She says, “I’m sure wherever Matthew is, he misses your cooking. He was so proud of you.” Immediately, Brooke chastises herself: What a moronic thing to say. Wherever Matthew is, what does that mean? Heaven? Hell? The ether? Buried in the dirt with the worms?
Hollis offers a faint smile of acknowledgment. “This peach cobbler was his favorite.” She stares into the candlelight as her mind wanders. Matthew loved any kind of fruit dessert and always ordered halibut if it was on the menu. He couldn’t abide Joe Buck calling a football game, though he loved Cris Collinsworth. His favorite color was green; his car was a color he called “hunter green.” (Hollis can’t think about his car; she yanks herself back from the topic like she’s pulling her hand from a hot stove.) Matthew preferred blondes over brunettes, or so he always claimed, though all of his old girlfriends were brunettes. He wore Ferragamo loafers to work, driving moccasins on the weekends, Chuck Taylors if he was going to a rock concert. He hated gambling and wouldn’t even throw five bucks into the football pool; he’d had an uncle who had lost everything on a craps table in Vegas. He read Michael Connelly, David McCullough. Did he have any regrets? He used to say he wished he’d coached Caroline’s soccer team when she was little, but who was he kidding, he barely made it to Sprague Fields as a spectator. He had better friends from college than from high school, and he had no friends from medical school unless you counted his professors—like Dr. Schrader, his mentor. Hollis had e-mailed Dr. Schrader only hours after Matthew died to tell him the news right away because Dr. Schrader would have been expecting Matthew’s visit. Dr. Schrader’s wife, Elsa, had written back with her condolences. Our hearts go out to you and Caroline. We had no idea Matthew was planning a visit; how sweet for him to want to surprise us. He was such a good egg on top of being the most brilliant student Manny ever had.
This struck Hollis as odd because Matthew loathed surprises, for himself or anyone else. He was a planner.
Matthew’s favorite city was San Francisco; he and Hollis always stayed at the original Fairmont on Nob Hill and ate, their first night, at Swan Oyster Depot—it was the one place Matthew didn’t mind waiting in line. He preferred an aisle seat to a window seat on an airplane; his guilty pleasure was a root beer float; he loved movie theaters, especially historic ones, and he always got popcorn with lots of butter. He donated a mind-blowing sum every year to the Pine Street Inn in Boston—homelessness was his cause, though he also talked about joining Doctors Without Borders once he retired. Hollis had privately suspected that he would never retire.
“Hollis?” Brooke says. Both Tatum and Dru-Ann call her Holly, but Brooke can’t imagine doing that. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes,” Hollis says. “I’m sorry, I was just remembering things about Matthew.”
“Do you think he’s… watching us?” Brooke asks.
This makes Hollis laugh. If Matthew were alive and she’d told him she was hosting a weekend for Tatum, Dru-Ann, Brooke, and someone she’d met on the internet named Gigi Ling, he would have run for the hills. Nothing would have interested Matthew less than what’s transpiring here at Hollis’s Five-Star Weekend.
“No,” she says.
Caroline checks her phone. There’s a text from Dylan: Meet me at Cru later if you can?
OMG, she thinks. Does Dylan actually want to link?
K, she responds. Depends what time the fun ends here. She adds the laugh-crying emoji.
Hearing from Dylan is a boost, but there’s nothing from Isaac. The I miss you text is just dangling there, a bad judgment call. He probably deleted it as soon as it came in. She’s aching to send another text, something about what she’s filmed so far. She is, after all, using his equipment. And the material is so much better than she expected.
Tatum returns to the table, followed by Dru-Ann, Gigi, and finally Caroline. Hollis gets a second wind. The evening can’t end yet—the food was impeccable, and the conversation was spicier than she expected, but what about fun? Can she make this fun? When “American Girl” by Tom Petty starts playing through the speakers, Hollis turns up the volume.
Brooke shrieks, “I love this song!”
