Chapter 8: The Grange Hall

The grange hall held two hundred people on folding chairs.

By seven on Thursday there were three hundred, and the rest stood along the walls in their work jackets.

I'd never seen it that full. Not for a funeral, not for the Christmas fair.

Sawyer wasn't there.

He'd taken the noon ferry to Portland for a fuel pump the Hen needed, and the last boat back had been cancelled for wind.

"You'll be fine," he'd said on the phone. "Just don't throw a chair."

"No promises."

Kit sat beside me in a wool hat, sketchbook on her knee. Sawyer's grandmother sat on my other side with her purse in her lap.

The mechanic stood at the back with his arms folded.

Up front, the Delano people had set up a screen.

On it was the island, seen from a drone at sunset. Then the island with the airstrip gone.

In its place: thirty white villas, a golf green running down to the water, and a round helipad with a gold D painted in the middle.

The room went murmury.

Pierce stepped up to the microphone in a gray sweater and jeans.

I'd never once seen him in jeans. He looked like a catalogue.

"I know a lot of you know me as the guy who bought the old inn," he said. "I want you to know me as a neighbor."

He was good.

He talked about the empty storefronts on Harbor Road. About kids moving to Portland because there's no work.

"One hundred and forty jobs," he said. "Year-round. Housekeeping, kitchens, grounds, maintenance. With health insurance."

A few people clapped.

"And I know what you're thinking. What about the plane? What about emergencies?"

He clicked to the next slide.

The black Delano helicopter, gleaming on the inn lawn.

"Free emergency flights for every island resident, forever. Fifty minutes to Boston. Any weather the pilots will fly in."

More people clapped. Louder.

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