25. Maybe: Sofia
When Caroline wakes up for the second time on Saturday, there’s a note on the kitchen table from her mother. Shopping in town. Back at noon, it says.
Hallelujah, Caroline thinks. She has the house to herself. Breakfast has, of course, been cleaned up (her mother is so type A, she’s triple A), but Caroline finds the morning buns wrapped in an origami of wax paper and she makes herself a bowl of café au lait with almond milk. She repairs to her favorite spot on the property—the footbridge over the pond.
The bowed middle makes a fine perch from which to survey the Shaw– Madden kingdom. Caroline sits cross-legged in the sun, enjoying the breeze across the pond and the view of the beach over the dunes. She sips her coffee, devours the first morning bun in three bites, then tosses pieces of the second bun into the pond. There’s a soft plashing sound as the fish break the surface of the water. A dragonfly hovers over Caroline’s bare forearm. Nature, she thinks. Introspection. Is she having a moment? Maybe, but it’s fleeting. She thinks about the night before and how strange it was that Dylan didn’t try to sleep with her. Caroline didn’t particularly want to have sex with him, though it would have been nice to feel desired. If Caroline told Isaac that she’d slept with her longtime crush, she knows he would be happy for her because Isaac’s generous heart would not want Caroline to be alone. After all, he isn’t alone. He’s with Sofia.
Caroline pulls out her phone and googles Isaac Opoku and Sofia Desmione—and then, like the pathetic weenie she is, she starts to scroll.
There’s the article from the New York Post on December 5, 2018, speculating that Isaac and Sofia were dating (“It’s the crossover we didn’t know we needed!”). Next is a picture of Isaac and Sofia on the red carpet at the 2019 Oscars—Isaac looking absolutely fine in a midnight-blue velvet Oscar de la Renta tux, Sofia in Givenchy. There’s a link to a New York magazine article predicting that documentaries are the only kind of films that will survive into the next decade; Isaac is mentioned. Finally, Caroline lands
on Sofia’s Instagram page with its 19.3 million followers (a lot of them Italian; Caroline has checked before). There are five pictures of Isaac in Sofia’s feed. Four of these are at public events—the Toronto Film Festival, Sundance, Cannes, and the Givenchy show during Paris Fashion Week. (Caroline takes a moment to feel awe that she has slept with Isaac, and Isaac has won awards at Cannes, making Caroline Cannes-adjacent.) But the best and most heartbreaking picture on Sofia’s feed was taken this past April, after Caroline submitted her application for the internship but before she’d been chosen. The photograph is of Isaac sitting on the white Kagan sofa in the loft.
He’s wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and white Chucks; the New York Times crossword puzzle is open against his thigh, and there’s a cup of golden tea on the table in front of him. It seems as though Sofia has caught him by surprise, as if she called his name and he looked up. His brown skin is luminous; his eyes are wide and soulful. In the other photos, Isaac’s expression is guarded, but in his face here, Caroline can see the nine-year-old boy who lost his mother. Caroline is arrested not only by his beauty but by his vulnerability.
The caption reads, simply, My love.
A text comes in and Caroline assumes it’s Hollis with their ETA, but when she looks, she sees it’s from a number with a 917 area code, and the caller ID reads Maybe: Sofia.
What? Ever so gingerly, Caroline swipes on the alert. The text says: Hi, Caroline, how is your weekend?
Caroline sets her phone down on the planks of the bridge; even touching it seems dangerous. Sofia has never, ever texted Caroline before. Sofia doesn’t have her number. She must have gotten her number from Isaac. Or taken it out of Isaac’s contacts.
Hi, Caroline, how is your weekend? It’s definitely Sofia; the syntax is what you’d expect from someone who’s fluent in English but isn’t a native speaker. How’s your weekend going? is how a person would ask if she really wanted to know, which Caroline assumes Sofia does not.
What is happening here? Caroline has a solid understanding of social media and she knows that you can’t tell when someone is looking at your account unless that person Likes or comments while you’re watching in real time, and Caroline has done neither. Sofia would be able to see if Caroline was active on Instagram if Caroline followed her, but she doesn’t. It’s a very spooky coincidence that Sofia texted while Caroline was stalking her page.
What can Caroline think but that Sofia has found out about her affair with Isaac? Maybe she checked Isaac’s phone and saw Caroline’s I miss you text.
It was stupid to send that, so stupid! Maybe one of Caroline’s blond hairs turned up on the pillow. (Isaac said he was going to wash the sheets, but did he?) The text could be explained away—Caroline sent it to Isaac by mistake.