In so many ways, this song was Hollis’s anthem growing up. She sings out, “She couldn’t help thinking that there was a little more to life somewhere else!”
In another second, everyone starts dancing on the deck. Caroline can’t pretend to be surprised; she knew this was coming. The follow-up song is the Romantics’ “What I Like About You,” and Brooke bops her head from one shoulder to the other in a way that must hurt her neck.
Dru-Ann pours another round of shots for everyone. Really, is this necessary? Caroline wonders. It’s nearly eleven o’clock now. How much gas is left in the tank here? She wants to go into town to meet Dylan.
The song changes to “I’m Still Standing,” by Elton John. Brooke raises her arms over her head and shimmies her hips and the rest of the stars form a circle around her, their unlikely hero. Caroline wonders if she can quietly slip out. Would anyone notice (well, her mother would notice) and would she miss anything important?
The next song in the queue is “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin, which brings a totally different vibe.
“Everyone backward-skate!” Dru-Ann shouts.
What does that even mean? Caroline wonders.
Hollis reaches for Tatum’s hand, and the two of them spin, twirl, and dip. Dru-Ann grabs Brooke, who is so smashed she simply clutches Dru-Ann around the middle and rests her head against her chest.
What have I done? Dru-Ann thinks. Dru-Ann and Brooke shuffle in a tight circle and an unwelcome memory pops into Dru-Ann’s mind: a seventh-grade dance with a boy named Philip Price. The song then was “Stairway to Heaven,” eight minutes of torture—or of ecstasy, if you were Philip Price pressing your thirteen-year-old erection into Dru-Ann’s leg.
Caroline focuses the camera on Gigi as she sits at the table watching the other women dance. Gigi’s expression is neutral; she doesn’t seem hurt or offended that she’s a fifth wheel, and she doesn’t fidget or check her phone or pick at the remaining cobbler, which is right in front of her. Instead, she remains so present and serene she might be a painting. Her gold necklaces glint in the candlelight; the breeze off the beach lifts her bangs off her forehead. What could she be thinking? Caroline wonders.
Gigi feels like a villain of literary proportions. She’s Lady Macbeth. She’s the narrator from “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Her guilt pounds in her ears, stains her skin. How can the others not see it, hear it?
She longs to come clean. She fantasizes about interrupting the music, making an announcement—I was Matthew’s mistress!—then dramatically exiting through the glass sliders while the others stare after her in shock and confusion. It would be hideous, yes, but also cleansing, cathartic. The yoke of guilt biting into her shoulder would be lifted.
She imagines visiting the Hungry with Hollis website before she goes to bed. A Kitchen Light will appear here, at Hollis’s Nantucket house. Gigi will write on the Corkboard:
To the Hungry with Hollis Community:
My name is Gigi Ling, and I’ve been interacting with all of you under false pretenses. I led you to believe I was enthusiastic about banana bread and bouillabaisse, but really, I came here because I was conducting a love affair with Hollis Shaw’s husband, Dr. Matthew Madden, and I was curious about the woman whom I saw as my rival. After Matthew died, Hollis and I became so close that she invited me to her home for her Five-Star Weekend.
I realize some of you might not care about the interpersonal drama, and to those of you, I say: Hollis served grilled swordfish with avocado sauce, fresh baguettes with butter she churned herself, and a peach cobbler with a hot sugar crust. Hollis Shaw is the genuine article.
I, however, am not.
What would Molly Beardsley of Twain Harte, California, think of that? How about Bailey Ruckert from Baton Rouge? Gigi wonders which of Hollis’s subscribers would cast stones. Nearly all of them, she assumes, though she’s curious if there are any out there who might offer mercy, empathy, understanding.
It hardly matters. Gigi is too much of a coward to reveal herself.
18. First Light II
Caroline gets to Cru at midnight. Dylan meets her at the podium, looking smoking hot in a navy button-down, a navy blazer, and jeans. He leads her to a seat at the front bar and asks if champagne is okay.