The Identicals(35)

Fish follows Harper around as she tucks things in boxes.

“Go lie down,” Harper says, pointing to his Orvis bed. But he won’t.

“I’m not going to leave you behind,” Harper says, and she kisses his snout and rubs his back, his mostly black fur silvered now.

She throws away everything in the fridge and most of what’s in the cabinets. What should she do with Billy’s ashes? she wonders. She doesn’t want to leave them here, in the nearly empty duplex, but taking them off the Vineyard feels wrong as well.

She decides to take them over to Billy’s house, where she places the urn on his mantel. Billy’s clothes she’ll donate, but later. When? When she comes back?

Yes, she decides. She will come back in a few weeks, a month or two, by the end of the summer. For now, she takes Billy’s invoices and accounts-payable file; she can work on his paperwork while Ainsley is at school this week.

Before she leaves the house, she snaps a bunch of pictures—every room and the yard, so she has them for posterity. She has decided to sell the house as a teardown, which pains her. As bad as it might have been, it was Billy’s. But the idea of a gut renovation—finding talented, available, reasonably priced people to hire, then managing them—is simply not an option. Harper has been fired; she has no income. She doesn’t have the money to pay for a renovation. Billy has around ninety grand in his savings account, but according to Polly Childs, it will cost nearly double that to do the work required. Harper will have to sell the house as is, pay off Billy’s mortgage, and split the difference with Tabitha. That part can’t be avoided. Harper had taken Billy to his lawyer in Edgartown, and they went over the terms of the will: everything was to be split down the middle with Tabitha. Mrs. Tobias had served as a witness. If they sell the house as is, they will each walk with a hundred grand, maybe a little more. Would it be nice to sell it for a million and get triple that amount? Sure. But Harper isn’t up for the challenge.



Harper wants to see Reed, but she can’t call him and she can’t text him. She cannot walk into the hospital to confront him in person, which is what she has wanted to do since he left the reception.

But Harper does drive through the hospital parking lot; Reed’s Lexus is there. It looks the same; nothing about it announces a major upheaval in his life.

What is it like for him at home now? Harper imagines the air is crackling with things unsaid. How has he explained the affair to Sadie? Has he said it was a mistake, a lapse in judgment? Has he blamed Harper, called her a vixen, a temptress? Has he told Sadie he loves Harper? Has he admitted to being torn and confused? And what has he said to Greenie? Reed isn’t a demonstrative man. He is serious and discreet; he is a doctor. Being caught like this, talked about, discussed as the object of gossip and rumors, must be soul-shredding for him.

Harper blames the whole affair on the Morning Glory Farm market.

In the weeks preceding the visit to the farm, Harper had logged in a lot of hours at the hospital with Billy, back when his problems were treatable. Dr. Zimmer had been the man in charge of Billy’s medical care. He explained what was going on with Billy’s kidneys, his liver, and his heart. He went over the medications in meticulous detail with Harper. Also, he talked to her about Billy’s diet and exercise, what he was allowed to do and what he wasn’t. It was all very professional. Only once had he laid a hand on Harper’s arm and said, “He’s lucky to have a daughter like you.”

Harper had responded, “He’s been an excellent father to me my entire life. I’m the lucky one.”

When Harper bumped into Dr. Zimmer at the counter at the Morning Glory Farm market, she had recognized him but couldn’t place him. He was wearing a tight, colorful biking outfit and a helmet and wraparound sunglasses. Harper was standing at the counter, where she was about to order a Morning Glory muffin fresh out of the oven. The market was engulfed in the aroma of cinnamon, raisins, orange zest, and toasted pecans.

“Harper!” Dr. Zimmer had said. He smiled at her, and Harper thought, Wait a minute. Who is this guy? Then, an instant later, she figured it out.

“Dr. Zimmer!” She checked out his spandex; he looked like he was wearing the flag of Uganda. “I didn’t know you biked.”

Dr. Zimmer nodded at his Fuji, leaning up against a tree. “Stress-relieving hobby,” he said. “Do you have time for a cup of coffee—my treat?”

“Sure,” Harper said. “Thank you.” She rarely hung around the Morning Glory because there was too great a chance she would bump into Jude or Jude’s partner, Stella, or someone who worked for Jude. And, sadly, Harper didn’t have friends she could meet at the farm for coffee and a muffin. She occasionally brought Fish with her for companionship, but Fish always attracted attention because he was so darn good looking, and attention was precisely what Harper wanted to avoid. To sit with Dr. Zimmer was a good thing, though, she thought. Dr. Zimmer was a revered member of the community, and he would lend Harper respectability by association.

They had sat at the picnic tables under the oaks for the better part of an hour. They started out talking about Billy—Harper confessed that Billy was still smoking one cigarette a day despite the fatwa on tobacco—then they wandered off topic, experimentally at first.

Dr. Zimmer had said, “Do you have siblings? Other family?”

Harper sipped her pumpkin-flavored coffee; this was the first time it had been available since the previous fall. It was a natural question to ask, she supposed, but it put the pleasantness of the encounter at risk.