She pulls her basket of yoga mats, blocks, and straps out of the back of her Camry and approaches the front door. Lightness and nobility, she thinks. First impressions matter. Hollis has never practiced with Avalon before; over the phone, she admitted that she’d seen Avalon’s ad in the back of N magazine.
Avalon notices the sea-glass windows on either side of the front door and she whips out her phone to take a picture. If she ever saves enough money to buy a house on this island, she wants windows just like these. She knocks, but there’s no response—no footsteps, no voices. She knocks again. Nothing. She checks her phone. It’s ten minutes to eight. Should she wait in her car until eight o’clock sharp? That seems silly; they have to set up on the pool deck, and Avalon has a vinyasa class to teach on Amelia Drive at nine thirty.
She texts Hollis: Good morning, this is Avalon, the yoga instructor. I’m here!
She waits another minute. There’s no answer and no noise from inside.
The door is unlocked; Avalon cracks it open. “Hello?”
The house is as silent as a crypt. Avalon steps in and eases the door closed behind her.
What a house! Past the gracious entryway, there’s a white brick fireplace and a sitting area—Avalon loves the pale blue silk chaise—and to the right is a bright, white kitchen with cathedral ceilings, white marble countertops, and high-end stainless-steel appliances, including a floor-to-ceiling wine fridge lit from within. Someone has set out breakfast—a big bowl of granola; two carafes of milk, one labeled SKIM and the other ALMOND; glass pitchers of juice—orange and pineapple—and the most exquisite fruit salad Avalon has ever seen, with raspberries, kiwi, blackberries, sliced peaches and plums, and chunks of pineapple and mango. Avalon can’t help herself—she plucks a fat blueberry off the top and pops it in her mouth. The pièce de resistance is a platter of the fragrant cinnamon morning buns from Wicked Island Bakery. These are nearly impossible to get, so someone was up bright and early today.
“Hello?” Avalon calls again.
She’s met with only the distant cries of gulls and the sound of the ocean; the back sliding door has been left open, and Avalon pokes her head out to see a pond with a footbridge, the beach beyond.
This home is breathtaking, she thinks. And that breakfast looks sublime. But where is everyone?
Hollis’s alarm wakes her at six o’clock. She’s still in her clothes, lying on top of her covers. Half a glass of sauvignon blanc mocks her from the nightstand. She grapples for her phone; she has to make the dinging noise stop, but she knocks over the wineglass in the process and she thinks, Oh, for heaven’s sake, what is wrong with you? She saves her phone from the wet and squints at the screen. The alert says MORNING BUNS.
Forget the morning buns, she thinks. She needs sleep.
But she’s the hostess, and this is supposed to be a Five-Star Weekend. She propels herself to her feet and staggers out to her car. She ends up being the second person in line at the bakery, and she makes a very lame early-bird-catches-the-morning-bun joke to the poor teenage girl behind the counter. Then she drives back home in a haze, twice nearly pulling over to throw up. Those tequila shots.
At home, she sets out the breakfast things like a robot, thanking God she prepped everything in advance. It’s only six forty-five; she can squeeze in an hour of sleep before yoga. Back in her room, she climbs into bed naked without realizing she’s left her phone in the car.
While Avalon is in the kitchen sneaking a piece of pineapple and a ball of honeydew from the fruit salad, Hollis is fast asleep.
Tatum wakes up at six thirty as usual, even though today she can sleep in instead of pouring Orion’s cereal, setting up his game on the iPad, packing Kyle a lunch, and getting herself ready for work (Saturdays at Irina Services are a special kind of hell). She tries to fall back to sleep but she can’t quite get there. Tatum doesn’t remember the last time she spent an entire night in bed by herself; it might have been when she was in the hospital after having Dylan. She and Kyle are never apart; when they go off-island, they go together. Tatum stretches out like a starfish. It’s nice, but she misses Kyle’s warm body, his morning wood poking her backside, his breath in her hair, the way his hand rests on her hip as they sleep. She rolls over to grab her phone and sees she already has a text from him.