Ditto a stray hair; Caroline worked in the loft, her DNA was everywhere.
Caroline decides to play it cool. Isaac probably told Sofia that Caroline was away for the weekend filming this thing for her mother and that he’d lent her his equipment as a mitzvah. Maybe Sofia found the idea intriguing; maybe when she was in Sweden she’d had a personality transplant and now cared about little people like Caroline. Or maybe—this was most likely— Sofia had an inkling something was going on but she wasn’t 100 percent sure.
Or maybe Isaac broke things off with Sofia and she wants to cry on Caroline’s shoulder. (Not a chance.) Caroline knows she shouldn’t respond, but she’s worried that silence implies guilt. Hey, she texts back.
A second later, Caroline’s phone starts to ring. It’s Maybe: Sofia.
Nooooooo! Caroline thinks. She can’t pick up. She might be able to come across as casual and unconcerned via text, but on the phone, her voice will betray her: I slept with Isaac, I fell in love with him. He ended things before you got home. I am heartbroken.
Caroline declines the call, then types: Sorry, can’t chat, I’m filming rn.
I’ll call u later.
To which Sofia immediately responds: K.
Caroline’s hands are actually shaking. She takes a breath. Should she reach out to Isaac? The answer is obviously no. Sofia might have his phone in her other hand, waiting for that exact thing to happen. Caroline thinks about Sofia saying, Please, no trouble. Trouble for Caroline now means losing not only Isaac but her internship, and not only her internship but her reputation.
What if Sofia goes to the Post and breaks the news of the affair and the Post sends a stringer up to Nantucket to take pictures of “Isaac Opoku’s other woman,” intern Caroline Shaw-Madden, film student at NYU? Caroline will be briefly infamous, like the nannies who break up the marriages of actors and rock stars. Being pursued by the paparazzi might seem glamorous but what would it mean for Caroline’s future? Would she be shunned by the documentary community? Or… would she be embraced by it? After all, she
caught the eye of the great Isaac Opoku. She replaced (for a matter of weeks, anyway) Sofia Desmione!
Would anyone believe it? It’s so preposterous that, for a second, Caroline imagines making a documentary about herself: Sleeping with Genius: My Brief Affair with Isaac Opoku.
Caroline hears the crunch of tires over shells—the stars are home.
Caroline stands up and shoves her phone in her back pocket.
The mood in the house is weirdly subdued. The women are quiet when they walk into the kitchen. Dru-Ann is missing; she must have gone straight to the Twist. Gigi and Brooke peel off down the hall. Tatum takes the remaining morning bun off the table and heads to her room.
“Did something happen in town?” Caroline asks her mother.
“No,” Hollis says. “Everything’s fine.”
Of course that’s her mother’s answer.
“How are you, darling? Did you get breakfast?” Hollis asks.
“Yes,” Caroline says. “Thanks.”
Hollis smiles. “I heard my friend Jack drove you to town this morning.”
“How did you hear that?”
“I had breakfast with him at Black-Eyed Susan’s,” Hollis says. “He told me you slept at the McKenzies’?”
“I did.” Caroline glares at her mother, daring her to pass judgment. “I met up with Dylan last night and I was too tired to get myself home, so I stayed
over. Nothing happened.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Hollis says.
Caroline is suddenly incensed. First of all, she’s twenty-one, a full-blown adult, and what she does at night is none of her mother’s business. And second of all… “I can’t believe you had breakfast with Jack. Isn’t the whole point of this weekend to spend time with your friends? You are such a phony.
You send the whole itinerary to your subscribers for them to fawn over, but little do they know, it’s a total sham. Shopping in town really means ‘I’m going on a cute breakfast date with my old boyfriend.’ And also, Mother”— here, to Caroline’s embarrassment, her voice breaks—“Dad just died, and you’re already moving on?”
“I’m not moving on,” Hollis says. “Jack is an old friend.”
Caroline is no idiot. She knows this is what happens—old people reconnect with their high-school sweethearts on Facebook and months later they’re getting married in the back garden with their adult children as attendants. “He told me he was still in love with you,” Caroline says.
“What?” Hollis says. “That’s ridiculous. He has a whole life elsewhere.
Please, darling, you don’t have to worry about Jack.” Hollis holds her daughter’s gaze but she feels like Caroline can see right through her. Jack said he was still in love with her?
Caroline shakes her head. “If I posted the unedited footage of this weekend, your fans would have a whole new opinion of you.”
What can Hollis say? She has become popular for showing her followers her real life, but Caroline has a point: It’s not her real life at all.
