Back in June, Kayla’s husband, Raoul Montero, owner of Montero Construction, landed the biggest job ever on Nantucket-the Ting house out in Monomoy. Val had represented Pierre and Elisabeth Ting when they bought the vacant lot for six million dollars, and the house they wanted to build would cost another ten million. The day Raoul had found out the job was his, he came home on his lunch hour, something he rarely did. Kayla had been weeding the garden, wearing a bikini top and jeans shorts, her bare knees stained with dirt. Just before Raoul pulled into the driveway, she’d had a sense of glorious freedom. Her kids were all elsewhere: her oldest, Theo, worked part-time as a ramp attendant for Island Airlines; her girls, Jennifer and Cassidy B., had babysitting jobs; and her eight-year-old, Luke, was at camp every day until four. After nineteen years of marriage and eighteen years of child-rearing, she woke up to discover that it was summer and she had a day all to herself; she dug in the garden, inhaling the scent of rosemary and basil, listening to Cat Stevens sing “Oh Very Young” on the kitchen radio. Then Kayla saw Raoul’s red pickup pull into the driveway. She’d panicked at first-construction could be a dangerous business, people fell off roofs and high ladders-but when she saw Raoul’s face, she knew he had good news.
“I got Ting,” he said. He strode through the backyard to the garden and reached her before she could even stand up.
“Lucky, lucky man,” she said. “How did you get so lucky?”
“It’s not luck, baby; it’s skill,” he said. He took Kayla’s sweaty body in his arms. Raoul was not only lucky, but blessed, as well. He was tall and strong with Spanish coloring-dark hair, golden brown eyes, rosy lips. Their kids worshiped him. They ate the same things that Raoul ate-for breakfast, two banana muffins and a bowl of fruit; for lunch, egg salad on a sub roll. They all loved Chevy trucks, skiing, The Rolling Stones singing “Street Fighting Man,” Tom Brokaw, scary movies, coconut cream Easter eggs. It baffled Kayla at times-they’d had four children who were carbon copies of Raoul. Sometimes it was like she’d had nothing to do with their creation. Sometimes it was like she was just a visitor to their planet.
Raoul scooped Kayla up in his arms. She wasn’t a petite woman by anyone’s standards, but that day when Raoul carried her into the house, she felt as light as a size two. “Anybody else home?” Raoul asked.
“Nope.”
He’d carried her upstairs to the bedroom, untying the string of her bikini top with his teeth. He laid her across the bed and slid her shorts and her underwear over her dirty knees. Nantucket was a small place, and there had been rumors during the nineteen years of their marriage that Raoul had had affairs with two women. But Kayla tried not to believe it.
Raoul whistled. “You’re beautiful, Kayla.”
“I’m glad you got the job,” she said. “I know how much you wanted it.”
“We wanted it,” Raoul said. “Didn’t we?”
“We did,” she said. “We all did. When the kids find out, they’re going to flip.”
Raoul unbuttoned his jeans and reached for her. He had a flat, brown stomach that rippled with muscles. He was a gorgeous, lucky man who had landed the job of a lifetime. What a way to start the summer-enough money was headed for their bank account to let them to grow old without a care in the world.
Maybe it was remembering that sweet afternoon hour of making love with her husband, or maybe it was all the talk of illicit affairs, but Kayla decided, after she got off the phone with Val, to drive out to Raoul’s job site. She did this occasionally, because after Raoul started the Ting job, he was rarely at home. He left the house at six in the morning with his metal lunch box (muffins, fruit, egg salad), and then he ordered pizzas for his crew for dinner, or he treated them to Faregrounds or A. K. Diamond’s. He had yet to make it home before their youngest, Luke, went to bed, and now that this had been going on for a couple of months, the kids were starting to show signs of frustration. Their hero, the parental sun they revolved around, was missing.
“Do you love the Tings more than us?” Cassidy B. asked him one Sunday morning.
“What kind of question is that?” Raoul roared, picking up Cassidy B. in a giant bear hug. He looked over Cassidy’s shoulder at Kayla-she was scrambling eggs at the stove. “The Tings are paying for your college education. Not to mention the braces you might need in a few years, not to mention a ten-speed bicycle, not to mention it looks like your doll-house could use a new roof. Do you have any idea how much it costs to reshingle these days?”
Cassidy B. put her hands over Raoul’s mouth. “Daddy!” she protested.
“You can hardly blame the kids,” Kayla said. “They never see you anymore. They miss you.”
“Well,” Raoul said, a dangerous edge to his voice, “we all decided that this was what we wanted.”
What they wanted, yes-but lately Kayla had been listing all the things that a million dollars couldn’t buy. It couldn’t buy happy, well-adjusted children; it couldn’t buy a happy marriage.
Monomoy was a breathtaking part of the island, a fitting place for a ten-million-dollar home. The Ting property had five hundred feet of waterfront with its own beach, its own dock, and sweeping views across Nantucket Harbor toward town; you could see the north and south church spires, the wharves, and the red beacon of Brant Point lighthouse. Buying a vacant lot for six million dollars set a Nantucket real estate record, but it was just a drop in the bucket for Pierre Ting, who was the scaffolding baron of Hong Kong. Most year-round islanders were unhappy about the best pieces of Nantucket being snapped up by ultra-wealthy people who didn’t appreciate Nantucket and would only spend a few weeks a year on-island. Raoul had caught a lot of flak from his fellow builders and the antidevelopment people for agreeing to build the Ting house, or “the cathedral,” as everyone called it. Raoul didn’t back down. “They’re jealous,” he said. “They’d do it themselves in a heartbeat.”
Kayla pulled into the quarter acre of dirt that had been cleared for a driveway, next to five pickup trucks, although Raoul’s truck wasn’t among them. Her spirits sagged until she remembered that Raoul sometimes let his crew borrow his truck to run to Marine Home Center, or to Henry Jr.’s for sandwiches. So she got out of the car. There was a huge yellow Dumpster, and boards, tool belts, and empty soda cans lying around. A boom box blasted her son Theo’s favorite band, The Beastie Boys. Kayla weaved her way toward the house. She was proud of Raoul’s design, although a small, secret part of her agreed with the islanders who found it ostentatious. Raoul had taken her on a tour after the framing was done. The entryway of the house had a wonderfully airy, spacious feel, with enough height to plant a tree, which was what the Tings intended to do-plant a Japanese cherry tree that would weep its fuchsia blossoms all over the marble floor. One moved into the formal living room, the formal dining room with built-in china cabinets, the gourmet kitchen featuring three islands to be topped in pink granite, the walk-in pantry, the den shelved for TV, DVD, and five hundred-CD changer, the atrium where the indoor pool would go. Up a huge, curved staircase were the five guest rooms, the children’s playroom, the master bedroom suite including his and her bathrooms, a study, a sitting room, and four walk-in closets (one just for Elisabeth Ting’s summer shoes). Outside, the house had eleven decks and nine hundred square feet of patio that led to the outdoor pool, the hot tub, and the beach.
It was Raoul’s most challenging design; already, Architectural Digest had called, wanting to feature the house the minute it was complete. But today it was still just plasterboard walls and plywood floors covered with shavings. It smelled wonderful, like fresh lumber, newly planed boards. It was Raoul’s smell, and Kayla loved it better than anything. Looking out the living room window at Nantucket Sound, she breathed in the fragrant wood and decided that maybe the house wasn’t so preposterous after all. Before they knew it, there would be another house on the island dwarfing this one.