The Identicals(91)

She slinks downstairs and is met with the powerful smell of polyurethane. The Portuguese Paulos are varnishing the floors. They look gorgeous, honey-toned and silky. And they were there all along, smothered underneath the hideous carpeting.

“Franklin?” she calls out.

“No here,” one of the Paulos says.

“No?” Tabitha says. She tries to remember what was on the docket for today. Kitchen, she thought. Getting to the kitchen can only be done by walking the far perimeter of the living room past the powder room and into the dining area. Through the skinny dining-room windows, Tabitha sees Richie on a spade digging a hole for the mature hydrangeas, whose roots are wrapped in burlap. Richie is here—that’s good, she supposes. He and Franklin didn’t get lost down the rabbit hole.

Tabitha finds Tad in the kitchen, tiling the backsplash behind the range.

“Hey,” she says. “Sorry I slept for so long.”

Tad barely looks up. “You’re not on my payroll.”

“No, I know,” she says. “It’s just… well, I like to get up and at ’em.” She watches Tad place the smoky glass tile row by row. This kitchen is going to be spectacular. She can’t believe the difference. She clears her throat. She could use a glass of ice water, some Motrin, some strong coffee. “Do you know where Franklin is?”

“No,” Tad says. He doesn’t offer anything else, and Tabitha listens to the rasping noise of the trowel against the wall.

Tabitha grabs her bag and heads to her car, which has been baking in the midday sun and is now an oven, the seats too hot to sit on. She puts down the windows and waits a few seconds before climbing in. She cranks the AC and backs out of the driveway.

Did Franklin even come home? Were her paranoid scenarios not so paranoid after all? Has he taken some little chickie up to Cedar Tree Neck to skinny-dip in the bay? Would he do that? Tabitha’s gut says no. Is she being naive? She doesn’t think so. She wonders if Harper somehow found out that Franklin was doing the work on the house. Does she still have connections here, someone willing to swing by and check on the house? Did Harper call Franklin? Did she threaten him, or did one of her drug buddies threaten him? Is that why he’s staying away? She can’t decide if this theory is spot-on or completely ridiculous.

Tabitha tries to go to Mocha Mott’s, but there’s no parking, then she gets stuck in traffic at Five Corners. She calls Franklin’s cell. It rings six times, then goes to his voice mail.

“Hey,” she says. She’s at a loss. Where is he? And what right does she have to know? It feels like the whole world has changed, and she’s the last to find out. “It’s me.”

She hangs up.



Franklin isn’t back at the house when she finally returns—she had to go all the way to Tony’s Market, in OB, to get coffee, water, and painkillers—and now she’s starting to panic. Something is wrong. She charges up the porch stairs into the kitchen, where Tad is still working.

“Have you heard from Franklin?” she asks.

“No, ma’am,” he says.

“What the hell?” she says. She is angry now, angry and worried. She wants to take it out on whoever is available, but Tad is having none of it. He ignores her.

“You know him far better than I,” Tabitha says. “Does he pull these little disappearing acts often?”

“No,” Tad says. “He doesn’t.” He sets the trowel down in the tray and faces her. “Have you called him?”

“Yes,” she says. “Voice mail.”

Tad nods. “I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

Tabitha doesn’t like anything about that statement, so she storms out to the yard. She approaches Richie from behind and gives him a vicious poke on the shoulder. He’s behind this change in Franklin somehow; she just knows it.

“Where’s Franklin?” she asks.

“Whoa!” Richie says. He turns on her with a venom that Tabitha doesn’t understand. What has she ever done to him? Why couldn’t he be nicer? Why couldn’t he be happy that Franklin has found someone? “I don’t appreciate being touched like that.”

“Sorry,” Tabitha says. But she’s not sorry! She is so frustrated and so confused that she would like to take Richie’s shovel and hit him over the head with it. “Do you know where Franklin is?”

“I haven’t seen him since last night,” Richie says. “He got a phone call and left in the middle of dinner.”

“What?” Tabitha says. This isn’t what she expected to hear. Phone call from whom? From Harper? Or someone else? “Is everything okay?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy the wrong questions,” Richie says. He checks his watch. “We’re finishing up now and heading back to America on the five o’clock boat. I’d really like that check.”

Tabitha glares at him for a second. He wants his check, and Tabitha wants answers. Who called Franklin? What happened? Where is he? You’re asking the wrong guy the wrong questions. She would like to take Richie’s spade and use it to bury him alive.

She should be counting her blessings, however. Richie is leaving.

“The check will be on the counter,” she says.



Richie leaves, the Paulos leave—and finally Tad packs up to leave. Tabitha forces herself to put a coat of Made in the Suede on the walls of the formerly lavender room, but after that she is wiped out, so she sits on the back steps and watches the sprinkler water Billy’s newly landscaped backyard. There has been no word from Franklin. He’s gone. Tabitha thinks about sending an angry text or leaving an infuriated voice mail; he is, after all, her general contractor, and he simply skipped a day of work without notice. But Tabitha doesn’t care about him as her contractor. She cares about Franklin, her lover. She wants to blame Richie for this mess, but she knows, somehow, that it’s her own fault. She should never have told him about Julian. Their new relationship was too fragile to hold the heavy weight of that story.