Page 2 of The Five-Star Weekend

Here on Nantucket, we think how unfair life can be: Hollis’s mother died too young, and now her husband has as well. We wonder if Hollis will return to the island for the summer. Will she feel like playing tennis at the Field and Oar Club or drinking rosé at the Deck? Fast Eddie Pancik, our perennially thirsty real estate agent, asks his sister, Barbie, if it would be in bad taste to see if Hollis is planning on selling the house in Squam.

Yes, you idiot, Barbie says.

On June 21, the first day of summer, Romeo at the Steamship Authority reports that Hollis Shaw has just driven off the ferry in her trusty Volvo, which is packed with boxes, bags, and what looks through the window like a portable pizza oven; Hollis’s Serbian sheepdog, Henrietta, is asleep in the back seat.Good for Hollis!we think.She came home.

For a few weeks, sightings of Hollis around the island are rare. She doesn’t attend the Nantucket Book Festival or the annual Squam Road Homeowners Association meeting. Johnny Baylor, who drives for DoorDash, reports delivering sushi from Bar Yoshi to Hollis’s house one night and a lobster roll from the Sea Grille another. Hollis’s longtime neighbor Kerri Gasperson sees Hollis walking Henrietta at dusk, but Hollis has AirPods in, and Kerri doesn’t want to bother her.

We understand that it takes time to process a sudden, unexpected loss. We assume Hollis will spend her summer alone, practicing self-care and privately mourning the man she was married to for twenty-four years.

But when we hear about the Five-Star Weekend—so creative! so unusual!—we all agree: This could be just the thing she needs.

1. Accident Report I

It’s early morning on December 15; Hollis Shaw is in the kitchen of her Wellesley home prepping the dough for cheddar tartlets. Her husband, Dr. Matthew Madden, has a ten o’clock flight to Germany—he’s presenting a paper at a cardiology conference in Leipzig and will be gone for five days.

This opening scene, should Hollis show a video of it, would seem to be one of domestic bliss. Hollis wears a pair of tailored red-plaid pajamas; her hair is held back in a clip. She has a footed bowl of café au lait steaming next to the slab of cool, gray-veined marble where she’s rolling out her pastry dough. Carols play over the sound system; “The Holly and the Ivy” is Hollis’s favorite and she sings along in a faux-operatic voice. Hollis’s kitchen is all decked out for the holidays: spruce garlands encircle the weathered wooden beams, and her collection of copper pots gleam like new pennies on her open shelves. She’s trimmed a “kitchen tree” with culinary ornaments: a tiny metal whisk, a wooden rolling pin, a bone-china box of doughnuts. Hollis has also hung miniature wreaths on all her glass-fronted cabinets. (Her daughter, Caroline, would probably declare the wreaths—as well as the apothecary jars filled with ribbon candy and gumdrops—“too much.”) The picture window above the sink where Hollis does dishes looks over the mature oaks and evergreens of her side yard. The view offers a pleasant distraction, especially this morning as snowflakes as big and fluffy as cotton balls float to the ground. Hollis loves nothing more than snow during the holidays.

Her timer chimes, and Hollis pulls a tray of crispy bacon from the oven. Like magic, her Serbian sheepdog, Henrietta, jingles into the kitchen (Hollis has put bells on her collar) and raises her furry face.

“Fine,” Hollis says, and she gives the old girl a piece. She drains the rest on a paper towel next to the red-pepper-and-smoked-Gouda quiche she made earlier that morning. She cuts a wedge of quiche and arranges it on a plate with a few slices of bacon and sections of a Cara Cara orange, which are a delightful and surprising pink.

When she hears Matthew’s footsteps on the stairs, she closes her eyes and takes a sustaining breath.

Don’t bring it up,she tells herself.Let him go graciously.

