“Sticky buns give me joy, Jane,” Evan said. “Do you want to deny me joy?”
Slowly, I relaxed, until I was laughing with the rest, laughing and teasing and feeling like a member of the group, and happy, for the first time all day, to be here.
“So you study architecture,” I said to Pranav later, once I’d reached the bottom of my Solo cup. “Do you know about the houses on the island?”
Pranav shrugged. Inane to think he was fancy because he had anaccent to die for, but I wasn’t evolved enough to think otherwise yet. “The important ones.”
Lexi rolled her eyes. “You’re so pretentious.”
I plunged onward. “Have you heard of Golden Doors?”
“Yeah. It’s a great example of Federal architecture. Gorgeous. Built in the mid-1800s, before all the rules.”
“Rules?”
“Height limits and materials and stuff,” Pranav said. “The entire island’s a National Historic Landmark District, but Golden Doors was built way before then.”
“The Barbanels are one of the super-wealthy island families,” Jane told me. “Actual islanders, not like the recent blow-ins. They’re also Portuguese! Sort of.”
I cocked my head.
“I mean, they’re Jewish. But a Portuguese sort of Jewish.”
My attention sharpened. I hadn’t realized the Barbanels were Jewish; I wouldn’t have expected a Jewish family to summer on Nantucket. Though what did I know of the extraordinarily wealthy? They could summer wherever they wanted. As for Portuguese—“Sephardic?”
“What?”
“Oh. It’s what you call Jews from Spain or Portugal.” Though they’d been kicked out during the Inquisition. My own family was Ashkenazi—descended from Jews who’d settled in France and Germany around the eleventh century.
“Cool.” Jane turned a high-wattage smile back on Pranav. “Pranav’s right, their house is stunning. They open it up for tours once or twice a year.”
Lexi nodded. “I actually have a gig there tomorrow.”
I swiveled in her direction. “What kind of gig?”
“Catering. They’re having a ‘start of summer’ party.” She shook her head at Evan. “Rich people are weird.”
“I plead the fifth.”
“Do any of you know them?” I asked the group. “Edward Barbanel and his family?”
Jane gave me an odd look, and I realized the others were, too. I’d come off too intense. “Why so interested?” my new roommate asked.
Evan smirked. “Noah?”
I hesitated. I didn’t know these people. They might think it was super weird, me coming to Nantucket to dig into my grandmother’s connection with the Barbanels. Also, a large part of me wanted to hold the reason close, like a dragon guarding its hoard. To change the subject by saying,Who’s Noah?
But how would I find out anything if I didn’t talk to people? What kind of historian didn’t do interviews? “I think my grandmother visited Golden Doors decades ago. She died recently and we don’t know much about her past, so I’m trying to find out more.”
“Did she know the Barbanels?” Evan asked.
“I’m not sure. I think—” I hesitated. “I think she knew Edward. They wrote letters.”
“What kind of letters?” Jane asked.
Pranav smirked. “Love letters?”
I looked at my feet.
