Swan Song

The narrative flashes back to the past.

Leslee discovers her ruined car and screams in anger, sure it was Delilah. She takes Coco’s car to pickleball instead. This time, when Leslee falsely claims that Andrea volleyed from the kitchen, Delilah overrules her. Leslee counters that Delilah vandalized the car. In response, Delilah fumes over Leslee reneging on the donation promise. Unfazed, Leslee walks away asserting that she will send Delilah the bill for her car cleaning. While Phoebe is confused, Andrea expresses her solidarity with Delilah.

Kacy meets Stacy Ambrose at the Burgee Bar and is taken by how cool Stacy is. The date is going well, but is interrupted by repeated calls from Isla, who is distraught that Rondo has been having an affair with Tami, Dr. Dunne’s wife, for the past 18 months—the whole time Kacy and Isla were together. Kacy regretfully steps away from her date with Stacy to talk to Isla.

When Coco goes out grocery shopping for the Richardsons, their credit card is declined at multiple places. She returns home to find Leslee writing multiple checks. Leslee takes pictures of two checks, tears them up, and heads out to deliver the third one to Benton Coe, claiming she needs to get it to him before he sues her.

The next day, Benton Coe and his crew work on the garden. The hot tub is done in record time. As soon as it is complete, Leslee gives Coco just a few invitations to hand-deliver to Sharon, Romeo, Eddie and Grace, the Wheelers, the Kapenashes, Busy Ambrose, and Benton Coe. Andrea Kapenash, who wants to support Delilah, stays home and sends Ed to the party alone. Sharon and Benton walk in together so Benton can escape Leslee’s clutches.

At the party, Eddie overhears Bull trying to convince Addison to cut Eddie out of the deal so they can split the profit just two ways. Addison declines, staying loyal to Eddie, and reiterating that Eddie is right about the local contractors.

Leslee invites everyone into the hot tub. Romeo, who has been growing increasingly jealous of Benton sticking to Sharon all night, abruptly asks her to leave with him, and she immediately agrees. Ed, who is slightly drunk, is suddenly jolted out of his haze when he feels Leslee’s hand on his thigh. He heads out too, asking Andrea to come pick him up as soon as she can.

The narrative flashes forward to the present.

Kacy slips away to look around in Coco’s apartment for clues. She finds Coco’s notebook of her tasks and duties. However, the last page carries a diagram titled “The Personal Concierge” (316) with Bull, Leslee, Lamont, and Kacy’s names scribbled around it. Kacy pockets the notebook and discovers that the second bedroom is filled with cardboard boxes of Leslee’s clothes and shoes. She remembers Coco’s notebook listing a drop-off at a thrift shop for the following day.

The narrative flashes back to the past.

The Field and Oar membership committee meets to vote on new members. With six slots open, five legacy couples are unanimously voted in before the group has to decide on the Richardsons. They need a two-thirds majority—six out of nine votes—to be admitted. Five committee members vote yes, and two vote no. Phoebe initially abstains, leaving the deciding vote down to Sharon, who votes no. Phoebe then also votes no and asks Sharon to be her fourth in pickleball. Sharon delightedly accepts.

Andrea plans Ed’s retirement dinner and asks Kacy if she’d like to bring Coco. Coco is unsure about coming. Kacy wonders if she should bring Isla as her plus-one; however, Isla only wants to come to Nantucket because Rondo has left her, and Kacy realizes she deserves better. Kacy texts Isla not to come and declines her phone calls.

After Phoebe votes against the Richardsons to join Field and Oar, Bull meets with Eddie and this time suggests they cut Addison out of the deal. He is disappointed in the Wheelers’ actions despite the Richardsons making a donation to the elite boarding school where the Wheelers’ son wants to go. Eddie refuses Bull’s offer and sticks by Addison, revealing he overheard Bull tell Addison the same thing at the party. Bull pulls out of the deal entirely.

Coco returns home after a grocery run to find Leslee screaming and crying for Bull. Bull goes to pacify her, and later tells Coco Leslee is upset because she didn’t get into Field and Oar.

Leslee stays in her room for days while Bull leaves on another work trip. Coco finally lures Leslee out with a meal of fresh eggs, bread, and bacon. After Leslee eats, she tells Coco about Phoebe voting against her. Leslee told Phoebe that she’d sent a donation to the boarding school, but Coco remembers Leslee taking pictures of checks before tearing them up. Leslee and Bull have not been accepted anywhere because of their inauthenticity and Leslee’s inappropriate behavior.

Leslee reveals that Bull is in financial trouble: The IRS is after him for millions in unpaid taxes, and Indonesia’s new environmental regulations will make it impossible for him to keep doing business there. Leslee, feeling a sudden closeness to Coco, takes her out to lunch. In the washroom of the restaurant, a woman named Blythe Buchanan warns Coco about the Richardsons. Blythe befriended them at Palm Beach the previous winter, and even tried to get them into the Bath and Tennis Club; however, Leslee behaved inappropriately with other women’s husbands there, causing the Richardsons to get shut out.

