath, Mitzi believed. She was partial to Pablo Neruda. Kelley can practically hear her reciting to him from “If You Forget Me”: