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Shipley turned off the ignition, pulled down the driver’s side sunshade, and peered at herself in the mirror. She removed her dangly silver earrings and tossed them into her bag. Then she pulled back her hair into a ponytail and spritzed Binaca on her tongue. Finally she tucked her white turtleneck shirt into the waistband of her jeans.

“What are you doing?” Eliza demanded.

Shipley opened the car door and stepped out. “You know how moms are.”

Mrs. Gilbert greeted them with a glass of Chardonnay in hand. She was sinewy and blond and her clothes were made of silk and cashmere, in varying tones of champagne and French beige. She looked like she subsisted on white wine alone, with maybe an after-dinner mint or two thrown in. She opened her
arms and pressed both girls against her skeletal chest. “I’ve put Eliza in the yellow room,” she said as she ushered them into the house.

The sofas were upholstered in green, gold, and cream Regency stripes, embellished with black throw pillows stitched with tiny gold pineapples. The wood floors were dark and polished, the bouquets of flowers perfectly arranged in crisp crystal jugs. It looked like a set from a horror movie. The palatial suburban wonderland—until the doorbell rings. Even Shipley’s room, with its white canopy bed and pink rose wallpaper, had a sinister air of too-good-to-be-true.

“Do you have a decorator or did you do this all yourself?” Eliza asked Mrs. Gilbert politely.

Mrs. Gilbert swilled her wine. “I worked very closely with the decorator. I was even thinking, now that the children are gone, I might take a decorating course myself.”

“Awesome,” Eliza said. The furniture in her house had been bought in sets from Sears. The shiny cherrywood TV cabinet matched the shiny cherrywood coffee table, which matched the shiny cherrywood dining room table they never used. The curtains and the carpet, the sofa and the armchairs all matched too. Nothing in Shipley’s house matched, not in an obvious way, and it definitely didn’t come from Sears.

They followed Mrs. Gilbert downstairs and into the kitchen.

“Look at that fridge,” Eliza exclaimed. “You could keep a pony in there.”

Shipley watched for the telltale twitch in her mother’s left eye, revealing her distaste for Eliza’s linty army jacket and dirty red Converse sneakers, but her mother actually seemed glad that Shipley had brought a friend. She’d even prepared the food ahead of time. The butcher block island was crowded with Tupperware
and bags of vegetables.

“I just have to put dinner on the hotplates to warm up and throw together a salad,” Mrs. Gilbert said. “Why don’t you give Eliza a tour of the neighborhood and do some shopping for a couple of hours? We can eat when you get back.”

Eliza couldn’t believe how shameless Mrs. Gilbert was about getting rid of them. Even her mom would sit at the kitchen table, smoking her Capris and pretending to be interested, while Eliza rattled on about the snake she’d seen at sleepaway camp or the asshole swim coach at the high school who’d been fired for being a perv. “How’s college?” her mom would have asked. But Shipley’s mom didn’t care.

Shipley could have driven to the Darien Sports Shop blindfolded. It was her favorite store. Three floors of shopping bliss. Lacoste. Lilly Pulitzer. Ralph Lauren. Patagonia. CB. Sportswear, skis, swimsuits, shoes, ice skates, tennis rackets, golf clubs. Everything.

Eliza trailed her while Shipley found a warm wool ski hat, insulated gloves, a heavy wool turtleneck sweater, and thick wool socks for the stranger who’d been stealing her car.

“Those for Tom?” Eliza asked.

“Uh-huh,” Shipley lied. She wandered into women’s sleepwear and picked out a pair of white thermal long underwear and a luxurious gray cashmere bathrobe for herself.

A saleslady came to unload the pile of clothes from Shipley’s arms. “I’ll just keep these at the register for you, miss.” She peered at Eliza over a pair of bifocals. “Anything I can hold onto for you?”

Eliza frowned. “No, thanks. I’m all set.”

Shipley hadn’t noticed until now that Eliza wasn’t shopping. She spied a pair of magenta rabbit fur earmuffs on a mannequin. “Hey, did you see those? Those are totally you.”

Eliza removed the earmuffs from the mannequin’s head and put them on her ears. They felt like headphones but softer. She checked herself out in the mirror. They were awesome. She took them off and examined the price tag: $224.95. “I guess not,” she said, putting them back on the mannequin.

“No way.” Shipley swiped the earmuffs away and tucked them under her arm. “Don’t worry. My family has an account here,” she confessed. “I usually get whatever I want and just sign for it. Pick out anything you like. Honestly. My parents won’t mind.”

