The Cousins

Four days following their arrival on Gull Cove Island, Aubrey and Milly have heard almost nothing from Mildred, except for a brief note saying that she has “been called away to Boston on business” (97). Milly tells Aubrey about her suspicion that Mildred didn’t know they were coming. Mildred’s lawyer, Donald Camden, invites Jonah, Milly, and Aubrey to have lunch with him. Aubrey’s boyfriend, Thomas, hasn’t been texting her since she left home. Her mother will be staying with her sister for a while, and her father is only texting her to ask about Mildred. As their driver takes them to the restaurant, he points out Cutty Beach, which Aubrey asks to see. Aubrey explains that her father’s novel talks about Cutter Beach and how “that’s where it all started to go wrong” (106). At lunch, Donald tells the cousins that Mildred is too delicate to overexert herself by hosting them for the summer. He offers to get them new jobs working on a movie set in Boston so they won’t be a burden to their grandmother. Milly drags Aubrey to the bathroom and points out that this “feels like a bribe” (112) and that Donald seems to be trying to get rid of them. She says they shouldn’t trust him because he was the one who sent the infamous “You know what you did” message that shut out Mildred’s children. 

In the days following their meeting with Donald, Jonah sits at the bar of the Gull Cove Resort. Mildred “still hasn’t bothered to grace [them] with her presence” (115), and as he talks to the bartender, Chaz, Jonah orders shrimp linguine. Milly joins him, and they watch as the television news reports a financial scandal. Milly tries to bring up Jonah’s dad, Anders, alluding to the news article that called him the “Bernie Madoff of Rhode Island” (118). Jonah avoids the discussion when Chaz changes the channel, and Milly shows Jonah the envelope she just received from Donald, urging them to reconsider his offer to leave Gull Cove Island and take the jobs on the movie set because “the terms of employment are more generous than [he] realized” (119). Jonah is tempted by the exorbitant amount of money, which is three times what he would make working at Gull Cove Resort for the summer. Brittany, one of the other Towhees (or high school summer workers), delivers Jonah’s food and invites him to join some of the Towhees at one of the beach hangouts: a restaurant called Dunes. Jonah starts to eat his shrimp linguine, to Milly’s disbelief. Milly and Jonah meet up with Aubrey and Jonah’s roommate, and they play a game of pool. To everyone’s surprise, Jonah is an excellent pool player, but while he is distracted, Milly steals his wallet from his back pocket. When the game ends, she drags him outside and confronts him: she knows that his real name is Jonah North, and she demands to know “why [he’s] pretending to be [her] cousin” (131).

Milly remembers how her cousin ate a bacon-wrapped shrimp when they were kids and had a severe allergic reaction. Jonah “polishing off an entire plate of shrimp linguine” (132) with no reaction confirmed her suspicions that he wasn’t really her cousin. Jonah North explains that he goes to school with Jonah Story, and the two struck a deal: Jonah Story would go to science camp as he planned, and he would “pay [Jonah North] to go to Gull Cove Island in his place and not tell anyone” (136-137). He swears Milly to secrecy because if anyone finds out he’s a fraud, JT—his nickname for Jonah Story—won’t pay him what he is owed. The next night, Milly has told Aubrey about Jonah’s secret but no one else. Milly asks the summer hire coordinator, Carson, if he has any contact information for Edward Franklin, who was supposed to be their coordinator for the summer. Another employee suggests talking to the bartender, Chaz. He and Edward used to date, and he would know how to get in contact with him. Carson introduces Milly to Theresa, her grandmother’s faithful assistant, who extends an invitation from Mildred: “She’ll be back on the island soon, and she want[s] to have the three [cousins] over to Catmint House for brunch” (145). She also invites Milly and her cousins to the Summer Gala as her special guests. Theresa encourages Milly and her cousins to “shop at any of the island’s boutiques and charge your purchases to the Story account” (148), which excites Milly and reminds her of her childhood fantasy of going on a shopping spree with her grandmother.