The Identicals(44)

“Her…” Clark Kent fish-mouths as he searches for words.

“Her twin sister. I live on Martha’s Vineyard.”

Clark Kent nods once. “She told me about you.”

“Well, that’s something,” Harper says. “We haven’t communicated much in the past decade and a half, but last week our father died…”

Clark Kent’s eyes widen.

“…and on Monday evening, our mother fell down and broke her hip.”

Here Clark Kent gasps. “Eleanor?”

Harper tilts her head. “How do you know my sister?”

Clark Kent straightens up and offers Harper his hand. “I’m being terribly rude. I’m sorry. My name is Ramsay Striker. I’m… or I was… well, I lived with your sister… Tabitha… I dated Tabitha for four years, lived with her for three. We broke up in February.”

“Ah,” Harper says. She studies the guy: tall, successful looking, well dressed. Tabitha’s type, or what Harper has always pictured as Tabitha’s type, although the only real boyfriend of Tabitha’s that Harper has ever met is Wyatt, who was not Tabitha’s type. Which is one reason—of many, she supposes—that it didn’t work out between them.

Harper would like to pin Ramsay Striker to a board like a butterfly specimen and ask him ten thousand questions.

As if reading Harper’s mind, Ramsay Striker checks his watch. “Do you want to go grab a drink?” he asks.



It’s the lunch hour, and places will be crowded, Ramsay says, so he suggests “the brewery” because Harper can bring her dog.

Brilliant, Harper thinks. Ramsay is thoughtful. And, as it turns out, the brewery—CISCO BREWERS, the sign says—is the perfect laid-back place to go on a mild, sunny afternoon.

Harper loves Nantucket already!

The brewery features a large brick patio surrounded by rustic farm buildings. One building sells beer, another sells wine, and yet another sells spirits. Perched on a stool with a golden retriever at his feet is a long-haired guy playing the guitar. There are a few dozen people sitting at picnic tables, drinking and eating guacamole and chips or oysters from the food trucks.

Ramsay and Harper choose an empty picnic table, and Ramsay says, “How does a beer and a lobster roll sound?”

Harper loves a man who instinctively knows what a particular moment calls for. “Like heaven,” she says.



Harper limits herself to two beers and just a sip of the third because she still has to go to the store and make it back to the carriage house before Ainsley gets home from school. She has told Ramsay about herself and Tabitha growing up—all the way to the divorce and the family divided between two islands.

Ramsay says, “So why the rift between you and Tabitha?”

Why the rift? So many reasons, starting with that fateful game of rock, paper, scissors. Harper tries, for the ten thousandth time, to imagine what would have happened if Tabitha had chosen scissors instead of rock. It would have been hellish to watch Tabitha roll away with Billy while Harper was trapped with Eleanor in the mausoleum on Pinckney Street. The furniture in that house was all two hundred years old—heavy, dark, and ornate with brocade upholstery and velvet drapes; the library was filled with dusty books, and oil portraits of their creepy Roxie ancestors hung on the walls. Would she have hated Tabitha? Yes, she supposes she would have. But she wouldn’t have become Eleanor’s disciple. That had been Tabitha’s willful choice.

Other things had happened to Tabitha that had been beyond her control.

Julian.

Harper is not going there.

She realizes that information has only been flowing one way during this lunch. Ramsay hasn’t divulged anything about his relationship with Tabitha, and they’re running out of time. It’s already two o’clock.

“How are you able to do this?” Harper asks.

“This?”

“Take a two-hour brewery lunch.”

“Oh.” Ramsay laughs and nudges his glasses up his nose. “My name is on the door. Family business on Main Street. Insurance.”

“Why did my sister let you go?” she asks.

“Wow,” Ramsay says. “Nice reversal.”

“Thank you.” Harper smiles at him. “I don’t know why I’m assuming it was she who broke up with you. It might have been you—”

“No, it was Tabitha,” Ramsay says. But he doesn’t seem inclined to add anything more, and Harper takes the hint.

She says, “This has been really fun. Thank you for lunch. But I have to go. I’m pretty sure Ainsley gets home from school between three and three thirty.”

“She does,” Ramsay says. “Assuming she’s not staying for detention.”

“Detention?” Harper says. “Is Ainsley a bad kid?”

“She’s a great kid,” Ramsay says. “But she’s been given no boundaries, so she pretty much does whatever she wants.”

“No boundaries?” Harper says.

“None,” Ramsay says. He holds up his palms in a gesture of surrender. “It’ll be good for her to have a different authority figure.”

“I’m only staying six days,” Harper says. “Seven at the most.”

“Give her all the love you can,” Ramsay says. “And some from me as well. Tell her I miss her.”