Eliza hesitated. She’d been prepared to hate Shipley forever, but as the day progressed, she felt herself soften. She’d thought Shipley would be more spoiled. Sure, her house was a showcase, but there was no one in it to dote on her, not even a well-groomed Labrador. Shipley had invited her home for Thanksgiving because she couldn’t face going home alone. And she was totally right about the earmuffs. Maybe Shipley knew her better than she thought. “You can’t buy me,” she insisted halfheartedly. “I’m not for sale.”

“Oh, shut up.” Shipley slung her arm through Eliza’s and steered her toward the jeans. “Look. An entire shelf of black denim. Go on. You know you want to.”

They tried on twelve pairs of jeans in a tiny shared dressing room. Eliza decided on two particularly flattering pairs that she would have to cut up and distress herself. Then she broke down and picked out a camping stove for Nick, an insulated sports bra for the frosty-titted Maine winter, two black turtlenecks, six pairs of black wool kneesocks, and an ankle-length black down coat that was basically like a sleeping bag she could walk in. It occurred to her that she could zip her new coat right onto Nick’s sleeping bag so they’d have a double-wide in which to have hot and sweaty down-insulated sex inside his yurt. Or not.

The total came to more than $2,000. Shipley signed for it before Eliza could see. “There, that was fun, wasn’t it?” she asked as they carried their bags out to the car.

It was an unseasonably warm Thanksgiving, but Eliza wore her earmuffs and her new coat out of the store. “That was awesome.”

Shipley had a closet full of clothes at home, so she hadn’t bothered with a bag for the trip. Eliza had thrown her duffel bag into the backseat. And so, for the first time since she’d gone to college, Shipley popped open the trunk of the Mercedes to accommodate their large Darien Sports Shop shopping bags.

“Holy shit,” Eliza said.

The trunk of the car was full of food: bagels, muffins, donuts, rolls, bruised fruit, moldy cheese, bags of crushed tortilla chips, and a battered gallon jug of water.

“What the fuck?” Eliza demanded. “Do you have an eating disorder?”

Shipley closed the trunk. The stranger must have been living out of her car, using the trunk as his pantry. She opened one of the back doors and tossed the bags onto the seat. “It’s not my food. It belongs to someone else.”

“What do you mean, ‘someone else’?” Eliza persisted. “Who?”

“I don’t know,” Shipley said. “Just someone I let use my car when I’m not using it.”

All that week Shipley had left the car in the Dexter lot with an empty tank to guarantee that it would be there on Thanksgiving morning when she needed it. She felt a little guilty for doing so, and even guiltier for removing the car from the premises without any explanation, but hopefully the warm clothes would make up for it.

Eliza stared at her. “You let this someone drive your car, and you don’t know them?”

“Right.” It made even less sense to Shipley now that she’d said
it out loud. She opened the driver’s side door and got in. “Come on,” she said. “Grab the map out of the glove compartment. I’m looking for Oliver Road, in Bedford.”

Tom hadn’t gone home for Thanksgiving. Ever since Shipley had posed with the Macy’s bag over her head, he’d been holed up in his room, painting. Shipley left him to it. She could have taken the opportunity to rush right into Adam’s arms, but Tom was her first real boyfriend, and she loved him—she did! She loved everything about him, except for his horrible naked Eliza paintings and how hyper and sweaty he got on ecstasy and his sometimes indelicate language. Adam was handsome—in a freckly, awkward sort of way—and measured and polite, but he was basically a townie, and a timid one at that. He hadn’t even come after her since their kiss in Professor Rosen’s kitchen. She hadn’t even seen him, not once, and his desertion baffled her. Was it just a one-off? Did he think he could use her to satisfy some horny selfish urge and then move on? Or maybe he really did want her. But how could he expect to win her when he wasn’t willing to fight for her? Tom had made a play for her from the beginning. There was never any confusion with him. She was sorry she’d strayed. They were perfect for each other. Just to be sure, though, she needed to see where he came from.

Eliza was very good with the map. They took the Merritt Parkway south from Darien, getting off at the Round Hill Road exit in Greenwich. Round Hill led to Bedford Banksville and on to Greenwich Road, followed by Oliver, a country road with only a few large properties. Number 149 was all the way at the end, a stately gray colonial with a wide front porch, a pink door, and a vast green lawn punctuated by mounds of raked leaves. Elegant old trees surrounded the property. A deep flower bed skirted the house, wherein hunkered November’s spoils of rhododendrons, hydrangeas, hostas, lilacs, lilies of the valley, irises, and peonies.
Beside the house was a fenced-in tennis court, and behind that a swimming pool covered with a green tarp. A black Jeep Cherokee a few years older than Tom’s was parked outside the two-car garage.

