“You should be sent to the outhouse,” Dru-Ann says, “for wearing that hat.” A smile breaks across her face. “Just kidding. Holly knows I prefer my own space.”
“The Twist is not an outhouse,” Hollis says. “The cottage has a Peloton, an espresso machine, and a bottle of tequila on the kitchen table just for you.”
“All righty, then,” Dru-Ann says. “I’ll see you Monday.” She grabs her luggage, steps outside, and closes the door behind her.
“Can I get you a drink?” Hollis asks Brooke. She takes a good look at Brooke’s outfit. The hat is overkill; she looks like she belongs in a Mary Cassatt painting. “A glass of rosé?”
“Just water, please,” she says. “I’ve already had two glasses of rosé and I’m feeling it.”
“Did you drink on the boat?” Hollis asks.
Brooke opens her mouth, but no sound comes out.
“There’s no reason to be ashamed if you did,” Hollis says. “This weekend is about kicking back.”
“The past couple of days have been awful for me,” Brooke says. “But I’ll tell you about it another time. It’s not an appropriate topic for the Five-Star Weekend.”
Hollis takes a beat. It’s true—she isn’t prepared to take on any Brooke-drama right now.
Hollis hasn’t heard from Gigi Ling about when or how she’ll be arriving. She texted Gigi the itinerary and the address and received a thumbs-up emoji. If she wasn’t coming, she would have let Hollis know. Right?
“Let me show you to your room,” Hollis says.
But before Hollis takes Brooke to her room, she gives her a tour of First Light. The interior design is so good, it’s like a drug. The deep blue half-moon sofa and the kelly-green club chairs in the living room are the perfect pops of color against all the white. Through the glass doors opposite the sofa, Brooke can see a pond with a footbridge and, beyond that, a stretch of golden sand and the ocean.
They head down the hallway. “This wing has two guest suites,” Hollis says, and Brooke thinks: Wing? Suites? “I have you in the Board Room.”
It’s like stepping right into Instagram. The wallpaper reminds Brooke of a man’s tailored shirt with classic navy, light blue, and subdued gray pinstripes. (Pinstriped wallpaper, who thinks of that? And is this why Hollis calls it the Board Room?) There’s a walnut pencil-post bed dressed up in crisp white sheets and a navy plaid quilt with an arrangement of pillows in blue stripes and florals. At the end of the bed is a rattan bench upholstered in blue ikat; the rattan is echoed in the curvy chandelier and the woven shades on the windows opposite the bed. Over the bed is a line of small-scale surf landscapes, and on the antique writing desk that serves as a nightstand are a blue glass vase bursting with cosmos (Brooke’s favorite flower) and the new issues of Martha Stewart Living and O magazine. (These will find their way into Brooke’s duffel; she’s known at her dentist’s and gynecologist’s offices for stealing magazines.)
Brooke removes her straw hat and immediately cools down. This room is the most gorgeous one she has ever set foot in; it makes her bedroom back in Wellesley—which she was feeling so proud of only yesterday—seem like a child’s art project.
It’s going to take all weekend for Brooke to process this room—the textures and layering of patterns—and figure out how and why it works. She keeps noticing things: the water carafe next to a navy-blue ceramic jug lamp on the side table, an area rug in wide navy-and light-blue stripes, the navy gingham cushion on the desk chair.
“You have your own bathroom,” Hollis says. “But between you and me, the outdoor shower is the best in the house.”
Brooke pokes her head into the bathroom. It’s an explosion of fun color, starting with orange and turquoise wallpaper printed with surfboards—that’s why they call it the Board Room—and an oval mirror bordered with white coral; on either side of the mirror is a little tiki lamp.
Brooke turns to Hollis. “I feel very honored to be staying here and… humbled to be chosen for this weekend.” She blinks rapidly. “I want you to know how much I value our friendship and everything you’ve done for me—”
Hollis can see Brooke getting emo, but at that moment, Hollis’s phone starts buzzing in her pocket. This must be Gigi, she thinks. She’s here. She came.
To Brooke, Hollis says, “Get settled, then come join us in the kitchen.”
