Harper looks very tense as Eleanor, Tabitha, and Ainsley—in that order—step off the ramp.
“Hello, Mommy,” Harper says.
Eleanor takes an appraising look at her daughter. “Hello, darling,” Eleanor says. She leans forward to air-kiss Harper’s cheek, then she takes the lace material of Harper’s top between her fingers. “Where did you get this?”
“I don’t know,” Harper says. “At the store? I’m roasting in it.” When she plucks the top away from her body, Ainsley notices that her aunt is wearing her grandfather’s gold watch.
Evidently so does Eleanor, because she says, “I can’t believe your father managed to keep that watch out of hock. He left it to you?”
“He did,” Harper says.
“Be certain to follow his example and hold on to it no matter what circumstances you find yourself in,” Eleanor says. “That watch is valuable. It belonged to his father, Dr. Richard Frost. It was Billy’s prize possession.”
“I realize this, Mommy,” Harper says. “I’m saving it for when Ainsley has a son.” She looks past Tabitha to Ainsley. “Hello, Ainsley.”
Ainsley hasn’t seen her aunt in three years. Somehow Ainsley had been allowed to go with Billy to Fenway, and Aunt Harper had been there. Four years before that, when Ainsley was nine, she had gone to the Cape with Billy, and they met Harper for lunch in Woods Hole. So this is only the third time Ainsley can remember seeing her aunt, yet Ainsley feels comfortable rushing into her aunt’s arms and, inexplicably, starting to cry. “I loved Gramps,” she says.
“He loved you,” Harper says. She gives Ainsley a hug that feels more maternal than any hug she has ever received from Tabitha.
When Ainsley pulls away, she watches her mother and aunt face each other. The moment is so awkward, so awful, that Ainsley’s insides twist. Hug each other, she thinks. Her mother hates Harper, but is the opposite true?
“Tabitha,” Harper says.
“Harper,” Tabitha says.
They do not move toward each other, and in fact it feels like the air between them is thrumming with bad energy. It’s like they’re two magnets with the same poles, repelling each other.
“All right, then,” Eleanor says, clearly already weary of the reunion. “Shall we go?”
Ainsley is delighted to see that Aunt Harper drives a vintage navy-blue Bronco that has been impeccably restored. Since Ainsley has been dating Teddy, she has logged in a lot of hours watching Barrett-Jackson Live.
“Is this a sixty-eight?” Ainsley asks.
“It is!” Harper says. “Good eye.”
“I thought you were hiring a car,” Eleanor says.
“Martha’s Vineyard Executive Transport was booked,” Harper says. “I assure you, I did call them. I’m sorry, Mommy, but you’ll have to slum it.”
“Sit up front, Mother,” Tabitha says. “Ainsley and I will squeeze in the back.”
Ainsley doesn’t want to squeeze in anywhere with Tabitha, but she obliges because her grandmother is a senior citizen and belongs up front.
The back of the car is basically a Dumpster for coffee cups, old issues of the Vineyard Gazette, greasy paper bags that look and smell like they might contain half of a week-old tuna-fish sandwich, chew toys, and empty airline-size bottles of J?germeister. Tabitha tries to wrap up all the junk in a sheet of newspaper just so she can find a place to put her feet in their eight-hundred-dollar shoes. The backseat has a sheet over it, but the floor is covered with dog hair.
“Do you have a dog?” Ainsley says. She has been asking Tabitha for a dog ever since she could talk.
“Fish,” Harper says.
“You have a fish?” Ainsley says.
“A dog named Fish,” Harper says. “He’s a Siberian husky.”
“That’s certainly an odd name,” Eleanor says. “It sounds like something your father would dream up. You always were exactly like Billy.”
“I’d love to give you a tour of the island—” Harper says.
“I want a tour!” Ainsley says. She had sort of been dreading this day, but already the payoff has been tremendous. Her mother’s and grandmother’s obvious misery has cheered Ainsley up.
“—but we really don’t have time,” Harper says. “The reception starts at noon, and your ferry back is at—”
“Not soon enough,” Tabitha murmurs.
“Four o’clock,” Eleanor says. “But I feel we should return to the dock no later than three fifteen, don’t you, Pony?”
“If not earlier,” Tabitha says.
Harper snorts. “She still calls you Pony?”
“Who is she?” Eleanor asks. “The cat’s mother?”
Harper catches Ainsley’s eye in the rearview mirror. “You know the story behind that nickname, right?”
“Please don’t,” Tabitha says.
“Mom wanted a pony,” Ainsley says.
“Your mother not only wanted a pony, your mother also became a pony,” Harper says. “For most of third grade. Ponytail, brown shetland sweater, brown corduroys. She neighed and whinnied. She trotted, cantered, and galloped. She did everything shy of eating hay. The way people were able to tell us apart that year was that your mother acted like a horse and I didn’t.”
“I remember it differently,” Tabitha says.
“We must leave the reception at three o’clock sharp,” Eleanor says. “You needn’t worry about driving us. I’ll happily pay for a taxi.”
Ainsley looks out the window, trying to take it all in. There’s a pond, a bridge, a field. It looks like Nantucket, but it’s not Nantucket.
“Six towns,” Harper is saying. “Seventeen thousand year-round residents. The greatest ice cream in the world at Mad Martha’s.”
“You’ve never tasted the ice cream at the Juice Bar,” Ainsley says. “Or have you? Have you ever been to Nantucket, Aunt Harper?”
“I have,” Harper says. “But not in a long, long time.”
“Who’s going to be at this reception?” Tabitha asks.
“I’m not sure,” Harper says. “Daddy wanted this, not me. But an announcement went up on Islanders Talk and my Facebook page, so…”
“So mostly Billy’s friends or mostly your friends?” Tabitha asks.
“Daddy’s.”
“Do you have any friends?” Tabitha asks.
“Mama!” Ainsley says, forgetting that she’s not speaking to Tabitha.
“I have friends,” Harper says.
“I’m not talking about the men you’re screwing,” Tabitha says.
“Tabitha!” Ainsley says, more to get her mother’s attention than to be disrespectful.
“I’m surprised anyone talks to you after that… that… drug bust,” Eleanor says. “I still can’t get over a daughter of mine… arrested! Your grandparents are rolling over in their graves, I assure you.”
“What do you know about it, Mommy?” Harper says. “Honestly, what do you know about it?”
“Ann-Lane told me everything,” Eleanor says. “You do realize she lives right next door to the family whose child you corrupted, don’t you? She said the state police were there and the FBI.”