The Identicals(77)
Days when storms do not occur.
Harper enjoys her own string of halcyon days on Nantucket. At first she doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, but then it dawns on her: she’s happy.
Business at the store is booming. Harper, Ainsley, and Caylee have divided up the schedule so that two of them are always working together at any given time, and they have incorporated the strategies that worked effectively at the party. Fish is stationed outside the store for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon; the rest of the day, he snoozes in the back office or waits for Harper to take him on his walk through town. This daily constitutional always ends at Ramsay’s office with a dog treat.
Good music plays in the store now at all times, a carefully curated playlist—90 percent women, 10 percent Prince. And every morning, Caylee posts a photo of herself on social media wearing the “outfit of the day”—dress, skirt or pants, and top and sandals. It never fails: by day’s end they have sold out of the outfit in all sizes.
Meghan comes to the store every day with baby David Wayne in his carriage. Harper never holds the baby—she has been afraid of babies since Julian died—but Ainsley and Caylee dance him around the store while Meghan marvels at the previous day’s receipts.
“I can’t believe how well the store is doing!” she says. “We are up five hundred percent so far from last summer.”
Ainsley is happier each day. She hasn’t made up with any of her friends, but she seems content spending her free time with Harper and with Caylee. She asks for their advice about Teddy. After she and Caylee bumped into him at breakfast, Teddy texted Ainsley, saying, I miss you. Can I call you sometime?
Ainsley hasn’t responded to the text, which has led Teddy to send more texts, all of them saying he misses her.
“It’s like the only way to get him back is to ignore him,” Ainsley says.
“The conundrum of human relationships,” Caylee says.
On days when Harper isn’t working, she explores the island. She loads Fish into the car and drives up to hike the scenic loop at Squam Swamp. She drives through the moors and swims in the clear green water of Jewel Pond. She packs a picnic and goes to Great Point for the day and climbs to the top of Great Point Light, which even Ainsley and Ramsay, two Nantucket natives, admit they’ve never done. In the evenings, Harper cooks dinner for Ainsley, and once a week they invite Ramsay over. Harper makes huge composed salads with fresh veggies from Bartlett’s Farm and grilled shrimp or scallops from 167; she serves the salads with her famous “frosted garlic bread”—famous to her and Billy, anyway. She makes a chilled Thai cucumber-coconut soup; she makes peach and blueberry hand pies, which leak fruit and sugar everywhere but are delicious nonetheless.
At the end of each day. Harper is more tired than she can remember being in her entire life. She sleeps like a heavy stone resting at the bottom of a pond.
Despite her exhaustion and the fact that alcohol turns her stomach now, she lets Ramsay talk her into having an adult evening at the Pearl. She makes it clear to Ainsley, Caylee—and especially to Ramsay—that this is not a date. It’s dinner with a friend.
“At a very sexy bar,” Caylee says. “Be careful. The tuna ‘martini’ sometimes has strange effects on people.”
“I need help picking out something to wear,” Harper says.
“Why do you care?” Ainsley asks. “If it’s not a date.”
This is a good question. Harper knows what Ramsay will wear: khakis, a Vineyard Vines tie, a navy blazer. His hair will be parted to the side and hold comb marks. He will be clean-shaven and will have polished the lenses of his glasses. Harper could get away with a Lilly Pulitzer or even with the least suggestive dress ever designed—the Roxie—in petal pink or Barbara Bush blue, but now that she has spent the last few weeks dressing people, she realizes that she has wasted almost forty years wearing… what? Her father’s old golf shirts, cutoff shorts, T-shirt dresses from J.Crew, and to “dress up,” things off the sale rack at Banana Republic and Ann Taylor Loft—and everything she owns is three sizes too big. It’s a revelation to finally own beautiful clothes, feminine clothes, clothes that fit. She wants something fun and distinctive for this dinner. It’s her first time going out on Nantucket. She’s a different person here. She wants to dress like it.
She loves the Parker brand, but she can’t pull off sequins or feathers, and their knit dresses are too casual. She tries on dresses by Nanette Lepore and Rebecca Taylor—but the winner, according to both Caylee and Ainsley, is a white silk Alice and Olivia slip dress with three black lace diamond-shaped inserts running down each side.
Because of her dark hair and her summer tan, the black-and-white combo really pops. Ainsley picks out a black suede choker, and Caylee selects a pair of black patent leather slides with kitten heels, which is as much heel as Harper can handle.
Once dressed, she stands for a moment in front of Tabitha’s full-length mirror. She looks good, she thinks—and it has little to do with the dress or the shoes. She is relaxed. She is smiling.
The Pearl is a sexy place—swank and stylish. Ramsay has reserved them two corner seats at the white onyx bar. The bar is lit from underneath; it emits an otherworldly glow.
“Two passion-fruit martinis,” Ramsay says. Harper nearly protests, but a passion-fruit martini does sound delicious, and she hopes her stomach issue has finally resolved itself.