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When Laurie arrives, Hollis explains that Matthew and Caroline are running late. Not a problem, Laurie says, she’ll go down to the beach to get set up. Tonight is a beauty, maybe the best weather they’ve ever had. Hollis is wearing her signature blouse, this one in lavender; she has asked Caroline to wear white and Matthew navy. But at this point, she’ll take them in anything, she’ll take them naked, where are they?
Hollis calls them both again—nothing—but she doesn’t text for fear of saying something regrettable. She told them both about the photo shoot this morning before they left the house—but then she groans, wondering if maybe they thought she was still talking about theBon Appétitshoot.No, no,she thinks, she definitely said,Laurie Richards, family photo,and they both said,Yes, okay,or something like that.
At five thirty, as Hollis is apologizing to Laurie—she’ll pay Laurie for her time, of course—Matthew and Caroline appear over the dunes. Hollis deserves an Academy Award for her performance as an only mildly annoyed wife and mother. “Where were you guys?” she says. “Laurie was just about to leave.”
“We were up at Great Point,” Matthew says. “I was surf-casting, Caroline was reading. It was the best day of the summer.”
Hollis isn’t sure how to read his tone. It was the best day of the summer and Hollis missed it? Or it was the best day of the summer because Hollis wasn’t there?
But she notices he’s wearing the navy polo and Caroline is in the white eyelet halter just like she wanted, so they cluster together, rein Henny in, and smile for the camera.
As Hollis peers over Gigi’s shoulder at the photo, she thinks how Gigi won’t be able to see that what binds Hollis to Matthew in that particular photo are waves of anger and resentment. To Gigi’s eyes, they must look like the perfect couple.
But they weren’t at all.
You’ve changed. And we’ve changed.
It feels like Gigi is holding a lie.
30. The Drop I
In the home theater in the basement, Caroline sets up two chairs across from each other and turns on the ring light.
“Is it okay if I film this?” Caroline says. She thinks it’s a stroke of genius to have clips of Hollis’s friends for the website. She doesn’t want this to be likeThe Office—that’s the most imitated format in Hollywood these days—but yes, she’s thinking exactly that.
Tatum shrugs. “I look like a dirt sandwich, but sure, have at it.”
Tatum’s hair, which was so sleek and glossy yesterday, is now damp from swimming and pulled back into a ponytail. She’s gotten some sun on her face, and freckles pop across her cheeks. She doesn’t have a swim cover-up like the other ladies; she wears a gray Nantucket Whalers T-shirt and jeans shorts, and her feet are sandy in flip-flops. (She must have missed the footbath outside the door; Hollis will have a fit, but it’s too late now.) Caroline couldn’t have styled her any better. Her look is Local Island Girl.
“Great, thank you,” Caroline says. She feels a little awkward, to be honest, but maybe only because she hung out with this woman’s son the night before and woke up in her house.
Tatum knows that Caroline and Dylan met up because right before Hollis crashed breakfast, Jack was telling Kyle and Tatum that he’d found Caroline in their driveway trying to order a Lyft, and Jack ended up driving her into town.
While Tatum was on the beach she sent Dylan a text that said:Caroline, huh?
Dylan texted back:It was one kiss. She slept on the sofa.
Tatum laughed. Dylan tells her everything, a result, she supposes, of how calmly she handled the news “I got Aubrey pregnant. We’re having a baby.”
Tatum typed:Do u like her????
She’s nice,Dylan wrote back.
There’s nothing worse than calling someone “nice,” and Tatum is disappointed. She wants Dylan to find someone to take his mind off Aubrey. There’s also her crazy idea that if Dylan and Caroline get married and have children, Tatum and Hollis will be sister-grandmothers—Tatum the cool one, Hollis the rich one. Tatum laughs, and Caroline gives her a quizzical look.
“I’m ready,” Tatum says. “What do you want to talk about?”
Caroline says, “Let’s start at the beginning, I guess. How did you and my mom become friends?”
Tatum says, “I can’t remember evernotbeing friends with Hollis. Our mothers taught kindergarten in adjacent classrooms at Nantucket Elementary, so it was a big deal when they both got pregnant at the same time because they both went out on maternity leave, and back then, you took the whole school year. They would get together a few times a week, take us for walks, push us in the baby swings, that kind of thing. And then—we were both far too young to remember this—Hollis’s mother, Charlotte, died.”
Yes,Caroline thinks.Aneurysm in the shower.Hollis was twenty-one months old.
“Tom Shaw was left taking care of this baby girl by himself. My mom, Laura Leigh, helped. Tom would drop Hollis off at our house on his way to work. So in my earliest memories, Hollis is there. She had her own toothbrush at my house, an extra pair of pajamas. My mother made the cupcakes for Hollis’s birthday, and whenever Hollis got sick, my mom was the one to come pick her up.” Tatum pauses. “In fourth grade, we had this thing called Mother’s Day Tea. We had to write poems for our mothers and read them in front of the class, and then there’d be a party with cookies and juice. I remember Hollis raising her hand and asking what she should do since she didn’t have a mother. For a second, I thought our teacher was going to cry. But then I whispered in Hollis’s ear that we could share my mother. And that’s what we did. We were like sisters.”
Caroline needs to take a beat. “Um, okay… wow. And you two stayed close friends all through high school?”
“Oh, hell yes,” Tatum says. She studies Caroline. How can she make this child understand the way things were between her and Hollis in the 1980s?
