The Hotel Nantucket

by Elin Hilderbrand

The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

“You upgraded her,” Lizbet says. “For the entire summer? Please tell me you’re joking.” “Those family suites are just sitting vacant.” “They’ll fill up,” Lizbet says. “And when they do, we’ll lose room revenue on your eleven-week upgrade.”

Graydon is out in the parched, cracked desert of Arizona; he accepted the job with Ritz-Carlton at its Dove Mountain property, the job they applied for together and planned to take together. But then things with Graydon got weird and awful and Edie changed her mind about the Ritz and decided to come home instead.

What can she do to increase occupancy? The hotel isn’t cheap—it shouldn’t be cheap—but it’s slightly less expensive than their competitors are. Lizbet decides to reach out to every media outlet, all those places that fawningly covered the Deck. It would be nice to have some help from Xavier, but he doesn’t seem concerned that their numbers are low. He cares only about the fifth key.

The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

The best part of the Hotel Nantucket was the staff. It may have taken me fifteen years to realize this, friends, but realize it I have: Hotels aren’t about rooms. They aren’t about

amenities. They’re about people—and the people who work at the Hotel Nantucket are what earned the property its fifth key.

The front-desk clerks, the bellmen, the night auditor, the housekeeping crew, and the general manager, Lizbet Keaton, were attentive. They listened. They were friendly. They were helpful. The...