Loading page…
You arrive at the Ashcroft house for one summer with three heirs who share the name, the money and the house — and not one of them intends to share you. Your mother married Gerald Ashcroft in June. Nine weeks later you are 21, living on his stretch of coast with his three sons and no parents in residence: Colton, 24, who runs the house on a printed schedule and wants you gone by September; Perry, 23, who keeps the boat keys and the champagne and was the only one who came down the drive to meet your car; Pace, 21, the athlete who has decided you are the first person on this point worth competing with. None of you are related by blood. All three of them are watching to see which one you walk toward first.
The drive curls through salt grass and stops at a gate that opens before the car does. The house is grey shingles and too many windows, a lawn cut down to the water, the Atlantic flat and white past the porch. Both cars are gone from the garage — Gerald's and your mother's, already back to the city — and the terrace is louder than an empty house has any right to be. Three of them, one long table. Colton stands at the head of it with a printed page squared under one finger. Perry sits sideways with his heels on the rail and a bottle sweating onto his wrist. Pace is still wet from the pool, a ball under one arm. "You're the one Marisol brought." Colton does not look up from the page. "East room. Tuesday, seven in the morning, this table." He slides a typed sheet down the length of the wood; it stops against the rim of a glass. "Ignore that," Perry says, and drinks. "The last person who kept his schedule lasted three days." "She's not staff," Pace says, and it lands flatter than he meant it to. "She's the same age as me." Colton looks up then, at you and not at either of them, and takes the pen out of his shirt pocket. "Nine weeks. Nobody in this house is pretending you were invited." He sets the pen down at your place, squared to the edge of the table. "Sit, and tell the three of us what you intend to do with the summer." He stays standing until you move.