Leslee takes Coco out with her to several places over the next couple of days, everywhere introducing herself to groups of new people. As they are driving back from a pedicure, Coco gets Kacy’s text about Ed’s dinner. She asks Leslee if she can attend. Furious and insulted that Coco has been invited when she and Bull haven’t, Leslee speeds down the road to Coco’s terror, before slamming the brakes at the last minute. She forbids Coco to go, and hatches a plan to throw a sunset sail will be that same day where she and Bull will renew their vows. Coco texts Kacy that she can’t come and that Leslee almost killed her when she asked.

The narrative returns to the present.

Ed and Kacy finally get home and fill in a worried Andrea. Coco has still not been found. As he gets into bed, Ed wonders if he is just imagining the tingling in his left arm. A part of him thinks that Coco set the fire and ran away, and he hopes she gets away with it.

The narrative flashes back to the past.

Coco and Lamont, lying awake together in bed, are startled when Leslee unexpectedly arrives at the apartment. Lamont pulls his clothes on and hides in the bedroom while Coco steps out. Leslee hands over boxes of clothes and shoes to be donated on Friday.

On her way out, Leslee spots Lamont’s shoes by the door and insults both Coco and Lamont. She calls Coco a pejorative word that mocks her working class background, and claims that she only hired Lamont and Coco to appear “woke.” However, she leaves without firing Coco.

Coco is furious, even as Lamont tries to calm her down. Revenge against the Richardsons has been festering in her mind for a while now.

Romeo takes Sharon out to karaoke and confesses his love. They spend the night together at Sharon’s. In the morning, she wakes up to numerous missed calls from friends and is shocked to learn the news about Triple Eight and Coco.

The narrative flashes to the moment immediately after the vow renewal on the Richardsons’ boat, as the past and present timeframes sync up.

Coco hits the water and struggles with the current before discarding her clothes and swimming as best as she can toward Whale Island. She remembers Bull telling her, “There is no story here” (350), about her screenplay. However, she knows he is wrong.

Ed wakes Kacy with the news that Coco has been found, alive, on Tuckernuck. She has been admitted to the hospital and treated for dehydration.

When Zara and Ed question her, she remembers standing by the boat’s back gate, taking a picture of the sunset, and then hitting the water. She also discloses that Leslee was the last one to leave Triple Eight before the sailing party. Coco is genuinely shocked to learn about the fire; Leslee usually has Coco disarm fire alarms before parties, but not that night.

Ed and Zara wonder why all of Leslee’s to-be-donated clothes were spared and opine that she committed arson. On the way out of the hospital, Ed catches the silver Range Rover speeding again. He finally pulls the young man over and gives him the maximum fine. With great satisfaction, Ed tells Zara, “Now that was a swan song” (356).

Details of what really happened finally emerge. The fire was started by a curling iron left in the bedroom, but the police suspect the use of an accelerant. Upon searching Hedonism, they discover cardboard boxes marked for donation that Leslee smuggled out of Coco’s apartment. Instead of old clothes, they contain $500,000 in cash. Leslee confesses to arson: She switched off the alarms, left the curling iron on in a box of packing straw, and strewed perfume-soaked rags around the house for the fire to catch and spread. With Bull’s business failing, Leslee wanted to secure insurance money. The cash in the cardboard boxes is the result of Leslee skimming their accounts as backup. Leslee receives a two-and-a-half year prison sentence.

Coco writes a screenplay, titled The Personal Concierge, featuring the events of the summer. She sends it to producers whose contact info she obtained from Bull’s email account using his password. After a bidding war, the screenplay is bought for a seven-figure sum and made into a movie that becomes a massive success. Months before she is to be released from prison, Leslee arranges a screening of the movie for fellow inmates, thrilled that it is about her.

Leslee remembers how Coco really fell into the water: When news broke of the fire, Leslee slipped away to smoke and collect herself before pretending to be distraught. She saw Coco against the back gate, and just as she was considering pushing her into the water to frame her, Coco dove in. Leslee wonders if Coco did it for revenge: The Richardsons were ruined, while Coco got her big break.

Kacy decides to stay in Nantucket, takes a job as a labor and delivery nurse at the local hospital, and begins dating Stacy. Eric and Avalon announce they are expecting a baby in April. Eddie and Addison apply for a loan to develop the property as planned. Lamont’s mother Glynnie moves into a home with her friends, leaving Lamont free to move to Los Angeles with Coco. Busy Ambrose tells everyone that the Richardsons never paid the $75,000 they promised to the elite boarding school, even though Leslee sent her a picture of the check. The story Sharon writes in her creative writing class about her romance with Romeo is published in an online literary magazine, and she receives $1,500 for it.

All of Nantucket shows up for Ed’s final retirement party, appreciating him for 35 years of service. Afterwards, Ed walks down the boardwalk and watches the sunset. His face goes numb and his chest is tight. Suddenly, he is transported back to different, important moments in his life, starting with his wedding. In the background, he can hear Andrea, Kacy, and Eric shouting for medics, asking him to stay with them, and telling him they love him. Ed then flashes forward in time to watch the birth of his grandson, whom Eric and Avalon name Edward. Ed muses that his life “seems like nothing short of a miracle: He found a home on this island, thirty miles out to sea. Nantucket” (370).