The Identicals(54)

Tabitha is ashamed at how relieved she feels at being let off the hook. She is livid at Ainsley—she hates thinking that her daughter is capable of an act so stupid and cruel—but neither can she bear to think of Ainsley suffering at the hands of the other kids. She sends Ainsley a text.

Tabitha: You okay?

Ainsley: What do you care?

Tabitha: I’m still your mother.

Ainsley: So?

Tabitha: So I love you.

Ainsley: Whatever, Tabitha.

Tabitha reads this exchange over again and again until tears blur her eyes. She wants to go back to Nantucket and shake her daughter—or hug her. But she tells herself that the way to be the best parent right now is to stay away. If Tabitha were to walk in the house and take back the reins, Ainsley would do something even more destructive than she’s already done. Tabitha is sure of it.



Deliverance shortly arrives in the person of Tabitha’s aunt Flossie, Eleanor’s sister, from Palm Beach.

Flossie is a firecracker. She’s eight years younger than Eleanor, but she looks and acts like she’s Tabitha’s age. She is a self-declared trophy wife, married to an eighty-five-year-old descendant of Henry Flagler. She plays tennis, she shops, she lunches, and, in the winters, she works three days a week at the Eleanor Roxie-Frost boutique on Worth Avenue.

When Flossie arrives at the town house on Pinckney Street, she apologizes for not coming sooner. “I was on a cruise when you called, and then when I got home, I still didn’t want to come. Boston is depressing, and my sister is a bitch on her best day. But then I thought about you. No one should be subjected to Eleanor like this. You’ve done enough, Pony.” She makes a shooing motion with her hand. “I hereby set you free.”

Tabitha goes up to her room to pack her things to go home—but then she remembers that she and Harper have a deal.

The thought is not unappealing: she will go to the Vineyard.





HARPER


Meghan is the most miserable pregnant person Harper has ever seen. It doesn’t help that the island has been experiencing record high temperatures and that Meghan is four days past due. And yet still the poor creature comes to work at the boutique—because the boutique has air-conditioning and her house does not. She also wants to make sure Harper and Ainsley learn everything about the store before she goes into labor. Harper gets the feeling Meghan is saying a permanent good-bye; she has the giddy air of escape. But maybe that’s just the hormones.

The Nantucket boutique is different from the Palm Beach store because, in addition to selling the Eleanor Roxie-Frost label, it sells Milly, Tibi, DVF, Nanette Lepore, Parker, Alice and Olivia, and Rebecca Taylor.

“This was Tabitha’s idea, and she really had to push your mother to do it,” Meghan confides. “I think Tabitha was growing weary of all ERF all the time.”

“Tell me about it,” Harper says. Working at the boutique is part of the deal, she knows, but she is, quite possibly, the least qualified woman in America to do so. In the twenty years she’s lived on the Vineyard, she has spent a sum total of two or three minutes thinking about what to wear. Now, as she browses the racks and shelves of dresses and skirts, pants, blouses, summer-weight sweaters, halter tops, shorts, blazers, sandals, belts, scarves, and the impulse-buy display of lacy thong underwear and stick-on bras, she sees that maybe she has missed out. The prints, the silks, the sequins, the feathers—it’s all alluring, sexy, chic.

“I’m going to be frank with you,” Meghan says. Meghan’s dishwater blond hair is pulled back in a sweaty bun, and her pale face is puffed like a marshmallow. Her fingers and ankles are swollen. She is wearing a stretch maternity dress in kelly green, which makes her look like a vegetable—a pea or a brussels sprout. “This store has a bad reputation.”

“How so?” Harper says.

“People think we’re snooty,” Meghan says. “Because we are snooty. Your mother and your sister train us to sniff out who’s buying big and who’s not, and we are to treat the customers accordingly. Tabitha doesn’t like browsers, and she positively hates tryer-oners.”

Ainsley nods emphatically. “She complains about them all the time. The people who try on eight or nine different outfits but buy nothing.”

“There are a couple of people she’s banned from the store,” Meghan says.

Harper laughs. “Is that even legal?”

“No,” Ainsley and Meghan say together.

Meghan says, “She doesn’t let men go into the dressing rooms because one time a couple had oral sex in there.”

“The girl was loud. Everyone heard,” Ainsley says.

“Good God,” Harper says.

“Men have to stay in this part of the store,” Meghan says. She points to two leather wing chairs over by the three-way mirror. “These are the appraising chairs.”

“Or they can stand,” Ainsley says. “But not within peeking distance of the dressing rooms.”

“Classical music only,” Meghan says. “I tried Billie Holiday one day…”

“Mom blew her stack,” Ainsley says.

“There is one piece of good news,” Meghan says. Then she places her hands under her prodigious belly and groans. “Braxton Hicks.”

“Oh, dear,” Harper says. Harper is getting a funny feeling about Meghan. She’s like a champagne cork about to pop.