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and e-mails. “Hi! You want to parasail with J-Lo for your birthday? Great! Eighty grand!”
    The second plus of cleaning our town’s mansions, of course, are all the loony conversations you might overhear. I may be shy, but in the words of The Seashell Register , I do rejoice in a good scandal.
    To give you some examples—and these are real quotes (the names haven’t been changed, in order to incriminate the guilty):
“Darling, please. I know all about you and the child psychologist. When you come home smelling like our daughter’s Magic Markers, I know where you’ve been. I really am a househusband—except at the beach.”
“If you were so worried about your body, Madeline, you wouldn’t lie about that Cohen idiot with the gray ponytail. Does yoga include a good banging?”
“I must have passed out with her, Theodore. We’d been drinking chardonnay in the sun all afternoon. But no, I am not a lesbian.”
    And, as bad as eavesdropping is, I’ve learned a lot from it. In fact, I would say that more than 90 percent of the tourists are actually pretty cool. They’re just going through the normal family stuff…only in a different tax bracket.
    Then I met Lily-Ann Roth.
    School was over. Jade’s dad had left for San Francisco, and the party planning had begun. Turquoise was locked away all day in her dad’s bedroom, poring over obscure law journals.
    Jade and Miles were back at their usual jobs: Jade at the Jupiter Bounce for toddlers in Amusement Alley and Miles three stands down at Sonny’s Clam Shack.
    Things were good.
    The Roth’s mansion is the prime Seashell Point spot for tourists. It’s smaller than some of the others farther down the beach, but it’s the most luxurious and it’s got “location, location, location,” as in, it’s right next to the boardwalk. There’s a garden, too—a garden on the beach, encased in ahuge, climate-controlled greenhouse. I’m not kidding. You can water your roses and stare out at the ocean. It is entirely ludicrous, but somehow wonderful.
    Every bedroom has a flat-screen TV, a king-size bed, Wi-Fi, and a bathroom with a Jacuzzi. There are three Roths: Arnold, Cheryl, and Lily-Ann. That leaves three empty bedrooms—three bedrooms that don’t need to be cleaned—a perfect gig for a cleaning person: half the job, all the fun. In theory, things were about as sweet as they could get. But when I showed up at the Roths’ on my first official working day…Who answered the door?
    Mom.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked.
    “Megan! I—I suppose we could have walked here together. I was just talking with Mr. Roth,” she said in a strange, high-pitched voice.
    I hoped to God that they were not having an affair.
    Before she could go on, Lily-Ann swept into view.
    Lily-Ann looked about as sour as my mood. She gave me a quick once-over, then dug her iPhone out of her skirt and began texting someone. Her flat stomach and belly button were plainly visible under her too-small spaghetti-strap top. I have to say, though, if she had a soul (I’d assumed she didn’t), she would have been pretty. She had great tanned skin, like Jade’s, a freckled button nose, and intense blue eyes. I could see why Miles had thought she was a trophy wife. I was also trying very hard to forget about that.
    “Megan,” Mom began, “this is Lily-Ann—”
    “I know, Mom. You introduced us in your office last summer.”
    Lily-Ann’s lips were too red and narrow, like a pair of little worms. They didn’t smile or scowl; they slithered.
    Mom laughed a little too loudly. “Oh, that’s right! Anyway, I thought it would be nice if you could show her around town while Mr. Roth and I discussed some business.”
    Then Mr. Roth appeared by his daughter’s side. His belly poked out from under his shirt, too. Only his stomach wasn’t flat. The shirt looked like he’d won it at a game stand on the boardwalk—it was stained with soda and read over forty and feeling foxy. I prayed he’d just