The Shampoo Effect

While rushing to catch a train in Boston, Massachusetts, Caroline Lash, a 28-year-old writer, accidentally steps on a jelly donut, splattering red filling on her jeans. A fellow passenger, Van Whittaker, offers her napkins and makes an ambiguously sympathetic comment that Caroline tries to correct but can’t before he leaves. After moving to the small town of Greenhead, Massachusetts, for an 18-month writing fellowship sponsored by the Palmer Preston Foundation, Caroline runs into Van again. She clarifies the donut incident, and he later leaves an apology donut on her car.

Caroline recently quit her job as an editor at a New York publishing house, a position she secured through her mother, best-selling author Gwendolyn Lash. Caroline left after publishing one of her own short stories in The New Yorker, hoping to establish a career outside her mother’s influence.

Caroline and Van meet a third time at the local Crane Castle, where he reveals that he’s an environmental scientist who works on the property. They begin a whirlwind romance. A few months later, Van reveals that his high-school flame, Bailey Newmarch, is pregnant with his child. Van explains that they slept together in January, before he met Caroline, as part of a years-long on-and-off pattern since high school.