The Hotel Nantucket

This chapter is written in the first-person plural voice of the gossipy Nantucket residents. They are astounded that London billionaire Xavier Darling is renovating and reopening The Hotel Nantucket, a place that seems “beyond saving” because it’s haunted. Lizbet Keaton will become The Hotel Nantucket’s general manager. Lizbet has recently broken up with her boyfriend of 15 years, JJ O’Malley. They worked together at the Deck, a restaurant where JJ was a chef and Lizbet the publicist and creative director, and they broke up after Lizbet found sexts between JJ and the restaurant’s wine representative, Christina Cross. Lizbet worked at the Deck for 15 seasons, ever since she first arrived on Nantucket from Minnesota.

A 94-year-old man, Mint Benedict, is the son of the hotel’s former owner, Jackson Benedict. He was at the hotel from 1910-1922 and maintains that the renovation is doomed because the place is haunted, and he believes it is his father’s fault.

Lizbet Keaton is keen to start a new life since her old one with JJ ended dramatically. At the Deck’s annual end-of-summer party for seasonal staff, Lizbet went to take the group picture and discovered pornographic and sexually-explicit text messages between JJ and wine representative Christiana Cross.