The Identicals(4)

“That’ll be forty-two dollars,” Sadie said.



Harper has a hard time imagining Reed and Sadie together at home. She knows which house is theirs—it’s in West Tisbury, near the Field Gallery—but she’s never been inside. She can more easily imagine the Zimmers sitting side by side in the sand in front of the fire at Lambert’s Cove. Maybe Sadie has a beautiful singing voice, whereas Harper—although she loves to sing at the top of her lungs in the Rooster Express delivery truck—can’t carry a tune. It isn’t a competition, Harper knows, not in a column-of-pros-and-cons way. Love is a mystery.

One of Billy’s nurses, Dee, pokes her head into the room. “How you holding up?”

Harper tries to nod—Okay—but all she can do is stare. “I can’t reach Dr. Zimmer,” she says, then she worries that she has just given it all away. “I mean, I know he’s not on call, but I thought I should tell him. Billy was his favorite patient.”

Dee gives Harper an indulgent smile, and Harper nearly expects her to say that all Dr. Zimmer’s patients are his favorites; that is the wonder of Dr. Zimmer. Then Harper worries that Dee is waiting for her to vacate the room; after all, she is no longer a paying customer.

But instead Dee says, “You were good to him, Harper. In some ways, you’ll probably find this is a blessing.”

A blessing? Harper thinks angrily. She wants to tell Dee to go eat some more cake, but then she wonders if maybe Dee is right. For the past ten months, Harper’s entire existence has consisted of worrying that Billy was going to die. Now that he’s gone, she is, in a way, free. There is nothing else to worry about. But she is left with a heavy mantle of grief, sadness so intense and piercing it should have another name. Since her parents’ divorce, when she was seventeen, Billy has been “her” parent. He was her friend, her hero, her unfailing ally, her everyday companion. She could not have dreamed up a better father—and now he’s gone.

Gone.

Harper wipes away her tears, sucks in a sustaining breath, and says, like the brave soldier Billy believed her to be, “Onward.”

“Atta girl,” Dee says. “I’ll go fetch Billy’s things.”



Onward: as per Billy’s wishes, his body will be cremated, and his memorial reception will be held at the Farm Neck Golf Club. Once Harper sells Billy’s house, she will be able to quit her job at Rooster Express, a desperation job she got three years ago when Jude fired her from Garden Goddesses following the Joey Bowen catastrophe. And then what will Harper do? She could, in theory, start her own landscaping company. She’s sure the clients still ask for her, and not just because she used to mow their lawns in a bikini top. She is a nice person and a good person, despite circumstantial evidence to the contrary.

Dee reappears with paperwork for Harper to sign and a large Ziploc bag containing Billy’s clothes and belongings, including the gold 1954 Omega watch he inherited from his own father, which was the possession he had treasured the most. Billy Frost had come to Martha’s Vineyard in 1995, left flat broke by his divorce from Eleanor, and he had floundered, Harper knew, just as she had that same year as a freshman at Tulane. Billy had scavenged work as an electrical contractor, picking up scraps and leftovers from people like Buttons Jones. He had befriended the guys who cut down trees and moved houses and insulated crawl spaces; he befriended the fishermen and first mates, the transients and junkies who hung out at the Wharf pub and who, when they were flush, bothered Carmen, the bartender at Coop DeVille.

But Billy always wore his watch, the gold Omega, and this had set him apart.

What will Harper do with the watch? She has no one to pass it on to.

Tabitha has Ainsley, but what does a sixteen-year-old girl want with a gold 1954 Omega? Harper thinks of Ainsley’s father, Wyatt. Billy had been fond of Wyatt, but can Harper ever suggest that Wyatt take the watch? No.

Tabitha is a toothache that can’t be ignored for another second. Six weeks earlier, when Billy got really bad, Harper copied Tabitha’s cell number out of Billy’s contacts and, with the help of half a dozen Amity Island ales and three shots of J?germeister, left Tabitha a voice mail informing her that if she wanted to see Billy one last time before he died, she had better do it soon. Tabitha had never responded—no surprise there. Harper wishes she had called Tabitha while sober, because she fears she slurred her words in the message, making it that much easier to disregard and delete.

Billy’s death warrants another phone call, but Harper is too angry to conduct one civilly. Did Tabitha deign to listen to the message? Did she come visit? Has she set foot on the Vineyard even once since the death of her son, Julian, fourteen years ago? She has not. Nantucket is 11.2 miles away, so it certainly hasn’t been an issue of proximity.

Harper sends Tabitha the same text. Billy is gone. And then, once safely inside her Bronco, Harper breaks down and calls Dr. Zimmer.

The phone rings six times, then he answers, voice hushed. Harper imagines he has stepped away from the bonfire and is standing in the shadows.

He says, “I’m sorry, Harper. I thought there was more time. Weeks.”

What kind of doctor is he? She wants to believe him incompetent or hate him, but she can’t. Reed gives everything he has to his patients. He stays late to do rounds; he never rushes; he is thoughtful, consistent, kind, clear. Not once in ten months did Harper ever feel like he wanted or needed to be someplace else; Billy might have been his only patient. Dr. Zimmer would, on occasion, show up with a surprise or treat for Billy—the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue; an arrowhead he’d discovered on a hike; a box of Stoner Food from Enchanted Chocolates, which he knew Billy loved (and technically wasn’t allowed to have). Reed Zimmer was like a doctor from TV, but better because he was real. He was both handsome and human. Sometimes he had bags under his eyes from staying up all night; sometimes he had scruff on his face or mussed hair. Sometimes he showed up wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt under his white coat. How could Harper have done anything but fall in love with him?