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“We met the October before last,” Gigi says. “So we were together for a little over a year before he died. The evening we met, I was supposed to fly to Argentina for vacation and Matthew was trying to get home to Boston. I met him in the Delta lounge. There was a hailstorm, all flights for the night were canceled.”
The October before last. Hollis would have to go back and look at her calendar. What was going on in her life the October before last? She can only guess she was layering slices of potato into a gratin dish, perfecting caramel apples, picking up her cashmere sweaters from the dry cleaner.
“How many times were you together?” Hollis asks. Her champagne and lunch are churning in her stomach; she’s light-headed, and her cheeks are burning. She’s angry enough to tackle Gigi, choke her. Has she ever in her life been this angry? Has anyone ever betrayed her this way? Of course not. “Where did you go other than Atlanta?”
“We saw each other every few weeks. Either I flew where he was speaking—San Francisco, Baltimore—or he met me in Madrid or Rome.”
“Madrid?” Hollis says. “Rome? You had an international love affair?”
“Those were my routes back then.”
So Matthew lied to Hollis. He created fictional conferences, knowing Hollis would never check, and he must have lied to the hospital as well, maybe claiming he was whisking Hollis off for a romantic weekend.
Mr. Wonderful.
Hollis imagines Matthew and Gigi strolling around Madrid and Rome hand in hand. They probably had their favorite spots—little hole-in-the-wall wine bars, cafés, shops where Matthew would buy Gigi a scarf or a beautiful belt. They would stop to listen to street performers. Gigi would have wowed Matthew with her fluency in the languages. But thinking about Matthew and Gigi in those foreign cities is far preferable to thinking of them in cities where Matthew and Hollis traveled together.
“Where did you stay in San Francisco?” It’s masochistic to ask, but she has to know.
“Oh,” Gigi says. She seems to think for a moment. “The Four Seasons once…”
So Matthew had the decency to take Gigi someplace other than the Fairmont. But Hollis won’t give him points for that; the Four Seasons sounds like an upgrade.
“And the St. Regis once, and then we stayed at Auberge du Soleil in Napa once.”
“You met him in San Franciscothree times?” Hollis says. She’s so horrified by this, she can’t even cry. Matthew took her toNapa? The gall,she thinks.The hubris.He could have run into any number of people who knew him or Hollis.
“I didn’t find out he was married until last May,” Gigi says. “The night we met, he told me he was divorced with one daughter—”
Hollis cries out.
“And I believed him. He didn’t wear a ring. He wasn’t on social media, and Google turned up only his professional accolades, his professional profile.”
“But then he told you?”
“Yes. We were in Greece. Santorini.”
“Greece!” Hollis says. Can this get any worse? She has to remind herself to breathe. Greece last May—yes, while Hollis was here, opening the house by herself.
“He said he wouldn’t see me much over the summer because he’d be on Nantucket with his daughter… and wife.” Gigi pauses. “I screamed, I cried, I threw things. But I was too in love with him by that point to end it.” She looks straight at Hollis. “That is my crime.”
Yes,Hollis thinks. Matthew had a wife, a family, two homes, a dog, friends, colleagues who respected him, a community, a life. To stay with him after learning thiswasa crime.
She’s intrigued to hear Gigi say she was too in love with him to end it.
“Was he in love with you too?” Hollis says. “Did he tell you that?”
“He did not,” Gigi says. “I think he felt things for me but I’m not sure he felt love.”Now is the time,she thinks. “There’s something else you should know.”
Hollis holds a hand up. “Please just let mefinish!” she says. She can’t believe this is her speaking. She feels possessed. “When did you reach out to me on Hungry with Hollis?”
“Right after he told me who you were.”
“And why?Why?”
Gigi puts her palms to her cheeks like she’s in Edvard Munch’sThe Screamand exhales. “I think it’s natural to want to know all you can about the wife of your lover.”
Hollis laughs bitterly. “Oh, is it?” She almost adds,I wouldn’t know,but then she thinks about the way she clicked on Mindy’s Facebook page after seeing her in Jack’s pictures. Mindy’s profile showed a quilt. And hadn’t Hollis then searched forquilting clubs in Western Mass.,hoping to find other pictures of Mindy? She certainly had.