But the truth is, this trip to Leipzig bothers Hollis; she was up half the night fretting about it. Matthew will present his paper tomorrow morning, so he could easily leave Germany tomorrow afternoon and make it home in time for their annual holiday party on Saturday. Hollis and Matthew have hosted a holiday gathering every year since they moved to Wellesley, and it’s always the third Saturday in December. Matthew claimed he “thought it was later,” so he made plans to stay at the conference until the end and then travel to Berlin to visit his mentor Dr. Emanuel Schrader, who was just diagnosed with Parkinson’s and can no longer practice surgery.

“But you can’t miss our party!” Hollis said when he told her.

Matthew had chuckled. “We can both agree this isyourparty, sweet-love. With all the Swellesley glitterati in attendance, you won’t even notice I’m not there.”

His tone had been light, playful even—but Hollis was still hurt. Shedidthrow the party pretty much single-handedly every year. She made all the food—the cheddar tartlets, the tenderloin sandwiches, the tiny potatoes topped with caviar—she buffed the champagne flutes, lined the luminaires along the driveway, stuffed gift bags with her homemade toffee for guests to take home. She sent the invitations, and her listwaslonger every December (except for the year when Hollis broke up with Electra Undergrove and her crew).

Despite this, Hollis can’t imagine standing in the doorway to greet everyone without Matthew at her side. It’sliterallyunthinkable.

But apparently not for him.

Now Matthew walks into the kitchen. He always wears a suit when he flies, and today he has on the red Vineyard Vines tie printed with Santas in speedboats—the very tie Hollis purchased for him towear to the party!He hums along to the carol currently playing—“Once in Royal David’s City”—and holds his right wrist out so that Hollis can help him with his cuff link, which is a silver reindeer. He’s certainly in the holiday spirit.

Hollis inhales the scent of his Kiehl’s shaving lotion. She loves the smell; it reminds her of date night and of the (increasingly rare) mornings when she wakes up in his arms.

She can’t believe he’s leaving.

She wills herself to say,Here’s breakfast,orLet me get your coffee—Matthew takes his coffee black and scalding hot, and she doesn’t pour it until he’s standing right in front of her. But instead what comes out of her mouth is “Ireallywish you’d change your plans.”

After Matthew leaves for the airport—far later than he wanted to—Hollis gathers the pastry dough into a ball, wraps it in plastic, and sets it in the fridge. She no longer feels like cooking. Matthew’s breakfast is untouched, but instead of covering the plate with foil and saving it for later—she deplores waste, one product of being Tom Shaw’s daughter—she scrapes the food into Henny’s dog bowl. Then she rips a paper towel from the roll and wipes at her eyes. She can’t believe how quickly their conversation escalated into a fight.

“Lately, you’ve been making anything but me a priority,” she said. “Work, travel, and now Dr. Schrader.”

“The man was my mentor, Hollis. Berlin is a two-hour drive from Leipzig. It would be egregious not to visit him, considering the circumstances.”

Instead of conceding this point, Hollis launched into her graver concerns. She had felt them drifting apart ever since Caroline left for college. Hollis had always dreamed of a marriage just like Matthew’s parents had—they were romantic and devoted to each other to the very end.

But when, Hollis wondered, was the last time their marriage had felt romantic? It would be romantic if Matthew canceled this trip, but that wasn’t going to happen. She could tell simply by the set of his shoulders, his jaw; he was eager to get out the door.

“Sometimes it feels like we’re nothing more than roommates,” Hollis said. She was tempted to mention how long it had been since they’d had sex, but that was as much her fault as his. During the day, she was busy, busy, busy and she fell into bed exhausted every night.

Matthew did his doctor’s trick of appearing to listen but not, which was how Hollis knew he wasn’t engaged; he was just waiting for her to be done, which was equal parts infuriating and disheartening. Matthew cleared his throat and checked his watch. Hollis wiped away her gathering tears as he pulled on his trench coat and his leather driving gloves. Matthew crouched down to rub Henny’s face, then gave Hollis a fierce squeeze—she felt something, at least, in his touch.

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