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Tatum tells Gigi about the sail. “I’ve lived on Nantucket my entire life, but being on the water on a day like today never gets old.”
Dru-Ann tells Hollis, “You’re lucky my fortune changed because I was ready to move into the Twist permanently.”
Hollis slides the first pie, a classic Margherita, into her portable pizza oven.You’re doing fine,Hollis tells herself,just focus on the food.But then the song “Fake Ass Friends” comes on and as everyone else dances, Hollis feels her temper coming to a slow boil. She pulls the pizza out and is horrified to see it’s black, charred, smoking; the toppings all slide right off the peel onto the deck.
No, she’s hallucinating. The pizza has turned out perfectly—melty and gooey with a thin, crispy crust.
Her entire body is tense with fury. She can’t sit down at a table across from or next to Gigi—and so she decides they will all eat standing up.
Gigi feels like she has a slash of paint across her face or like she’s been branded; she is Hester Prynne, an adulteress, a scarlet woman. She senses Hollis keeping her distance—every time Gigi gets near her, she feels a chill like she’s walking past an open refrigerator—and it seems like the other women are keeping their distance as well. Caroline has her camera out—the guilt Gigi feels about Caroline is at another level altogether—and Gigi does her best to stay out of the frame. She knows the other women have had one-on-one chats with Caroline, and Gigi has been dreading her turn all weekend for obvious reasons. But now they’re out of time, and unbeknownst to Caroline, Gigi has endured an interview of another kind.
Gigi doesn’t know how she’ll make herself eat. She takes a piece of pizza just to be polite, to seem normal. With the first bite, she discovers it’s the best she’s ever tasted, including pizza she’s eaten in Italy. She considers telling Hollis this—Your food is pure sorcery—but Hollis will think Gigi is trying to flatter her, so Gigi simply loads her plate with a slice of the shrimp and lobster pizza and a slice of the Brie and pear one. She stands at the edge of the deck and looks at the pond and the footbridge.
Brooke appears at Gigi’s elbow. She’s wearing the skirt and navy-and-white-striped boatneck sweater that Gigi helped her pick out… was it only the day before? Gigi feels like she’s been on Nantucket for weeks.
“You look so pretty,” Gigi says. Brooke’s face has some color, and she’s smoothed her curly hair back into a bun; the sweater emphasizes Brooke’s delicate collarbones, and the skirt shows off her slim calves.
“Did you know that Matthew had that bridge built for Hollis as a surprise one winter?” Brooke says. “Because Hollis loves the footbridge at Monet’s home in Giverny. Isn’t that romantic?”
“Very,” Gigi says. It hurts to hear this, though it’s helpful too. Gigi inserted herself between two people who had created a life together. Matthew built Hollis a bridge.
Gigi would like someone to build her a bridge someday—a metaphorical bridge, anyway.You deserve to be somebody’s number one,Matthew said in their last conversation. It sounded patronizing at the time, but Gigi knows he was right. She does deserve that.
Brooke says, “I am so happy I met you. You’ve been such a good influence on me.”
“Oh, Brooke, no, stop—”
“It’s true,” Brooke says. She turns around to face the others. “Hey, you guys, don’t we all just love Gigi?”
Tatum raises her wineglass but says nothing because her mouth is full. Dru-Ann says, “We just love you, Gigi,” in a way that is both teasing and sweet.
Caroline sets down her camera for a second so she can eat. “Only my mom could invite a complete stranger to this thing and have it turn out to be someone as chill as Gigi,” she says.
There’s a beat of silence. Are they all waiting for Hollis to speak? She looks up from the cutting board. “Who wants a slice of veggie supreme?”
50. The Grand Finale
The ice cream truck from Island Kitchen arrives at nine o’clock, and the ladies go out front to choose their flavors.
This isn’t your average Good Humor man,Dru-Ann thinks. She orders Snickers cheesecake in a cup. Brooke picks cherries jubilee in a waffle cone. Tatum can’t decide between French lemon custard and peach and biscuits. She wants peach and biscuits but her mind is back to doing that thing again:If I get lemon custard, the tumor will be benign.She gets a scoop of lemon custard in a sugar cone. Gigi gets banana cream pie. She just has to make it through the fireworks, then she can excuse herself and go to bed. She’s booked the first flight off the island, which leaves at 6:45 a.m. She’ll be gone before anyone else wakes up. The other women might feel sorry or slighted that they didn’t get to say goodbye. Maybe Hollis will tell them then, and they can all trash her over their morning coffee.
Hollis materializes next to Gigi and says quietly, “Funny, the banana cream pie was Matthew’s favorite too.”
Hollis spreads blankets out on the beach and places ice buckets for the wine in the sand along with bowls of truffled popcorn. Hollis has curated every single detail of this weekend—and yet nothing turned out like she expected.
Caroline walks Malik, the fireworks guy, around the pool deck. “This place isfire,” he says. “I’ve lived on this island since sixth grade, but I’ve never been out this road.”
“Welcome to Squam,” Caroline says. She and Malik go over the dunes to the beach; he needs to set up a certain distance away from the women, the dunes, and the house, otherwise the place will beliteralfire. “Do you mind if I take some video footage of you?”
“Is this my fifteen minutes of fame?” Malik says with a grin.
Malik is kind of cute,Caroline thinks. And a little while ago, James, the first mate from theEndeavor,requested her on Snapchat.
I’m still standing,she thinks, then she groans. She’s becoming one of her mother’s playlists.
Although Caroline is the only one who learned the names of the fireworks—silver pistil to red peony, coconut pistil to blue peony—their effect is appreciated by everyone on the beach. Dru-Ann notes that Brooke has returned to form; she claps and whoo-hoos for each display. She’s especially enthusiastic about the “fireflies”—the strobe lights that pop all over the sky. Dru-Ann prefers the whistling rockets that shoot up super-high, then drip down like the branches of a weeping willow.
If the next one is blue,Tatum thinks,I’ll be okay.
