Hollis is dazzled by Matthew’s moves on the dance floor and then by the make-out session when he takes her home.
The week following the fundraiser, Matthew invites Hollis to dinner at his parents’ house. The brick mansion in Wellesley Hills is grand but warm; there’s a fire lit in the library, where they have cocktails and talk about books. Matthew’s father, Robert, is an attorney who loves Boston crime novels; he lends Hollis The Friends of Eddie Coyle. His mother, Judith, sits on the board at the Boston Public Library; she turns Hollis on to Barbara Kingsolver and, since Hollis likes to write about food, the collected works of M. F. K. Fisher. They eat dinner in the formal dining room, which sounds stuffy but Robert and Judith make it feel intimate and fun. The two of them are clearly madly in love, clinking wineglasses and kissing before they eat. Hollis is mesmerized, watching them. She makes a joke about how many forks there are and if she doesn’t use the correct one, don’t hold it against her, she grew up in a five-room cottage on an island thirty miles off the coast. Judith says, “You could eat with your hands and we’d still find you delightful.”
When Hollis leaves, Judith gives her a squeeze and says, “I hope I’ll be seeing a lot more of you.”
Finding Matthew seems like an impossible stroke of luck, and yet it makes a certain kind of sense. Hollis hasn’t dated anyone seriously since breaking up with Jack Finigan seven years earlier. She has been waiting for the right person—and her patience has finally paid off.
“Matthew and I built a beautiful life together,” Hollis says. “I was blessed to have met him.”
In general, nothing drives Tatum crazier than when someone uses the word blessed, though honestly, she could use a blessing herself. If Gigi picks up her wineglass before I count to ten, Tatum thinks, then I don’t have cancer. Tatum counts really slowly, but Gigi’s attention is fixed on Hollis.
Tatum feels a stab of dread. HER2-positive cancer, she thinks, must have been the kind her mother had. Aggressive.
Dru-Ann hands Tatum the platter of roasted chicken and crispy fries. “You’ll like this.”
You have no idea what I’ll like or won’t like! Tatum thinks, but she accepts the platter and takes some chicken. The fries look good too, actually. Tatum ended up sitting next to Dru-Ann because Brooke said, “Gigi asked to sit next to me,” as though they were girls in the middle-school cafeteria. Tatum turns to look out the front windows for Jack and Kyle. They said they’d meet her and Hollis “later”—and “later” can’t come fast enough.
Dru-Ann tries to be calm and present. She won’t dwell on, or even fully acknowledge, the fact that she has been fired from all three of her jobs. It’s actually funny (from, say, a nihilist’s perspective) how with one sentence, Dru-Ann vaporized her entire life. So what now? Well, now she enjoys her cocktail and helps herself to the Thai curry lobster and wonders what Hollis will say when Dru-Ann asks if she can live in the Twist forever.
Gigi wants to know more, she wants to know it all, a full history of Hollis and Matthew, how they acted when they closed on their first house, which side of the bed each of them slept on, how they named their daughter and chose their dogs. And where did things go wrong? How did Matthew Madden turn into a man who would lie about being divorced to a woman he met at an airport lounge—and then sustain that lie for seven months afterward?
But Gigi knows better than to ask any more questions right now. She turns to Tatum. “What do you do, Tatum? I don’t think I know.”
Tatum says, “I clean houses and run errands for a company called Irina Services.”
“That sounds so fun!” Brooke says. Brooke stopped working after she got married. Charlie is one of those men who want to be the sole provider. It’s a self-esteem thing, but also a power thing; he has spent the past twenty-something years calling the shots because he brings home the bacon. “I’m jealous that you have a job. I basically do the same things—clean and run errands—only nobody pays me.”
“It’s honest work,” Dru-Ann says.
“I would appreciate it if the two of you would stop patronizing me,” Tatum says. “I’m not a fancy sports agent, I’m not an airline pilot, I’m not internet-famous. I’m a maid and a gofer. I work for people like you.”
Dru-Ann is about to say she wasn’t patronizing anyone, but she knows Tatum won’t believe her.
