A text comes in from Hollis: Hi, just checking in. What’s your ETA?
Gigi promptly orders a second bloody mary. She has always been fascinated by airport drinkers. It’s as though the rules of polite society fly out the window when people see an airport bar. Six o’clock in the morning? Great time for a beer and a shot. The woman sitting next to Gigi has ordered a plate of French fries and an entire bottle of champagne just for herself. Not all superheroes wear capes, Gigi thinks. She finishes her drink and pays the check. By the time she gets back to the Cape Air gate, there’s a second text from Hollis with the address of the house. Call me if the cabdriver can’t find it! Hollis adds.
In the days following Matthew’s death, Gigi waited for an e-mail or a phone call. She pictured Hollis going through Matthew’s desk drawers and finding something that gave her pause—the strip of pictures from the photo booth at the wedding Gigi and Matthew crashed in Baltimore when Matthew was lecturing at Johns Hopkins or the handwritten menu they saved from lunch at Bouchon. Matthew had assured Gigi he was careful; as a surgeon, he knew how to keep things sterile.
A week after Matthew’s passing, when Gigi’s sadness was festering like something infected, she had an epiphany: The only person who understood how she was feeling was Hollis. There were thousands upon thousands of condolences posted on the Hungry with Hollis Corkboard, so Gigi went straight to Hollis’s DMs. I’m here to listen, she wrote, and she added her cell phone number. That very night, there was a text: Hi, Gigi, it’s Hollis. I’m sorry to bother you.
Gigi responds immediately: Not a bother. I’m here. How are you doing?
In this way, a friendship was born.
But, Gigi thinks now as they call the 3:25 flight, it’s a friendship built on a massive deception. Gigi stays in her seat as the other eight passengers line up to board, then as her name is called over the loudspeaker. She whips out her phone and checks flights back to Atlanta—there’s a direct at eight o’clock. She thinks about just staying in Boston; she loves the hotel Fifteen Beacon. Or she could hop over to Martha’s Vineyard.
A third text comes in from Hollis. Is everything okay?
Gigi’s fingers hover over her screen. She types, but doesn’t send, Sorry, something came up. My conscience, as it turns out, she thinks. She should never have agreed to come in the first place; it was positively psychotic.
Except, Gigi thinks, she wants to go. She wants to meet Hollis in real life; she wants to see the house; she wants to hear the stories (does she want to hear the stories?). If it gets weird or uncomfortable, she can leave.
She approaches the desk. So sorry, she missed the 3:25, is it possible to get the next flight, the 4:40?
The 4:40 is sold out, the gate agent, Bonnie, tells her in a tone that’s on the corner of unfriendly and impatient (but Gigi has sympathy; a gate agent’s job is frustrating). Ditto the 5:15, Bonnie adds, and ditto the 6:05. “I’m sorry,” Bonnie says. “It’s a Friday in July.”
Gigi’s heart sinks. Back to Atlanta, then?
“I do have one seat left on the six-fifty flight, arriving Nantucket at seven forty,” Bonnie says.
“Yes,” Gigi says. “I’ll take it.”
“Are you sure you’re not going to ‘miss’ it again?” Bonnie says, using air quotes. “I saw you sit through our announcement, you know.”
Oops, Gigi thinks. Busted. “If I told you why I didn’t get on the three-twenty-five, you wouldn’t believe it. But yes, I’m sure.”
Bonnie lets a fraction of a smile slip. “That’s all I need to know.”
16. Happy Hour II
Hollis opens the wine that Tatum brought as a hostess gift and pours two glasses, one for herself and one for Tatum. Dru-Ann picks up the bottle and scrapes the price tag off with her fingernail.
“Twelve ninety-five,” she murmurs. “Classy.”
“Dru-Ann, shh!” Hollis hisses. Back when Hollis and Matthew got engaged and then married, there was all kinds of friction between Tatum and Dru-Ann. That’s ancient history, but—as Hollis knows only too well—no one holds a grudge like Tatum McKenzie. “Tatum brought me this wine because it’s one of my favorites.”
“If you say so,” Dru-Ann says.
“Sorry it’s not a Montrachet,” Tatum says. “I finished that bottle this afternoon.”
Touché, Dru-Ann thinks.
