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 like Real 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 back Nothing, 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 dreamed that feature up?), then she’ll text a question, like How about Fells steak tips?, which Hollis will feel compelled to respond to, and Brooke will like or emphasize that text… 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 with Where 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, Italian Vogue, 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 documentary L’?toile 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, what helping means 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 kindergarten bébé could 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 by everything, 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.
She said, “I’m sorry. My father died unexpectedly in December, and I’m still fragile.”
She wouldn’t have been surprised if Isaac had fired her on the spot, but instead he backed away from his computer and took her by the hand, and led her over to the vintage sofa in the loft’s living area. He made her a cup of Yellow Gold tea and brought out an assortment of cashews, Turkish figs, and dried apricots from Kalustyan’s on Lexington. He told Caroline that he’d lost his mother when he was nine years old, and not a day went by that he didn’t mourn her.
He was so sweet in that moment and his loneliness so obvious (his relationship with Sofia was a sham, Caroline decided then; they were together only because they were good for each other’s brands) that she forgot herself. She dismissed Sofia’s request—Please, no trouble—and kissed him. To his credit, he pulled away and said, “This isn’t what you want.” What he meant was This will not replace your father’s love. What he meant was I am in a position of power and you are not and therefore this won’t be fair to you. We have seen stories like this play out before and they always end badly.
Caroline said, breathing into his mouth, “It is what I want. It is.” And she kissed him again.
Caroline receives her mother’s text as she’s leaving Isaac’s loft and beginning the long walk to her sublet on the Upper East Side (it’s too hot for the subway and she doesn’t have money for a cab). Sofia is returning to New York the following day, and as agonizing as it will be for both Caroline and Isaac, the affair has to end.
Caroline and her mother haven’t spoken in months. This, Caroline has to admit, is her fault. Caroline got an A in both Intro to Psych and Social Psych so she understands that she’s punishing Hollis because Hollis is the surviving parent. Everyone at the funeral kept commenting on how “strong” Hollis was, which made Caroline livid. Hollis used to be a devoted wife and mother, but when her website went stratospheric, she shoved both Caroline and her father into a corner. Well, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but there was a marked difference in their family dynamic. Hollis’s social media presence became her new baby; it was top of mind for Hollis every second of every day. Caroline and her father used to jokingly call Hollis “the Cooking Kardashian,” but now that her father is dead, it isn’t funny. Caroline is furious with her mother for reasons she can’t articulate, and the stark truth is that Caroline is still in so much emotional pain that holding a grudge feels good.
But Hollis has always been intuitive. Caroline wouldn’t be surprised if her mother had somehow sensed that Caroline just experienced the first breakup of her adult life.