The Identicals(72)

“You and Candace are still a couple, though, right?” Ainsley says.

Teddy scuffs the toe of his plastic-looking Top-Sider against the wooden floor. “Honestly, I’m not sure. She hangs out with Emma all the time now. They go to the beach together every day. Neither of them has to work. They go to parties with all the summer kids.”

“That’s what I did last summer with Emma,” Ainsley says.

“Yeah,” Teddy says. “It’s like Candace is you now. The new you.”

“If Candace is the new me, then who am I?”

Teddy gives her the slow cowboy smile. Ainsley basks in the warmth of his gaze—he’s looking at her the way he used to—and she nearly falls into that golden pond. But no. She will not be such a pushover.

“Ladies’ room?” she asks.

Teddy snaps back to his senses. “Behind you,” he says.

“Thanks,” Ainsley says. “See you around.”



When Ainsley returns to the table, Caylee says, “I was about to send a search party.”

Ainsley spears a juicy chunk of pineapple. She thinks she handled Teddy pretty well, considering. She didn’t tear up or beg him to take her back. She wasn’t snotty or disdainful or sarcastic, even when he asked her the offensive question about Caylee being her babysitter. She had been pleasant, calm, even-tempered. If Candace is the new Ainsley, then maybe Ainsley is now the old Ainsley, the person she had been before meeting Emma.

Ainsley’s phone pings.

“Hmm… wonder who that could be,” Caylee says, but she sounds like she already knows.

Ainsley checks the display. It’s Teddy.

I miss you, the text says. Can I call you sometime?





TABITHA


Finding a contractor to work on Billy’s house is going to be more challenging than Tabitha imagined. It’s not like choosing a dry cleaner or a pizza delivery place. Billy’s house doesn’t have Wi-Fi—the house is resolutely stuck in 1993—so Tabitha resorts to using the good old Martha’s Vineyard phone book, which she finds on the mantel next to the urn containing Billy’s ashes. She turns to the back, the business listings, and looks under “General Contractors.” There are dozens and dozens of them, and for a moment she is heartened. She doesn’t know any of these builders from Adam, so she decides she’ll start with AA Vineyard Builders and proceed alphabetically from there.

1. “…waiting list of three years…”

2. “Sorry: we’re booked solid for the foreseeable future…”

3. “Is the project inside? I may be able to sub out my New Bedford team in January…”

4. “What’s the last name again?” “Frost,” Tabitha says. Click.

5. No answer.

6. Voice mail. Tabitha leaves a message.

7. “I’m sorry. We can’t take on any new projects at the moment.”

8. “Frost, as in Harper Frost, that chick who ratted out Joey Bowen?” Click.

9. “I’ll have my husband or his partner call you back by the end of the month at the very latest.”

10. “Sorry.”

11. “Sorry.”

12. “I wish I could say yes, I really do, but I’m just the mother-in-law. My daughter and son-in-law are in Vermont until Labor Day. A lot of builders take the summer off. You might want to call back in September.”

13. “This number has been disconnected…”

14. “I’m free, but is the house down island? I refuse to work on any house that’s down island. I’m simply not dealing with that traffic every day.”

15. “I’m slammed, quite frankly, but I know for a fact that Franklin Phelps is finishing up a house in Katama and is looking for something small right now. He might be able to help you. You got his number?”

Tabitha freezes. “Franklin… Phelps, you say?”

“You got his number?”

“No. I… I’m using the phone book.” She runs her fingers down the listings to P. She doesn’t see…

“The phone book? Lady, I can promise you you will never find a builder using the phone book. You need to know someone. Call Franklin Phelps, tell him TF sent you. Here’s his number.”

Tabitha writes down the number, then hangs up the phone and stares at the notepad. Franklin is a builder in addition to being a musician. Okay. Franklin could be the answer to her prayers—if she hadn’t slept with him. But because she slept with him, because she has honestly not been able to stop thinking about him, she cannot possibly call him.

She decides to abandon the cold calling for the time being and do something productive. She’s off to the dump.



She loads up the disgusting rag rugs, the old bathmats, and the mildewed shower curtains. She gets rid of the hideous lamps, stacks of magazines, chipped dishes, Tupperware without tops, the Jaws poster that hangs in the powder room, the broken microwave, the dollar-store oil paintings, the plastic place mats and rickety TV trays, the cracked canisters for sugar and flour, both empty. She tosses old batteries and half-empty cans of paint, boxes and boxes of defunct lightbulbs, frayed extension cords, a dented colander, and baking pans that contain the residue of a hundred nights of burned nachos. It’s all going.