It goes by so fast, Hollis thinks now. What if she’d had a crystal ball that night and could see the four of them together thirty-seven years later at the new bar upstairs? What would she have thought? It’s dizzying to consider.
Jack takes a sip of his beer. “You won’t be sitting for long.” He goes over to the guitar player, whispers something in his ear, slips him some money.
Does Hollis know what’s coming?
Of course she does—but the first chords of the song give her the shivers nonetheless. The guitar player sounds just like a young Mick Jagger. “I know living is easy to do…”
Suddenly Jack is behind her, singing in her ear. “The things you wanted, I bought them for you.” He reaches for her hand. “Dance with me, Holly.”
Hollis looks at Tatum but she and Kyle are in their own world. Kyle is stroking Tatum’s hair; Tatum’s eyes are closed.
Hollis is shy—nobody else is dancing—but what does she care about anyone else? She and Jack slow-dance in the space between the guitar player and the bar. Hollis clings to Jack, inhales his scent, thinks about the boy who rode his bike seven miles out to Squam every Saturday morning and chopped wood with Tom Shaw just so he could spend an hour with Hollis on the beach alone. She thinks about her father saying, Don’t elope tonight, and Jack responding, We’ll wait until senior prom, sir. He’d been kidding but also serious. They had planned to get married. All the years they’d dated, that had been the plan.
Oh, Jack, she thinks. She can’t imagine how badly she hurt him.
Wild horses, she thinks. We’ll ride them someday.
But things had turned out the way they were supposed to. Hollis was meant to marry Matthew, that much she’s sure of.
There’s a tap on her shoulder. It’s Tatum.
“We’re leaving.”
“But you’re coming back to Squam tonight, aren’t you?” Hollis says.
“I’ll bring her out there,” Kyle says with a wink. “But we’re taking the long way ’round.”
After they disappear down the stairs, Jack says, “Can I buy you another drink?”
“I’ve had enough, I think,” Hollis says. “I parked my Bronco on India Street, but I should probably get a cab.”
“I’ll drive you home in the Bronco,” Jack says, “and catch a ride home with Kyle.” He tilts his head. “But we’d better take the long way ’round.”
Hollis would have said there was no way she would recognize their spot—the place, deep in the moors, where she and Jack used to park in high school—but Jack drives there without even having to think about it. It’s a quarter mile from Gibbs Pond, where the high-school parties are, a tiny enclave surrounded by fir trees: the Round Room. All these years later, it looks exactly the same—one reason, Hollis thinks, why she’ll always support the Nantucket Conservation Foundation. Jack cuts the engine and snaps off the lights. There’s a smattering of stars straight up but the crescent moon is obscured by the trees.
Hollis says, “How many couples do you think parked here after us?”
“And before us,” Jack says.
“But it was ours for years,” Hollis says. They came here nearly every weekend junior and senior years and the summer in between. The other kids knew to stay away.
“I want to talk,” Jack says. “Tell me everything.”
“You tell me everything,” Hollis says. “What happened to Mindy?”
“We had a good run,” Jack says. “Seven and a half years. She was a cool chick; she gave me space. She worked for a drug company selling Botox and whatnot. It was a little disturbing, all those women wanting to freeze their faces, but she enjoyed it. She was good at darts and made a mean chicken cacciatore.”
“But?”
“She wanted to get married. I threw her a surprise fortieth birthday party at my bar and after everyone left, she sat me down and told me I needed to put a ring on it or she was leaving.”
“Ultimatum 101,” Hollis says.
“She married someone else; she’s happier now. It all worked out.”
“Except you’re alone,” Hollis says.
“You can be in a relationship and alone,” Jack says. He clears his throat. “How are you doing, Holly? I imagine it’s been rough.”
Hollis exhales. “I’m not sure I have the words to describe what it’s been like,” she says. “Everything changed in an instant. My whole life became that car wreck. But I had to be strong—for Caroline, obviously, but also because I thought that’s what people expected.”
“Which people?”
“My friends, my community, my blog’s subscribers. Everyone sees me as, I don’t know, some kind of—”
“Domestic goddess?” Jack says. “Earth mother?”
He’s probably not far off. “They see me as in control—steady, well adjusted. I’m the one who provides comfort. I didn’t feel like I was allowed to fall apart.” Tears drip down her face. It feels so good to cry that she just lets the sobs come. Jack reaches out and pulls her into his arms. He murmurs into her hair, “I’m here, Holly berry.”
Hollis sits up and gropes at her feet for her bag, where she keeps a pack of lavender-scented tissues; she’s on brand even when she’s having a breakdown. “There’s guilt too,” she says, then blows her nose. “Matthew and I were having problems. It was a low-grade fever, nothing splashy or dramatic; we just drifted apart. He was always working, then my website took off and I put my energy there. Caroline was away at college. Both of us talked to the dog more than to each other.” Hollis wipes under her eyes. “We had a conversation the morning he died… we were both trying to express how unhappy we were. He told me that I’d changed, that we’d changed, and he was right.”
“Oh, Holly.”
“When things were bad with Matthew, I would check up on you. I’d stalk your Facebook page. I did it when I was feeling low and I wanted to remember what it felt like to be really loved.” The tears start up again. Whatever she thought might happen this weekend, it wasn’t ending up in the Round Room confessing all her secrets to Jack Finigan. “I saw the picture of you and Mindy—”
“Three years ago?” Jack says. He’s laughing and she can’t blame him; it sounds so silly.
“I wanted to know if you were still with her,” Hollis says. “I guess what I really wanted to know was if you ever thought about me.”
“Of course I thought about you, Holly. You’re a part of who I am.”
“But you never come back here.”
“I come back now and again,” he says.
Without thinking, Hollis says, “I saw you once.”
“That one Thanksgiving,” he says.
Yes, she thinks. What year would it have been? Caroline was in middle school, so maybe almost ten years ago. It was the Friday after Thanksgiving, and Hollis, Matthew, and Caroline were downtown for the tree-lighting ceremony. It was a favorite evening of Hollis’s—all of Nantucket coming together on Main Street, the ceremonial lighting of the Christmas trees in town. Hollis was wearing a chunky knit sweater and a down vest; she and Matthew and Caroline usually walked to Languedoc for lobster bisque and steak frites after the lighting. Hollis had been swaddled in a bubble of contentment.
But when the switch was flipped and Main Street came aglow, Hollis was arrested by the sight of one face through the crowd. She squinted. Was it him? Was it Jack? Yes—and he was looking at her. He smiled, flashing his dimples, and lifted a hand to wave.
Hollis felt a rush she hadn’t at all expected. Jack! She was suddenly self-conscious. She looked around for Matthew, but he and Caroline were over on the sidewalk with their phones out, snapping pictures of the trees. Hollis knew she appeared to be alone, and she was glad. She locked eyes with Jack, thinking, What do I do? A normal response would have been to lead Matthew and Caroline over and introduce them. This is Jack Finigan, a friend of mine from high school. Matthew would have known that it was Jack, her old boyfriend, though he wouldn’t have cared one bit; Matthew was the least jealous person Hollis had ever known. Why didn’t she do that? The answer: She didn’t want to introduce Jack to her family; she didn’t want Jack to know she had a family. In that instant, she’d wanted to go over and hug Jack, kiss him, even. She’d had the urge to pull him down Quince Street, hide between two of the summer homes, and make out.
Instead, she lamely waved back, then looked away, and when she rejoined Matthew and Caroline, she claimed she had a headache and should probably go home. “I’ll take a cab,” she said. “You two go to dinner.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Matthew said. “We’ll all go home. There are a ton of leftovers.”