Hollis returns with Laura

Hollis returns with Laura after more than two years away, bringing home both an unexpected declaration of love and a relationship whose terms are less settled than he first suggests. His arrival reunites him with Auden, Robert, Heidi, and Thisbe, but Laura’s resemblance to Auden’s mother and the couple’s contrasting ideas about commitment make the gathering more complicated than a straightforward homecoming. In the aftermath, Hollis recognizes that Auden, too, has changed during her summer in Colby.

The Call and the Decision to Return

Hollis’s return begins with a phone call while Auden is at a party. It is nearly midnight, and she has spent the evening trying to keep up with the gathering while repeatedly thinking over what she saw on the boardwalk with Eli and Belissa. When the phone rings, she answers too quickly, briefly hoping it might be Eli; then she remembers that he does not have her number. The caller is her brother, whose unpredictable presence in her life has often left her wondering what he will do next.

Hollis announces that he is in love. He has been traveling for a couple of years, but says he cut the trip short and took a plane to follow Laura back to Colby. The scale of that decision is characteristic of his way of thinking: he treats the journey as long in calendar time but short in relation to the larger commitment he has suddenly made. He tells Auden that he and Laura are looking for an apartment and that he plans to sign up for fall classes. He also wants to visit the family and introduce Laura to Robert, Heidi, and the baby. The call therefore presents the return as more than a temporary stop: Hollis is imagining a settled life in Colby, even as the certainty of his plans has not yet been matched by Laura’s.

The Homecoming and Laura’s Resemblance

When Hollis arrives, Robert calls upstairs to announce him. Auden joins Heidi and Thisbe at the top of the stairs as Robert opens the front door. Hollis has been gone for more than two years, yet Auden finds him much the same, except that he is a little thinner and his hair has grown shaggier. Laura steps out of the passenger side of the silver Honda, and Auden initially finds her familiar without understanding why. Heidi identifies the resemblance: Laura looks like Auden’s mother.

The likeness is specific and striking. Laura has the same long dark hair, dark clothes, and very pale skin; she is somewhat shorter and curvier, but those differences do little to lessen the effect on Auden. As Laura and Hollis come closer, the resemblance unsettles her further. The detail gives the reunion an unexpected emotional complication: the new person Hollis has brought into the family appears, in some of her most immediately visible features, to recall someone central to Auden’s family history.

Hollis greets Thisbe exuberantly, lifting her high over his head and joking that she is going to be trouble. While Robert and Heidi laugh, Laura watches from beside them, holding her sunglasses with a clinical-seeming expression. After Hollis has made faces at the baby, Laura clears her throat, prompting him to hand Thisbe to Robert and bring Laura into the group. His introduction calls her his fiancée, but her response immediately qualifies the label: they have not actually become engaged. Hollis explains the discrepancy through his own readiness, acknowledging that he is prepared even if Laura is not.

Impulse, Deliberation, and Family Tension

Laura makes clear that she regards marriage as serious and should not be rushed. Hollis treats this caution with affectionate amusement, presenting Laura as someone who may temper his impulsiveness. Robert, by contrast, says that the family loves that quality in Hollis. Laura does not simply reject it: she grants that impulsiveness can be charming while also arguing for the appeal of deliberation. The exchange sets out a real difference between them without turning it into a rupture. Hollis’s declaration of love is sincere in the account, but his readiness to call Laura his fiancée outruns her stated position.

Robert begins to answer Laura in a sharper tone, but Heidi interrupts to suggest that the travelers must be tired and offers drinks. The moment leaves the disagreement unresolved. It also places Laura, almost immediately, in a conversation with Robert that will continue through the family’s discussions of serious subjects. At lunch, the talk turns to environmental policy; over cocktails, Robert and Laura debate university funding, liberal arts, and sciences; and a two-hour family dinner later becomes an argument between them about capital punishment. Auden experiences the sequence as a replay of the arguments that shaped her parents’ marriage, with Laura occupying the role associated with her mother. The resemblance is thus not only physical: Laura’s presence in sustained debate with Robert also brings an old family pattern vividly to mind.

What Hollis Sees in Auden

After that dinner, Auden and Eli go shopping at Park Mart at one thirty in the morning. The store is nearly empty on a Monday night, and its quiet is a relief after the family’s prolonged discussions. As they move through the store, Auden describes Laura as very different from the other women Hollis has dated. Hollis’s new relationship has become a subject she is still trying to place, especially against the familiar pattern of Robert debating with a woman who recalls her mother.

Hollis later turns the comparison toward Auden. He tells her that she is different in Colby, and when she points out that she has been there only a month, he answers that a great deal can happen in that time. He offers himself as evidence: in two weeks he met the woman he calls his future wife, changed the direction of his life, and bought his first tie. The tie supplies a small, concrete counterpoint to the scale of his announced plans. More importantly, Hollis says that seeing Auden with her friends makes him happy. His homecoming therefore registers change on both sides: he has abruptly redirected his own future, while he recognizes a social ease in Auden that she did not have before her summer in Colby. The return closes not with a settled engagement or a resolved family debate, but with each sibling noticing that life has begun to move differently.