The Identicals(15)

“So,” Ainsley says. “You came home early. How was your night?”

Oh, how Tabitha would love to change the tenor of the evening by sinking into the Gervin and telling her daughter about her night—the party on the Belle, meeting the captain, going to Nautilus, bumping into Ramsay. But Tabitha recognizes Ainsley’s words for what they are: a strategy. Ainsley has never once asked Tabitha about her night. Ainsley is painfully self-absorbed. Ainsley asking now is Ainsley wanting to butter Tabitha up so that Tabitha forgets she’s supposed to punish Ainsley.

It doesn’t matter how Tabitha fields the question, because at that moment Ainsley finds the cup in the kitchen that contains her submerged phone. The scream could shatter glass.

Tabitha feels a childish sense of triumph. Gotcha, she thinks.



Later, when Tabitha is lying in Ainsley’s bed—she isn’t about to sleep in her own bed after what happened—and Tabitha is wondering just whose flawed genes her daughter inherited, she remembers Harper’s text. She checks her phone. It is now 12:15 a.m., the hour she was expected home.

She clicks on Vineyard Haven, MA.

The text says: Billy is gone.





AINSLEY


They are going to Martha’s Vineyard.

Billy is dead. Billy is the only grandfather Ainsley has ever known, because her father’s father, Wyatt senior, died before Ainsley was born.

Ainsley, Tabitha, and Ainsley’s grandmother, Eleanor, take the fast ferry from Nantucket to Oak Bluffs. While standing in line, Ainsley accidentally refers to it as Oaks Bluff, and she is reprimanded by a woman even older than Grammie who is standing behind her. This woman puts a hand on Ainsley’s shoulder and says, “One tree, many bluffs. Or, more likely, one kind of tree, many bluffs.”

“Whatever,” Ainsley says.

Eleanor pipes up. “One needs to know.”

Ainsley nearly rolls her eyes in her mother’s direction until she remembers that she hates her mother. Tabitha intentionally destroyed Ainsley’s phone, and thus Ainsley has no way to get hold of anyone—not Emma, not Teddy. Her mother kept her in the house all weekend, even though it was beautiful weather. Her mother didn’t go to yoga class and, even more shocking, didn’t go to check on things at the boutique.

Ainsley had said, “You can go into the store for a few hours, Tabitha. I’m not going to go anywhere.” (This was a barefaced lie. As soon as Tabitha pulled out of the driveway, Ainsley intended to ride her bike to Teddy’s.)

Tabitha said, “Grammie is going in for me.”

“Grammie?” Ainsley said. Eleanor is a designer. She is an artist and a genius, but she has not, to Ainsley’s knowledge, ever gone into the boutique to manage or supervise. That has always been Tabitha’s job.

“Yes,” Tabitha said. She had given Ainsley her fakest smile. “I’m staying here with you.”

Spending two days shut up in the house without a phone had been a living hell. Because Billy had died, Tabitha spent most of the time mooning around. She pulled out old photo albums—all photo albums were old, Ainsley knew, but these were really old—displaying pictures of her mother and Aunt Harper when they were babies. Tabitha had encouraged Ainsley to join her on the sofa, which smelled like marijuana smoke and probably would forever, a fact that secretly pleased Ainsley. Tabitha had said, “You should see these. These are pictures from when we were a whole family. Your grandparents are married, and Harper and I are wearing matching outfits.”

Ainsley did not deign to respond. Her mother could ground her, and her mother could drown her phone, but her mother could not make her speak.

Ainsley spent the majority of her time in lockdown worrying. Ainsley and Teddy had planned on going to dinner at the Jetties, where, it was rumored, G. Love was going to play a surprise set. They had heard this from Teddy’s uncle Graham, who would be shucking oysters and clams at the raw bar. With Ainsley grounded, Teddy might offer to take Emma to the Jetties instead. As Ainsley lay in bed watching reruns of Chopped on TV, Emma and Teddy might be drunk and swaying together in the crush of people energized by G. Love’s magical appearance. They might kiss. Emma is a thrill seeker without morals; she would think nothing of stealing Ainsley’s boyfriend. Ainsley wants to hate Emma, but she can’t, so Ainsley hates Tabitha.

Tabitha had started drinking wine at five o’clock—the expensive Nicolas-Jay Pinot Noir, from the Willamette Valley in Oregon, that she used to drink before Ramsay put her on rosé. Tabitha had then asked Ainsley if she wanted a glass.

Ainsley had thrown her mother a look of contempt. What mixed messages she was sending! The whole reason Ainsley was under house arrest was because she had been drinking (and smoking weed and turning the living room into a frat house), and what does Tabitha do? Offer Ainsley a glass of wine. Ainsley was so agitated about the Emma-Teddy scenario forming in her mind that she could have used a drink. But three years earlier, when Ainsley was first experimenting with alcohol, she had consumed a bottle and a half of the Nicolas-Jay Pinot Noir. It was delicious, she’d thought initially—like a rich, plummy juice. But shortly afterward, she’d started puking purple. She would never drink red wine again.

Tabitha passed out by nine, and Ainsley would have sneaked out at that point, except that Eleanor had been alerted to her granddaughter’s escapades, and an alarm had been activated that would sound if anyone broke the threshold of the driveway in either direction. There would be no coming or going that night.