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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’townthe 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 inGame of Thronesfacing 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 theGlobe.
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 haddrinks?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.”
Brooke wants to hide under the Captain’s Table—but no, she won’t cower. Not in front of Gigi and Dru-Ann. She raises her face and in the coldest voice she can muster, she says, “Leave me alone, Electra.”
Good for you, Brooke,Hollis thinks, though she can’tbelieveBrooke was gullible and, she’ll just say it,weakenough to fall prey to Electra. Hollis pictures Electra promising to include Brooke in all the fun, and Brooke, in return, offering up the itinerary for the weekend, which Hollis had sent only to her blog’s subscribers.
As Hollis is about to say,Leave us all alone, Electra, you’re not welcome here,she notices Electra staring at Gigi, of all people. “Have we met before?” Electra asks.
An uneasy expression crosses Gigi’s face, and Hollis thinks,Good God, even Gigi is intimidated by Electra.
“No, I don’t think so,” Gigi says. “I’m not from here.”
“The British accent!” Electra says. “Yes, I’m certain we’ve met somewhere—”
“Definitely not.” Gigi’s voice is clipped.
Tatum finishes what’s left of her wine. This is precisely what she thought Hollis’s friends would be like—Real Housewife–type bitches. She supposes she should be glad that Brooke and Gigi are nice and normal. Even Dru-Ann is a peach compared to this hellcat.
Dru-Ann is dying to push back her chair and take this woman on—nobody talks to Hollis and Brooke that way, not while she’s around—but out of the corner of her eye, Dru-Ann sees her old friends Gucci Bex and Laura Ingalls walk into the restaurant.No,she thinks,not possible.But of course possible, because she simply can’t catch a break this weekend. Dru-Ann has lost everything, and you can’t fall off the floor, as the saying goes, but even Dru-Ann isn’t brave enough to create a scene while those two are in the building.
As it turns out, Dru-Ann isn’t needed, because someone else takes hold of Electra’s arm, pulls her away from the table, and whispers angrily in her ear—and that person is Blond Sharon. Sharon recognized Electra Undergrove the second she walked into Nautilus because earlier that day, Sharon had received a text from her old friend Fast Eddie, the well-known real estate agent. The text said:Meet the worst renter I’ve had in thirty years in this business. Wait until I tell you the stories!And underneath was a picture of this woman.