I miss you. How was last night?
How was last night? It was better than Tatum thought it’d be. The music was all the good ’80s stuff and the food was, of course, incredible. The most satisfying part of the evening was that she succeeded in freezing out Dru-Ann exactly the way she’d dreamed of doing for twenty-five years.
When “Take My Breath Away” played, Hollis reached for Tatum’s hand, and they did the dance that they’d choreographed in middle school (and performed any chance they got, including at junior prom, senior banquet, and both of their weddings). They hadn’t done those moves in a long time but they both remembered every step.
Tatum can’t figure out how Gigi fits in. She seems nice, but why did Hollis invite her?
It’s fine, Tatum texts Kyle. She won’t get too complimentary yet; there’s still plenty of time for things to get weird. It’s pretty clear Tatum has far less money than everyone else, though she was pleased to discover that she’s having better sex. She’ll tell Kyle about the orgasm conversation in person—he’ll love it.
What did you guys do last night? she asks.
Went to the Tap Room for steaks. Then drinks at Straight Wharf.
Whaaaaa? Tatum thinks. The Straight Wharf bar is filled with gorgeous twenty-somethings. She can’t believe Kyle went to the Straight Wharf. Did he pay sixteen bucks for a Goombay Smash or eleven bucks for a Bud Light? Did he get hit on? (He’s fifty-three but he looks ten years younger, the bastard.) If he and Jack wanted a nightcap, why didn’t they just stroll a hundred yards farther down the dock to Cru? Dylan would have given them drinks for free! These petty feelings of jealousy are unfamiliar and very unpleasant. Why shouldn’t Kyle be allowed to have fun? He should be allowed is the correct answer, but Tatum would far prefer it if Kyle had stayed home eating microwave popcorn and watching the Red Sox.
Another text comes in from Kyle. She expects it to be an explanation or an apology but it says: Then we went to see Buckle and Shake play at the Gaslight.
Tatum idly fingers the tender spot on her right breast; she presses harder so she can feel the hard little nugget she now knows is either a cyst or a tumor. She replayed the voice mail on her phone before she went to bed, thinking she might hear something new in the doctor’s voice. Do I have cancer or don’t I?
It sounds like Kyle and Jack had a proper Nantucket night out on the town. They went to the Gaslight, a building Tatum hasn’t set foot in since it was the Starlight movie theater and she and Kyle snuck in to see 9? Weeks. Tatum has heard good things about the nightclub—Dylan goes on occasion—but it always seemed too young and fabulous for Tatum and Kyle.
She leans back into the pillows. She isn’t the first Mrs. Albright. She won’t be the kind of wife who tells her husband to start dating while she’s still around, nor will she reassure Kyle that he should find someone once she’s gone. She doesn’t want him to find love again, start over, have a second act. If that’s a character flaw, she’s sorry-not-sorry.
Another text from Kyle comes in: I’m headed out to fix a boiler on Crooked Lane. Jack and I are going for breakfast at Black-Eyed Susan’s around ten. Want to meet us?
“Meeting husband for breakfast” seems against the rules when she’s on a girls’ weekend—but there’s no way Tatum is missing it. Sure thing, she texts back. See you then. At ten, the itinerary says shopping in town, so Tatum will just slip away for an hour. No one will even notice.
Tatum hears a knock at the front door, and she jumps from bed to peer out the window. There’s a young woman with dirty-blond curls piled on top of her head and a mandala tattoo on her shoulder. She’s bracing a basket of yoga mats against her hip. Tatum scurries back to bed. She has no desire to do yoga today or any day. While the others do their upside-down dog or whatever, Tatum will smoke on the back deck like the rebel she’s always been.
But there’s no movement in the house, no response to the knock, thank God. Tatum closes her eyes. She will sleep in until it’s time to go to town and then she will meet her husband no matter what Hollis and the others think. The fireworks chandelier is cool, but it’s not love.