Brooke reaches for the bottle of Whispering Angel rosé resting in the ice bucket. Her hostess gift is an ocean-breeze-scented candle, but now that Brooke has seen the relaxed elegance of Hollis’s home, she worries the candle is down-market, maybe even cheesy (what does an “ocean breeze” smell like, anyway?), and because Brooke bought it on sale at the Christmas Tree Shop, it cost even less than twelve ninety-five.
Hollis wants to raise her glass for a toast—she wants to thank everyone for putting their lives on hold and coming to spend the weekend with her—but they should really wait for Gigi.
It’s six o’clock and there’s been no word from her.
Will this end up being a four-star weekend? she wonders.
She needs to change the energy in the room. The music is, maybe, a touch too angry? Hollis presses Shuffle on Tatum’s playlist. REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Lovin’ You” floats down from the speakers. It’s suddenly the 1980s.
When Hollis sets out the cheese and charcuterie board, Brooke whips out her phone and starts taking pictures. She wants to post this on Facebook as soon as she can; she wants Electra to see what she’s missing: melty baked Brie in a golden pastry crust, thinly cut salami fashioned into flowers, tiny bowls of Marcona almonds, purple olives, and cheese straws. There are dishes of mustard and chutney, a winding river of seeded crackers, clusters of frosted grapes, plump strawberries, dried apricots—and in the center of the board, a pile of Hollis’s famously addictive bacon and rosemary pecans.
“I hope this is dinner,” Dru-Ann says. The tequila is doing its job; she feels her joints loosen. She’ll ignore the tension between herself and Tatum the same way she’s ignoring her real-life problems. She has left her phone in her bag, and her bag is on the blue silk chaise at least ten feet away.
“Send me those pictures,” Dru-Ann says to Brooke. She types her number into Brooke’s phone, then chooses the only decent photo of the food and texts it to herself. “Now you have my number, but it’s to be used only in case of emergency.”
Brooke beams like a Girl Scout who has just won the award for selling the most Thin Mints, and Dru-Ann feels herself softening. The woman can talk the face off a clock, but she’s actually kind of sweet, and would it be so bad for Dru-Ann to have an ally this weekend? “For example, if you’re at the Wellesley Country Club and you see some twelve-year-old on the tennis court serve her way to victory, you can text me. Because that could be my next client.”
“Yes!” Brooke says, raising her arms over her head in a V for victory. “I’ll text you!”
Caroline returns to the kitchen cradling Isaac’s camera. She raises it and pans around the room, focusing on one image (the champagne bottles with their bright orange labels), then another (Dru-Ann’s Balenciaga hobo bag slouching like an actual hobo on the blue silk chaise). Brooke is attached to Dru-Ann like Velcro—until Dru-Ann turns to Tatum.
“Sorry I made that crack about the price tag,” Dru-Ann says.
Tatum locks her arms across her chest and gives Dru-Ann a cool look. Caroline edges the camera closer. What have we here?
“I don’t care anymore what you think of me,” Tatum says. “If you don’t like my wine, don’t drink it.”
Don’t worry, I won’t, Dru-Ann thinks. But as she studies Tatum—the woman has barely aged, and she has great hair, though it’s maybe a little Charlie’s Angels—she remembers something that happened at Hollis’s wedding. Dru-Ann made a joke and Tatum took it the wrong way. Big-time. Dru-Ann would apologize now, but it’s probably better not to bring it up.
She rattles the ice in her glass. “I drink tequila.”
Then Dru-Ann notices the camera trained on her. She gives it the middle finger.
Despite herself, Caroline smiles. What would her mother’s fans think of that?
Tatum’s playlist segues from “I Don’t Like Mondays” by the Boomtown Rats to “Vienna” by Billy Joel.
Caroline films the four stars crowded around the cheese board as they construct perfect bites. There’s a lot of eating, a little bit of singing along: But then if you’re so smart, tell me why are you still so afraid? (This is Hollis, terribly off-key.) The only person talking is Brooke: Oh, my goodness, Hollis, you must have been pulling this together for days, these pecans are addictive, the Five-Star Weekend is such a clever idea although I couldn’t do it, I haven’t talked to anyone from high school since my mother sold our house and moved to Boca.