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Tatum bats cleanup; her season batting average is .322, the best not only on the team but in their division, but she strikes out at her first two at-bats and then pops up, all on purpose. In the final inning, Nantucket is up by one run and a girl from the Amherst team named Miranda Coffey goes to bat. She’s got a platinum flattop like Brigitte Nielsen and a cold eye; she’s going to wallop the ball no matter how unhittable Hollis’s slider is. As if scripted, Miranda sends a deep one to left field, and honestly, it’s nothing Tatum can’t handle. She sees the runner on second shooting for third, and thinks,Nantucket High girls softball, state champs two years in a row,that’s what she and Hollis have dreamed of since they were little kids hitting a Wiffle Ball off a tee. But then, a lot of things Tatum and Hollis dreamed of aren’t coming true. Hollis is going to the University of North Carolina. Hollis turns around on the mound; she’s watching Tatum, and for one second, Tatum meets her eyes in a look of sheer fury and thinks,How could you?And she catches the ball but lets it drop from her glove. The runners score and Amherst wins.
If Tatum is going to be heartbroken, then Hollis will be as well.
“I threw the game,” Tatum tells Caroline. “I’ve been ashamed about it for thirty-five years. I robbed not only Hollis but our team and our school—hell, our island—of a championship title. I was the ultimate poor sport.”
Caroline’s expression is more fascinated than horrified, Tatum thinks. She’s getting way more than she probably expected.
“So then what happened?” Caroline asks.
“Hollis left for college,” Tatum says. “And she never came back. Not really.”
Hollis returns to Nantucket for the holidays her freshman year, but the summer after freshman year, when Tatum thinks they will both work at the Rope Walk again, Hollis announces she’s staying in Chapel Hill to wait tables at Chili’s.
Chili’s?Tatum thinks. Why would Hollis want to stay in swampy, sweltering North Carolina slinging fajitas when she could come home and make three times as much money with a view of the water? It makes no sense!
Tatum calls Hollis long-distance and begs her to reconsider. By that point Tatum’s mother, Laura Leigh, has been dead a year and Tatum’s father is dating Alison, a young woman he recently hired at the pharmacy. Tatum needs Hollis. Hollis is her sister.
“I promise I’ll go out on the yachts with you,” Tatum says, though she knows she won’t because of Kyle. “I’ll help you find a rich husband.”
“Sorry, Tay,” Hollis says. “Dru-Ann and I have decided to stay here.”
Dru-Ann,Tatum thinks.Of course.Hollis talks nonstop about Dru-Ann Jones, her roommate, whose father is some bigwig on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
“We’re working at Chili’s and conquering our summer reading list—Nella Larsen, Joan Didion, Angela Carter.”
Tatum doesn’t know or care who any of those writers are and Hollisknowsshe doesn’t know or care.Hollis is like a snake,Tatum thinks,shedding her old life as though it’s a skin she’s grown out of.
“So when my mom stopped coming back here over the summers, did you two stop being friends?” Caroline asks.
“No, we were still friends,” Tatum says. “But it wasn’t the same.” She pauses; she needs a cigarette. “Kyle and I got married, and your mom was my maid of honor—she and I did our dance, things were still fine. Then… your mother got engaged.”
Hollis calls Tatum to say that Matthew is finishing his surgery residency and they’ve decided to get married. Tatum wants to know about the ring, the proposal, was it romantic?
“He didn’t get down on one knee or anything,” Hollis says. “Icannotimagine him doing that.”
Right; Tatum can’t either. She and Kyle met Matthew the one and only time Hollis brought him to Nantucket. They went to the Lobster Trap for dinner and Matthew became absorbed with dismantling his lobster with precision so as not to leave a single shred of meat behind. Every time Tatum or Kyle asked him a question, he startled as though he’d forgotten he was at dinner with other people.
Hollis goes on to say that she and Matthew will be married in Wellesley, where Matthew grew up, in February—because that works best with Matthew’s schedule. Matthew’s mother, Judith, is planning the wedding. Hollis doesn’t have to do a thing.
“Great?” Tatum says. She and Kyle had a small wedding on the beach at Brant Point, followed by a reception at the Admiralty Club in Madaket, but she made every decision herself. Tatum gets down to what she assumes is the reason for this call. “How many bridesmaids are you having?”
“Six,” Hollis says. “You, Dru-Ann, Matt’s cousin Cora, Gretchen and Ellie from UNC, and Regency from Boston.”
Tatum has never met Gretchen and Ellie, though she knows they’re a couple, and she has never heard of Regency from Boston nor even realized that Regency could be a first name. But fine, whatever. “Just get me everyone’s address, I guess,” Tatum says, “so I can organize things.”
“Organize things?” Hollis says.
“Iamthe matron of honor,” Tatum says. “Right?”
What follows is a beat of silence that Tatum can only describe as loaded.Loadedlike a gun threatening to murder their friendship once and for all.
“Yes, of course!” Hollis says. “You and Dru-Annboth!I’m having one matron of honor, you, and one maid of honor, Dru-Ann.”
Tatum’s mother, Laura Leigh, was a kindergarten teacher, and because of this, Tatum was raised to share. But no, sorry, not in this instance. Hollis is supposed to choose her best friend as her maid—or matron—of honor.Bestis a superlative; there can be only one. If there’s more than one person, the job becomes watered down, it means only half as much. Hollis is diminishing Tatum, and (Tatum hates herself for this) her response is to cry.
“I have known you your entire life, we’re not just friends, we’re sisters, my family took you in, my mother treated you as her own!” Tatum feels affronted not only for herself but for her mother, who braided Hollis’s hair and got the grass stains out of her softball uniform and helped her shop for a prom dress. Tatum realizes that Hollis and Dru-Ann grew close in college and she felt wildly jealous about this (and in response started hanging out with Terri Falcone more than she might have otherwise), but there’s nowayDru-Ann and Hollis are as close as Tatum and Hollis. Hollis is just impressed by Dru-Ann, or maybe she’s been strong-armed by her.
Hollis goes into damage-control mode. “I definitely want you to be my matron of honor, Tay, it’s just that Dru-Ann knows the other girls better and she has all these cool ideas.”
