The Identicals(113)

If Ramsay does come in the fall, he will learn that Harper is pregnant. She imagines meeting him at the ferry with her rounded belly—surprise!



It had been hardest, of course, to say good-bye to Ainsley. There were so many things Harper wanted to tell her niece: Be a good girl, be kind to your mother, be patient with your grandmother, don’t drink until your twenty-first birthday, then you and I will drink together, good champagne. Don’t smoke, ever. Never fall in love, fall in love with abandon, things will make sense when you’re older, things will never make sense. Life isn’t fair, make good decisions, don’t beat yourself up when you make bad decisions, value yourself the way I value you. Travel. Listen. Question. Wear sunscreen, use birth control, don’t buy tomatoes out of season. I will miss you. You are a wonderful, talented child, Ainsley, and I’m only ever a boat ride away. And then, last but not least: Scissors cut paper, rock smashes scissors, paper covers rock.

Ainsley said, “Next summer can I come live with you on the Vineyard and be your nanny?”

Nanny? Harper hadn’t yet thought of herself as a person who would need a nanny. But for Ainsley’s sake, she smiled and said without hesitation, “Absolutely.”



She leaves Tabitha at Billy’s house to take a shower and pack, and she drops Fish and her belongings off at the duplex. Fish collapses on his Orvis bed and closes his blue eyes and Harper is glad. She feared he would want to go with her when she left, but she needs to do this alone.

“I’ll be back in a little while, bud,” she says.

Fish doesn’t even lift his head.



Sheep Crossing: she knows the road, although as a delivery person she has overshot it half a dozen times at least. It’s nothing more than a slender dirt-and-sand path, really, with a tiny wooden sign half hidden by overgrown brush. Harper turns onto the road, blood rushing in her ears, anxiety coursing through her in a way that can’t be good for the baby.

We’re going to meet your father, she thinks.

She pulls into the first driveway on the left, as Tabitha said to do, and there is the Lexus and there is Reed’s bike. Harper is sweating now, and her breathing is shallow; her nerves are in control. She turns off the car and sits, then thinks, Well, this is it. She walks up to the door and knocks.

“Hello?”

Harper turns at the voice. A man—not Reed—is strolling across the lawn holding a bottle of Scotch. The man has a handlebar mustache waxed into curlicues, and despite the heat, Harper shivers. She can handle just about any variation on a man’s appearance—after all, for three years she lived with Rooster’s cockscomb, and before that she lived with Joey Bowen’s mullet—but she cannot tolerate a handlebar mustache.

The man offers his hand, and Harper shakes it expediently.

“I’m Dick Davenport, the neighbor,” he says. “Would you be looking for Dr. Zimmer?”

Dick Davenport? she thinks. The name fits him perfectly: he’s half barbershop quartet, half 1970s porn star. “I would be,” she says, wishing she had paid attention at Winsor when they were learning about tense in English class. Would be is the conditional? Past conditional?

“He’s not home,” Dick says. “I took him to the ferry around lunchtime. I was just stopping by to drop off this Laphroaig as a thank you. Reed collected my newspapers while I was home in Atlanta.”

“Oh,” Harper says. Dick looks like he wants to hand her the Scotch. “You took him to the ferry? Was he going somewhere?”

“Yes,” Dick says. He gives Harper a conspicuous once-over. “You’re very, very pretty. You aren’t single by any chance, are you? I would love to take you to dinner. How about tonight? I happen to know the new reservationist at the Covington.”

Harper is completely blindsided. The neighbor of the house where Reed is hiding—or was hiding, as he has apparently left on the ferry for parts unknown—is asking her on a date. “Thank you, but I can’t. I’m having dinner with my sister tonight.”

“I’ll take you both out,” Dick says. “Is she as pretty as you?”

“Maybe another time,” Harper says. She takes a few steps backwards until she is an arm’s length away from the Bronco, and she watches as Dick sets the Scotch inside the screen door. She slips into the driver’s seat, doesn’t bother with the seat belt. She can’t get out of there fast enough.

Dick waves. Harper throws the car in reverse.



When she gets back to Billy’s house, Tabitha is sitting on one of the brand-new kitchen stools, drinking a glass of champagne. The bottle is on the counter next to her, and Harper blinks, thinking she’s seeing things. It’s Billecart-Salmon rosé, the same champagne that Harper brought to Nantucket fourteen years earlier, the champagne they drank together on the end of the dock while skimming their feet against the water’s surface. Does Tabitha realize this? Did she choose this champagne on purpose? She must have: very little escapes her sister. So is this a sign, then? Tabitha has forgiven Harper? She’s ready to move on? For real?

Harper is unconvinced.

“Get a glass from the cabinet,” Tabitha says. “I’ll pour you a teensy bit.”

“Did you find Franklin?” Harper asks.

“Called him, went straight to voice mail. Went to his house. His truck is there, but he’s not home. I peeked in the windows.”