Shipley eased the car around the cul-de-sac where the road ended and circled past the house again. Indiana Jones, the Fergusons’ arthritic Bernese mountain dog, rose from his roost by the front door, gazed at them curiously, and then lay down again. A middle-aged couple and their grown-up son sat in white wooden Adirondack chairs on the porch, eating pie.

“Is this Tom’s house?” Eliza pressed her face against the window. “Do you think those are his parents?”

“Yes,” Shipley said, barely breathing. The house was bigger and more authentic somehow than her own. She imagined the whole family played doubles tennis together, and Tom’s dad had probably taught the boys to swim. Tom’s mother was probably passionate about her flowers, and everyone pitched in to rake the leaves. Shipley’s mother employed a gardening service staffed by migrant Mexican workers. Her family never did anything together except go on an annual Caribbean beach vacation, during which they would sit in separate locations on the sand, depending on their tolerance to the sun, reading books.

Eliza put her window down and stuck out her arm to wave.

“What are you doing?” Shipley hissed. To her horror, the entire family stood up and descended the porch steps, pie plates balanced in their hands. As they approached, Shipley recognized Tom’s features in all of them. He had his mother’s blue eyes, her thick brown hair, and her determined chin, but he was built like his father. His father even walked in the same floppy-footed style, like he’d never quite grown into his feet. Tom’s older brother, Matt, was blond and stocky, but with the same blue eyes and chin.

“What do we say?” Shipley whispered.

Eliza was never at a loss for words. “Hi there,” she called. “We’re friends of Tom’s. He asked us to stop by and apologize for him not coming home for Thanksgiving.”

“How nice of him to send you as envoys,” Mrs. Ferguson quipped. “Would you like a slice of pecan pie? It’s my great-grandmother’s recipe.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and lowered her voice. “Highly alcoholic.”

Eliza laughed and glanced at Shipley, whose face and neck were flushed pink. “Sorry, but we can’t. We’re actually sort of late for our own Thanksgiving.” She jabbed her thumb at Shipley. “We’re having it at her house, in Greenwich. This is Tom’s girlfriend, by the way. This is Shipley.”

“Hi,” Shipley croaked.

Matt chuckled. “So you’re Shipley. I’ve heard a lot about you. We all have. Apparently you’re the love of his life. He’s going to marry you one day.”

“Well, we’ll see.” Shipley giggled and gripped the steering wheel to steady herself.

Mr. Ferguson leaned against the car and ducked his head into Eliza’s open window. He smelled like freshly laundered sheets with a hint of candied nuts and bourbon. “Are you sure you don’t want some pie?”

Shipley’s foot hovered over the gas pedal. She was obviously dying of embarrassment. “Thanks so much, but we’re actually both allergic to nuts,” Eliza fibbed.

Deep, worried creases appeared on Mr. Ferguson’s forehead. “Tom’s all right, isn’t he? He hasn’t even called today.”

Eliza could have told him what she truly thought of Tom, but she wasn’t an asshole. Not really. “Tom’s great,” she said. “He’s really into this art class he’s taking. And he’s acting in a play.”

Mr. Ferguson nodded. “He mentioned that. Any idea when they’re putting it on? We were thinking about making the trip
up to see it.”

“It’s next weekend. Saturday night. You should come! And the Portraiture open studio is totally the same weekend. I would know because I’m sort of the star of the show.” Eliza winked at him. “You’ll see what I mean when you see it. Anyway, we won’t tell. You know, in case you want to surprise him.”

Mr. Ferguson grinned. “Good idea.” He stepped away from the car and pushed his hands into his khaki pants pockets. “Thanks for stopping by.”

“Tell Tom he missed a kick-ass turkey,” Matt called.

“Happy Thanksgiving!” Mrs. Ferguson waved as Shipley leaned on the accelerator and sped away.

Shipley didn’t say anything on the way home. Tom’s parents were nice and his house was idyllic. It was just as she’d thought. Tom was the perfect boyfriend. When she got back to Dexter, she’d have to work very hard to fix what she’d very nearly ruined. She would make it clear to Adam that kissing him had been a mistake, and while she was happy to be friends, it must never happen again. She would try to be more understanding of Tom’s art. Artists took drugs and behaved strangely sometimes. The work required it. Besides, Tom was only experimenting. Pretty soon he’d figure out that art and ecstasy really weren’t his thing. Deep down he was still her Tom. Even more so now that she’d met his parents. She could imagine planning the flowers for their wedding with Mrs. Ferguson in her sunny kitchen. She could hear Tom’s brother giving a witty best man toast.
“Tom had only been at college for a week when he called me and said, ‘I’ve just met the girl I’m going to marry….’ Of course I didn’t believe him, especially not after I met the girl. She was way too pretty for him.”