Dolly All the Time

Dolly Brick is a 39-year-old kindergarten teacher, single mother, and part-time call-center worker in Boston. When a fire breaks out on the sleeping porch of her father Freddie's house in coastal Whitfield, Rhode Island, she packs up and drives south with her 13-year-old son, Gus, for the summer. The fire alarm battery, something on Dolly's maintenance list, never sounds. A neighbor smells the smoke and gets Freddie and Dolly's brother Christopher out safely. Christopher sustained a traumatic brain injury in a car accident at age eight and has a schizophrenia diagnosis, requiring constant support.

Dolly and Gus go straight to Brick Fish House, the family seafood shop founded by Dolly's great-grandfather, because Freddie is short-staffed. Freddie has carried decades of debt from a failed second store he opened to please Dolly's mother, Georgia, who craved a grander life. Georgia left the family when Dolly was 12, drifting to Virginia and eventually remarrying. In her absence, Dolly became the caretaker for Christopher, her younger sister Patsy, and the household.

After delivering shrimp to Eight Oaks, the sprawling Whitfield estate, Dolly encounters Stewart Whitfield on the road. Stewart, the eldest son of the wealthy family whose name adorns the town, stands beside his Range Rover with a flat tire and a dead phone. She changes the tire while a passerby snaps a photo. Stewart shows her a tabloid image of his fiancée, Audrey Mills, kissing a baseball player. His engagement has publicly collapsed.

The situation worsens when the fire chief reports that the roof is rotten and must be replaced for roughly $50,000, or the house could be condemned. Christopher's routine revolves around the house and his maple tree on the front porch, and Freddie is about to make his final debt payment. The next day, Stewart proposes an arrangement: He is competing with his cousin Grant for the CEO position at Whitfield Industries, but his parents worry he is a workaholic incapable of sustaining a personal life. He asks Dolly to pretend to be his girlfriend through the Starlight Gala in late August. Dolly names her price at $60,000, and Stewart accepts. Over dinner, they negotiate terms: two outings per week, no sex, no kissing, and touching only for show or emergencies. Stewart's family, except his sister Busy, cannot know.

Busy, a vibrant socialite who survived childhood cancer, takes Dolly shopping and to a salon for gowns, a gold dahlia pendant necklace, and a sharp new bob. Their first public outing is a cancer fundraiser in Providence, where Stewart gives a speech about Busy's illness and Dolly realizes this is why he became so serious at 17. On the ride home, she coaches him on hand-holding and compliments, and the physical chemistry between them becomes undeniable.

Their connection deepens when Stewart takes Dolly, Gus, and Gus's new friend Clay sailing on his wooden sailboat, Marian. At a hidden grotto with a waterfall, they share personal revelations: Stewart describes his first panic attack on the family yacht, and Dolly tells him about Gus's father, Niles, who gave her $300 and told her to "take care of it" (136) when she was pregnant. She bought a crib and has raised Gus alone. At a family dinner at Eight Oaks, Grant and Stewart's father, Henry, challenge Stewart's preservation-focused approach to business. Stewart leaves the table in distress, and Dolly finds him in the gardens having a panic attack. She coaches him through deep breathing and learns his deepest fear: that he will be the Whitfield who lets the family legacy collapse. They nearly kiss before Dolly pulls away.

The pretense gives way to genuine feeling. During a sunset cruise on Marian, Stewart confesses he thinks about kissing Dolly constantly. She kisses him first, then reframes the moment as "method acting" (195). When Gus hits his head at lifeguard camp and Dolly cannot get there, Stewart leaves work, picks Gus up, and brings him to Eight Oaks, where Stewart's mother, Victoria, a retired pediatrician, treats the wound. On the drive home, Gus asks if the relationship is still pretend. Dolly admits she likes Stewart very much.

Stewart invites Dolly to a pivotal business dinner in Boston. Henry pushes back on Stewart's San Francisco restoration project, but Dolly tells a story about Christopher's childhood experience at a beloved old ice cream parlor, connecting the preservation of buildings to the preservation of memory. Henry softens. That night at Dolly's apartment, Stewart tells her that everything about being with her "feels natural. Everything but not touching you" (241). They make love for the first time.

Their relationship becomes fully real. Stewart sneaks into the sleeping porch at night, gives Gus sailing lessons, and takes the family to a Red Sox game by helicopter. He tells Dolly he has never been this happy. She reciprocates but privately worries: Stewart wants children, and after a complicated pregnancy and emergency C-section, she has decided against another baby. She plans to address the issue after the gala.

At the Starlight Gala, Grant reveals the fake-dating contract to Henry after breaking into Stewart's briefcase. He learned about the arrangement from Christopher, who innocently mentioned the new roof and the exchange of money. Henry is furious, calling Dolly a "call girl." Dolly waits for Stewart to defend her, to say he loves her, to explain that the relationship became real. Instead, he focuses on the career damage, telling his father he "did it for the company" (285) and gesturing at Dolly without looking at her. He follows Henry inside, leaving Dolly alone in her white dress. When she finds him on the driveway, he offers to drop off a check. Dolly tells him to mail it.

Months of brief, formal texts follow, but Stewart does not call or visit. Over Thanksgiving, Patsy reveals she feels locked out by Dolly, resented for having had a normal childhood while Dolly sacrificed hers. Dolly acknowledges she has always made every decision for the family rather than for herself. She moves back to Whitfield permanently. When Gus develops meningitis on New Year's Day, Victoria treats him at the emergency room. Alone in the waiting room, Dolly confronts her rage toward her mother for walking away and resolves to stop letting people off the hook.

Dolly rebuilds. She bakes for the fish house, starts an online shipping business with Patsy, and brings Christopher into daily work at the store. In late January, she drives to Boston with her best friend, Naomi, and storms into Stewart's office, telling him he broke her heart and refusing to make his departure comfortable.

On the first Saturday of June, Stewart appears in Dolly's driveway. On the renovated sleeping porch he secretly paid for, he tells her he lost the CEO position to Grant but has restructured his role. He tells Dolly he confused who he was with what he did and that he fell in love with her for the first time in his life. Dolly says she still loves him but cannot accept anything temporary. Stewart promises he will never leave. They kiss, and Dolly describes it as feeling "like a promise" (349). He reveals he has been texting with Gus for months, a friendship Gus maintained on his own. The next morning, Stewart asks Freddie, Gus, and Christopher for permission to date Dolly. Gus agrees "on a trial basis" (350).

Twelve months later, they sail the family yacht to Nantucket with the extended family, conquering Stewart's lifelong fear. Dolly has expanded the fish house with a bakery counter. In the Eight Oaks vegetable garden, the same place they nearly kissed two summers before, Stewart proposes with his great-grandmother's ring hidden in a rosemary bush. He asks to adopt Gus, and Dolly agrees. The novel closes with Dolly imagining their wedding in the chapel she dreamed about as a child, reflecting that she is finally "at home with herself now, Dolly all the time" (363).