Hannah bit down on her lower lip and told herself to be brave. Natalie was in deep conversation with a woman who looked almost identical to her, down to the center part in her hair. She knew, in her gut, that Natalie wouldn’t be receptive to questions about the Legacy Club.
So she forced herself to ask Jim, “Do you know anything about a sort of secret club from Nantucket?”
Jim laughed. “Like the sailing club? The country club?”
Hannah shook her head. “I don’t think so. They call themselves the Legacy Club?”
Jim’s face grew shadowed and drawn. Slowly, he got to his feet, as though she repulsed him. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.
Hannah could tell that he was lying. He had no interest in delving into the truth. “Are you sure? Because I have a feeling…”
“Natalie mentioned that you used to be an investigative journalist,” Jim said. “Maybe I can hook you up with a few of my contacts in the city? They’re always looking for fresh angles.”
“Are they looking for fresh angles on the Legacy Club?” Hannah asked, feeling like a cat playing with a mouse.
“No! Like I said, that doesn’t exist,” he said. And then he repeated himself yet again. “Nothing like that exists. Really. I wouldn’t lie to you. But maybe you could cover, I don’t know. Corruption and fraud in the city. Elections. Political uprisings? I don’t know. Whatever it is you journalists like to write about.” He tried to laugh. “To be honest, I haven’t picked up a newspaper in ten years. Haven’t needed to.”
“The money keeps coming in regardless of what’s happening in the rest of the world, huh?” Hannah said icily, crossing her arms over her chest. If she were a woman who made bets, she would have put down a lot of cash on Jim making money in a Kendall-adjacent way. Meaning he probably didn’t earn everything he had and took whatever he could and expected not to get caught.
But Hannah had no interest in cornering him. Not today.
“I mean, like I said, I’m a single dad,” he said.
Hannah wanted to roll her eyes. She wanted to ask him how many nannies he had working for him. She wanted to ask who cleaned his house.
All at once, Natalie appeared over the table, her brow furrowed. “Everything okay over here?”
Hannah got up abruptly. “We were talking about the Legacy Club,” she said.
Natalie blinked and blinked, as though trying to decide how to acknowledge this. “As far as I understand it,” she said, “they’re a sinister group of people who don’t have the best interests of this island in mind.”
Jim let his jaw hang.
“Isn’t that right, Jim?” Natalie asked.
Jim seemed unsure what to say. He threw his hands up. “That’s my cue,” he said, before kissing Natalie’s cheek and telling her he had a wonderful time. He was away from the table and off the veranda in less than five seconds, leaving Hannah and Natalie in a face-off.
Hannah’s stomach thrashed. Natalie looked more confused than ever, but her confusion was tinged with anger. Hannah knew she felt that Hannah had messed up her party. But she couldn’t say how or why.
“So you and Jim?” Natalie began.
“He seems great,” Hannah lied. “Give him my number, maybe?”
Natalie nodded in a way that suggested she wouldn’t. “Thanks for coming by, Hannah,” she said. Her voice was like a string.
Hannah hurried out of there, jumped in her car, and drove in no direction in particular, her heart in her throat. She smashed her hand against the steering wheel, letting out a yelp. Natalie had done it: she’d confirmed the existence of the Legacy Club. Beautiful, wonderful Natalie. She’d messed up Jim’s commitment not to say a thing.
But why was Jim so cagey about the club? Why didn’t anyone want to talk about it?
Eventually, Hannah wound her way to the harbor, where she parked not far from the burger restaurant she knew that Minnie and Viggo had gone to earlier. She was hungry but too fidgety to sit down anywhere, so she roamed the boardwalk, her hands in her pockets, people-watching. The temperature had dropped to the low sixties, which felt refreshing and cleared her mind.
All she could think about was the Legacy Club. Was it possible that she’d stepped right into one of the more interesting stories of her career, all by chance?
Did she deserve that kind of luck?
She imagined cracking the code of the Legacy Club (something that felt like a given, as she knew how to follow stories and make people talk). She imagined writing the article and selling it to the highest bidder.The New York Times?The Washington Post?The Times? She’d be interviewed on major news channels. Maybe she’d get a prestigious position at a newspaper somewhere. They’d sell the crummy beach house and be done with this place.
Minnie would hate her for taking her away from Viggo, that was true. Hannah’s heart sank at that.
