Tabitha had shrugged the comment off, but it had taken root in Ainsley. She knew Stephanie thought there was something inappropriate about the way Ainsley was being raised. Candace, also an only child, was being raised like a baby. She had ten thousand rules to abide by: four bites of everything on her plate (including broccoli and lima beans), PBS Kids and Disney Channel only (no Nickelodeon of any kind), bedtime at eight o’clock, even on weekends, teeth brushing and flossing, and a schedule of chores that earned Candace a dollar a week, deposited into her college fund.
Ainsley found much in Candace’s house to admire: the meals were homemade and delicious; Stephanie and her husband, Stu, said a nice short grace before eating and then kissed each other; the bath towels were fluffy; the sheets on Candace’s bed were always crisp and neatly made; and always, Stephanie would read to them before bed.
Tabitha, by contrast, watched every morsel that Ainsley put in her mouth, forbidding doughnuts, pancakes, and baked potatoes. Ainsley had learned the term empty calorie by third grade. Tabitha dressed Ainsley in smaller versions of her grandmother’s designs, dresses that would have fetched five hundred dollars or more on eBay. She gave Ainsley lessons in how to walk in high heels and how to throw French phrases into everyday conversation. à tout à l’heure! Probably Ainsley’s fondest memory of growing up is coming home from school, drinking Coke Zero on the sofa with Tabitha, and paging through the new issue of Vogue with Tabitha covering the captions with her hand and quizzing Ainsley on the designers.
Once Ainsley got to middle school, she was able to turn the unorthodox way she’d been raised to her advantage. She was the coolest person in sixth grade: the prettiest, the most developed, and the best dressed by far. Candace had cried on the first day because she got lost changing classes and missed their fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Bonaventura. Like countless middle school girls before her, Ainsley secured her position as queen bee by stepping on the people below her, and her favorite rung had been Candace.
Stephanie had changed her tune over the course of that year. She called Tabitha incessantly, hoping to “get the girls together.”
“I’m not sure what happened,” Stephanie said. “I think they had some kind of falling-out. But I’m sure it can be fixed, right?”
Through middle school and into high school, Candace had sought Ainsley’s attention and approval, but to no avail. Ainsley didn’t say hello, didn’t acknowledge Candace’s presence in the hallway, in the cafeteria, in the classroom. Ainsley became friends with Emma Marlowe, and they had their disciples—BC, Maggie, Anna, and… Teddy.
But just this past spring, something happened with Candace. Her father’s online hotel-booking business had been bought up by Orbitz, and suddenly the family was very well off. Stephanie and Stu took Candace to Aspen to ski in February and to Saint Barts in April—and, while they were away, Candace had acquired a set of sophisticated habits. She had, apparently, slept with the son of a sheikh in Aspen, drunk Dom Pérignon at lunch with her parents at a place called Nikki Beach in Saint Barts, and started smoking clove cigarettes. Over the course of a few short months, Candace had become cool, so Ainsley—out of fear of being overthrown more than anything else—had invited Candace to her house for the party.
Candace might have exaggerated her vacation exploits, because at the party she was the only person other than Teddy able to drive when Tabitha got home. Tabitha had given Candace the keys to Emma’s Range Rover. Emma might be angry at Ainsley for that, and no one is more intimidating when angry than Emma. Ainsley has no way of knowing what’s going on in her world without her phone.
The ferry is nearing land, and Tabitha goes to stand at the window. Ainsley refuses to join her, but she cranes her neck. There’s an expansive green park to the left with a white gazebo in the middle.
Ainsley touches her grandmother’s arm. “Have you ever been to the Vineyard?”
“Not since my honeymoon,” Eleanor says. “Your grandfather and I traveled to both Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard on a motor yacht my father chartered for us. I’m sure you can guess that I preferred one island and Billy the other. This was Billy’s place.”
Ainsley processes this. Eleanor and Billy not only split up their possessions, their money, and their twins, they also split up the islands—Nantucket for Eleanor, the Vineyard for Billy.
“Has my mother ever been here?” Ainsley asks.
“Oh, certainly,” Eleanor says. “Back before…”
“Before what?” Ainsley asks.
“Before everything happened,” Eleanor says. “I believe the last time she came to visit Billy here was when she was pregnant.”
“With me?” Ainsley says. “Or with Julian?”
“Who can remember?” Eleanor says. She waves a hand laden with rings. Eleanor is seventy-one years old and the most elegant woman Ainsley knows. She has traveled to Paris and Milan and Shanghai and Bombay and Marrakech and Sydney and Rome and Tokyo. She has boutiques in Nantucket and Palm Beach. The Nantucket store closes in the winter; the Palm Beach store closes in the summer. Eleanor’s flagship store, on Newbury Street, shut down for good last year because of declining sales. Ainsley suspects her grandmother’s designs are becoming dated.
Ainsley is shocked that her mother and grandmother are even attending Billy’s memorial reception. (It’s not a funeral. Billy has been cremated, and his ashes will be kept in an urn.) Ainsley saw the photos of Eleanor and Billy together in the album, but for as long as Ainsley can remember, there has been a Hatfield-and-McCoy-type feud between the two halves of the family. Tabitha hates Harper for reasons Ainsley isn’t privy to, and she assumes that Eleanor hated Billy as well. She would ask Eleanor, but she’s too intimidated.
Tabitha turns to Ainsley. “Oak Bluffs has this thing called the Methodist campground,” she says. “It’s all these different-colored gingerbread houses, and in the center is the Tabernacle, which is a large outdoor church-type thing.”
“It sounds like a cult,” Eleanor says.
“Oh, dear God,” Tabitha says, looking at the people who have amassed on the dock to await the ferry’s arrival. “There she is.”
Ainsley sees her mother’s double standing in the crowd. The sight is so surreal that Ainsley turns to look at her mother to make sure she is standing right there, then she looks back in the crowd at Aunt Harper. Aunt Harper wears her hair just as her mother does—long, heavy, and dark—but of course her clothes are different. Tabitha wears the Roxie—the linen shift with the obi—in black and a pair of black patent leather Manolo Blahnik pumps that she normally reserves for the city. Aunt Harper is wearing a pair of black pants that looks like something a waitress at a Red Lobster might wear and some kind of black lace shell that Ainsley—who has developed a pretty sharp eye when it comes to other people’s poor fashion choices—suspects came off the sale rack at Banana Republic. The top and pants don’t make sense together—the pants utilitarian, the shell dressy—and black lace, according to Eleanor, always references lingerie, which makes it inappropriate for a funeral or memorial reception. Despite Aunt Harper’s pitiful outfit—or perhaps because of it—Ainsley’s heart is captured. Aunt Harper is the underdog here, the first one Ainsley has found herself rooting for in sixteen and a half years.