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A little while later, Hollis’s phone lights up with a text from her best friend from when she was growing up, Tatum McKenzie, who still lives on Nantucket year-round:Does “girls’ weekend” mean I would spend the night at your house in Squam?
Hollis writes back:Yes, won’t that be fun?
Okay,Tatum says, which isn’t really an answer to the question. But it sounds like she’s a yes, and Hollis feels cool relief pass through her. Every summer since Hollis and Matthew built the new house on her father’s property, Hollis has invited Tatum and her husband, Kyle, over for dinner, and every summer, Tatum comes up with an excuse for why they can’t make it, so Tatum has never been inside Hollis’s house. Once, a few years earlier, Hollis got a text from Tatum out of the blue:Kyle and I went for a Sunday drive and ended up at your place in Squam. We peeked in the windows, danced on your pool cover, and had sex in your outdoor shower. (Just kidding!) You have officially become a Summer Person, Holly. Just like you always wanted.This was followed by the one-tear crying emoji.
Hollis wrote back, trying to be funny:You did have sex in the outdoor shower. I know you did.
Tatum responded with the middle-finger emoji.
Hollis has bumped into Tatum a few times since then—once at Dan’s Pharmacy, once at the post office, once at St. Mary’s (where Hollis and Tatum used to be altar servers together)—but if she’s honest, Hollis would admit that things haven’t been good or right between them since she left for college.
Forget the Hallmark movie, Hollis thinks. Her Five-Star Weekend might be more likeReal Housewives.
But three of the four are definitely coming. There’s no turning back now.
When the hottest part of the afternoon has passed, Hollis takes Henrietta for a walk, leaving her phone behind. The hydrangea bushes that line Hollis’s driveway have filled in, just as Anastasia promised, though Hollis can’t appreciate their pink and periwinkle beauty the way she should.
By the time I get back,she thinks,Gigi will have texted.
But she hasn’t; the only text is from Brooke:I’m so excited!!! I booked my ferry, I get in at 4:05 on Friday!!! Now, tell me, what can I bring??!!?
Hollis nearly texts backNothing, just yourself!But texting with Brooke is like one of those woven finger traps: the more you engage, the harder it is to extricate yourself. Brooke will react with the heart or double exclamation point to Hollis’s text (what kind of sadist dreamedthatfeature up?), then she’ll text a question, likeHow about Fells steak tips?,which Hollis will feel compelled to respond to, and Brooke will like or emphasizethattext… and this will go on until, in exasperation, Hollis stops replying (hint, hint), at which point Brooke will send a string of emoji hearts and kissing faces.
Hollis leaves Brooke’s text to bleed out. She clicks on Gigi’s name just to double-check that her invitation text went through; the service in Squam can be spotty.
Yes, it was delivered at 9:38 that morning.
Clearly, Gigi is done with her. Hollis isn’t sure why this bothers her so much. It isn’t as if Gigi is a soul mate; you don’t meet soul mates on the internet. (Well, some people might, but not Hollis.)
But when Hollis wakes up the next day, a text is there, sent at three fifteen in the morning:I feel so honored to be included. Are you sure about this?
Hollis stares at the words, blinking, rereading, double-checking that this text is really from Gigi Ling. The text sounds like Gigi: lovely and gracious. It’s all Hollis can do not to respond withWhere have you been? Why have you been ghosting me?
Instead, she types:Very sure. Can’t wait to meet you IRL!!!!Then she deletes that (all the exclamation points make her sound like Brooke) and types:Very sure. Looking forward to getting together.
She hits Send.
3. Chink in the Armor
Caroline Shaw-Madden receives a text from her mother requesting her presence on Nantucket for the weekend.
No,Caroline says to herself. But then she reconsiders.
For the past seventeen sweltering, feverish days, Caroline has been romantically involved with her boss, the Academy Award–winning documentarian Isaac Opoku.
Caroline never dreamed things with Isaac would take this kind of turn, not only because of the age difference (fourteen years) or the power differential (Caroline is a rising senior at NYU who has yet to make even a short film of her own) but also because Isaac is in a committed relationship. His girlfriend, Sofia Desmione, is a bona fide supermodel (Vogue,ItalianVogue,Valentino, Dolce e Gabbana), and Sofia lives with Isaac in the Chelsea loft that also serves as Isaac’s studio.
But… Sofia is rarely around. She’s either out on a shoot or partying until dawn at Zero Bond. Isaac, though, suffers from social anxiety; he asks Caroline to go through his e-mails and decline all invitations. From the beginning, Caroline wondered why Isaac and Sofia were together. She’d seen Sofia only once in her first month of work: Sofia breezed in, smelling like a mixture of Jo Malone and tequila and wearing a dress that looked like a Hefty garbage bag, kissed Isaac on the forehead, and told him she’d gotten an assignment with Acne Studios and would be shooting in Stockholm for three weeks. She added, “I’m having lunch with Mauricio at Cluny, then I’m off to JFK. Gemma will come in a little while to pack my bags. Love you.”
And Isaac had said in his darling Ghanaian accent, “Love you too,ma chérie.”
Only then had Sofia noticed Caroline. “New assistant? Cute! I’m Sofia.” She offered Caroline a cool hand. “Please, no trouble.”
Please, no trouble.Caroline was so startled by the statement that at first she was unable to respond. Did that mean what she thought it meant? Had there been “trouble” with other assistants, or did Sofia find Caroline particularly threatening (the thought was laughable)? By the time Caroline had recovered enough to say, “No, of course not,” Sofia was gone.
Caroline is, technically, helping Isaac edit his documentaryL’Étoile Verte;it’s about Amira Delacroix, a chef who left her wildly popular restaurant kingdom in Paris to open an elegant French bistro in the Moroccan desert town of Ouarzazate. However, whathelpingmeans is that Caroline goes to the corner bodega to fetch Isaac’s bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches, she opens his mail, and she sits on a stool to his left as he teaches her how to edit. From the beginning, Caroline found Isaac gentle, lovely, and kind. He hired Caroline to complete the mundane tasks of his day but also because he likes the company. Plus he wants to impart his knowledge to someone, and Caroline is a sponge. But one afternoon shortly after Sofia left for Sweden, Caroline handed him the script with the pages out of order, and Isaac lost his temper. He said, “A kindergartenbébécould do this, Caroline, and yet you manage to make it a mess!”
Caroline couldn’t help herself—she started to cry, and once she started, she couldn’t stop. It wasn’t Isaac’s reprimand, it was everything, and byeverything,Caroline meant that her father was dead. She hadn’t told Isaac about her father because she didn’t want special treatment. Certainly the nine hundred and ninety-nine other students who’d applied for this job had problems too, but those problems didn’t belong in the studio.