Brooke says, “If I leave Charlie, I’ll probably get a job like you have.”
“At the rate I’m going,” Dru-Ann says, “I might too.”
“Please just stop,” Tatum says. “You don’t have to try to level the playing field. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”
An awkward silence falls over the table, and Gigi deeply regrets asking the question.
Hollis can feel their ship about to capsize. How can she right it? She starts to say, My first job was opening scallops in sixth grade, down on Old North Wharf, but at that moment, a woman wearing a sundress in dramatic black-and-white-zigzag stripes walks into the restaurant, and Hollis’s first thought is that this woman somehow belongs to their group.
But their group is complete. This woman just happens to be wearing black and white—And isn’t that funny, we should buy her a drink—but then Hollis wonders if it’s a superfan who decided to crash (with all the people who subscribe to her blog’s newsletter, there are bound to be a few with questionable judgment).
Then Hollis takes in the dark red hair and the snide one-arched-eyebrow-pursed-lips expression and thinks, Lord have mercy.
It’s Electra Undergrove.
If a hungry Siberian tiger had walked in, Hollis would have been less alarmed.
Electra must be here on vacation. Hollis has heard through the Wellesley grapevine that Electra still comes to Nantucket, and what can Hollis do about that? She doesn’t own the island. Hollis instinctively lowers her face. They’ve finished eating; all that remains on the plates are chicken bones, a smear of egg yolk, some garnishes. Hollis was going to suggest espresso martinis for dessert but never mind that now.
Hollis and Electra’s friendship ended five years ago under very bad circumstances because of how Electra treated Brooke. Brooke! Hollis glances up to see if Brooke has noticed Electra. Yes, Brooke’s eyes are as round as plates and she’s shaking her head at Electra but Electra glides right over to the table and says, “Good evening, ladies.”
Hollis rises from her chair. She feels like a queen in a chess game or like a character in Game of Thrones facing her rival. Poor Brooke, she thinks. First Charlie, now Electra. But Hollis will protect her. “What do you want, Electra?”
Electra tips her head back and laughs. Her hair is different (it used to be brown), and her posture has changed—she’s leading with her chest. Yes, that’s right, Hollis heard she had her boobs done. They look lovely, good for her, Simon must be thrilled, but Hollis doesn’t care. For years, this woman was Hollis’s closest confidante. They kept each other sane when the kids were growing up. Hollis loved Electra’s sense of humor and her joie de vivre. She made every playdate a party and single-handedly created an enviable social life for all the Fiske Elementary School moms, then the middle-school moms, then the Wellesley High moms. Her rock and roll football parties became so legendary, there was an article about them in the Globe.
Then everything soured.
Electra says, “Brooke and I had drinks yesterday at Slip Fourteen and she shared the itinerary for your little weekend, so I thought I’d pop by to see how it was going.”
“You…” Hollis isn’t sure what she’s hearing. Brooke and Electra had drinks? Yesterday afternoon… when? Before Brooke came to the house? Hollis remembers Brooke saying she’d already had a couple glasses of rosé, but she’d assumed she’d meant on the ferry. “You and Brooke had drinks?”
Electra turns her laser-blue glare on Brooke. “You mean to say you didn’t tell Hollis I treated you to a bottle of rosé?”
“You didn’t treat me,” Brooke says. “I treated you. Or we split it.”
“That bottle cost a hundred and fifty dollars, Brooke. You didn’t give me even half,” Electra says. “But it’s fine because we were celebrating, weren’t we?”
“Celebrating?” Brooke says.
“We were celebrating the rekindling of our friendship,” Electra says. She smiles at Hollis. “Brooke is coming back to rock and roll football this year. Sunday, September tenth. Brooke wrote it in the calendar on her phone.”
“I did not!” Brooke says. “I mean, yes, I did, but Charlie and I have no intention of coming.”
“From what I hear, Charlie will be tied up in court,” Electra says. “Liesl called this afternoon and told me he’s looking at another lawsuit for groping a coworker.”