Brooke opens her mouth to speak but Hollis doesn’t have time for any more Lifetime-movie moments so she leaves the room and shuts the door with a definitive click. She checks her phone.
It’s not Gigi. It’s Tatum. I’m here, the text says. Come out to the driveway. I have a surprise.
Caroline hears voices in the kitchen—Dru-Ann and Brooke. This is the five-star “arrival” that Caroline should be filming, not only because her mother is paying her to do that but also because Hollis’s subscribers will want to see it.
The whole thing is one giant eye-roll emoji.
But… some complications are developing. Her mother’s relationship with Tatum is intriguing because of the whole local/summer person dynamic. Dru-Ann is apparently being canceled. Brooke will be socially awkward, as always. And at some point, the mystery woman will show up: Gigi Ling. Her name holds promise; it rolls musically off the tongue. Bring it, Gigi Ling! Caroline thinks. Please don’t be a dud.
Caroline carries Isaac’s camera—he asked her to hold it like a literal baby—outside, where a Honda Pilot has pulled into the driveway. Caroline sees a man and woman in the front and a shadowy third figure in the back seat.
Caroline hears Isaac’s voice: Observe.
Something is happening right in front of her.
Caroline focuses her camera on the woman emerging from the Pilot’s passenger side. Caroline thinks, Well, that’s where Dylan gets his looks. Tatum is tall and slender and has long, dark, movie-star hair. She’s dressed in cutoff jeans and a navy-blue Whalers Lacrosse T-shirt. Tatum and Hollis hug—Caroline can’t help noticing that Tatum looks ten years younger than her mother—and then a burly guy with a seventies porn ’stache gets out of the driver’s side and Hollis says, “Hey, Kyle.” Caroline zooms in on her mother and Kyle McKenzie as they hug and rock back and forth. “It is so great to see you,” Hollis says. “Thank you for driving our girl all the way out here. I’ll take good care of her, I promise.”
Kyle says, “Someone wants to say hello.”
At that moment, the back door of the Pilot opens and a bald guy with a silver goatee gets out. He’s pretty cute for a dad type and, wow, is he laser-focused on Hollis. Caroline turns the camera on her mother just in time to catch the shock on her face. This is an ambush of some kind, Caroline can see that, but who is this dude?
He steps forward, saying, “Hey, Halle Berry.” (Caroline will only realize when she views the footage later that he says “Holly berry,” not “Halle Berry.”) And Hollis whispers, “Jack?” like she’s a character in a period drama whose lover, reportedly killed in battle, has returned. They walk toward each other—but stop when they’re about a foot apart.
Caroline holds her breath. What is her mother doing right now?
Jack extends his arms. “Come here.”
And Hollis goes to him.
Caroline lowers the camera. She doesn’t want to be the daughter who becomes indignant and jealous when her mother has a “moment” with somebody she used to know—but too bad, she is that daughter. Her face flushes, and she kind of wants to scream.
But she knows what Isaac would say: She should have stayed and gotten the shot. Conflict equals content. That dude, whoever he is, is a chink in the armor.
Jack Finigan, Hollis thinks once she’s in his arms. She sees ghosts of him whenever she passes Nantucket High School or drives out to Great Point; she sees him every time she’s at the Boat Basin because he and Kyle spent their summers working as first mates on fishing charters while Hollis and Tatum waited tables at the Rope Walk. They would all meet up after work, the boys with a couple of striped bass collars and the girls with the night’s leftover lobsters and a six-pack of Pabst, and they would head out to Fortieth Pole in Kyle’s beater CJ-7 and cook everything over a fire as they listened to Billy Joel on the Jeep’s tape deck. My sweet romantic teenage nights!
Hollis and Jack had been each other’s first everything; they had grown up together. Jack Finigan taught Hollis how to love.
She’d seen him once from afar on Main Street a bunch of years ago. It was around then that she began stalking the poor man on Facebook.
“I’m sorry about your husband,” he murmurs into her hair.
She takes a breath and pulls away. She’s aware they have an audience, one of whom is her daughter with a video camera. Jack’s arrival is very off brand for the Five-Star Weekend, which is supposed to be about her relationships with women.
Jack is a star of another kind.
“There’s too much…” she says. “Can we talk later?”