“Would you like a glass of champagne?” she asks. “I ordered the good stuff. Taittinger. And there are supposed to be finger sandwiches and sliders. I kept it Waspy for your grandmother’s sake. No spring rolls, no quesadillas.”
“Nothing with any actual flavor,” Ainsley says. She gives Harper a conspiratorial smile. It’s so bizarre—her mother’s face on a much nicer, cooler person. “So was that guy, the policeman, your boyfriend?”
Harper’s expression changes. She looks anxious, like she’s been caught. “Boyfriend?” she says. “You mean Drew?”
“I’m sorry,” Ainsley says. “It’s none of my business.”
Harper takes a long look at Ainsley, as if she’s trying to see inside her somehow. “I wish I could go back to your age,” she says. “Start over. I’d do things differently.”
Ainsley nods. “I’d love some champagne,” she says. “And I’ll even eat pale triangular sandwiches. I’m starving. We didn’t have breakfast.”
Harper says, “Just take a flute of champagne, and if anyone gives you trouble, tell them your grandfather wrote it into his will that you’re not only allowed to drink champagne at his memorial, you’re also supposed to.”
Ainsley nods, knowing full well that this explanation will not work with her mother or grandmother.
“I’m going to check on things back in the kitchen,” Harper says. “Cut some crusts off myself if I have to.”
Harper leaves the tent, and Ainsley feels abandoned. She sees her grandmother and mother standing off to the side, holding their champagne flutes in front of them as they would hold crosses in the presence of vampires. They aren’t speaking to each other or to anyone else. God forbid they actually engage with Billy’s friends. Why did they even bother coming?
Ainsley grabs a flute of champagne from the waitress’s tray and heads over to the men in golf shirts. “Hello,” she says. “I’m Ainsley, Billy’s granddaughter.”
Ainsley drinks that flute of champagne, then Smitty, the ringleader among Billy’s golfing buddies, procures her another. The champagne goes right to her head on an empty stomach, but she doesn’t care; she kind of likes it. She is a celebrity here, at least among these men and all the people Smitty introduces her to, such as the woman in the Lilly Pulitzer shift, presented to Ainsley—with a nudge and a wink that make Ainsley think she should pay special attention—as Mrs. Tobias.
“I loved your grandpa,” Mrs. Tobias says. “He was a dreamboat.”
Mrs. Tobias is very tan. She’s somewhere in her midfifties, which is too old to pull off the kind of sundress she’s wearing—it’s best suited for someone Ainsley’s age—and her frosted blond hair is styled like Rachel’s from Friends. But she’s pretty. She’s a heck of a lot younger and sexier and more attractive than Eleanor, although she lacks Eleanor’s elegance and grace.
Dreamboat, Ainsley thinks. Was this her grandfather’s girlfriend? Or maybe just his paramour? What to make of the name Mrs. Tobias? Where, if anywhere, is Mr. Tobias?
But before Ainsley can formulate the kind of probing questions that will yield more specifics, her attention is snagged by something happening over by the entrance. The tent has filled up with people, and servers are now passing trays of hors d’oeuvres—shrimp cocktail, radish sandwiches, pigs in a blanket—so it’s hard to see, plus Ainsley’s vision is hazy, thanks to the champagne. But she hears a woman shouting.
“Where is she? Where is she?”
The voice carries over the polite cocktail party chatter, and soon heads turn and voices are hushed. Ainsley sees a couple enter the tent, the woman petite, with very short hair and bug eyes, and a man in a suit and tie, following her, reaching for her arm, trying to quiet her down.
Who is this? Ainsley wonders, and at the same time, Mrs. Tobias murmurs, “Oh, shit. Here it comes.”
Here what comes? Ainsley’s eyes widen in wonder, then shock, as the bug-eyed woman approaches Tabitha and Eleanor.
“You!” she says. The person she seems to be addressing is Tabitha.
Wha…? Ainsley thinks. She sees Aunt Harper enter the tent just as the bug-eyed woman throws a full flute of champagne all over the front of Tabitha’s black Roxie dress, and then, with a whip-quick motion, slaps Tabitha across the face.
The sound of the slap reverberates through the tent. The crowd gasps, then goes silent.
HARPER
She understands the timing is bad: her father’s memorial reception is held only three days after Sadie catches her and Reed together in the parking lot of Lucy Vincent. Three days is long enough for the rumor to spread but not long enough for people to forget about it and move on.
She considered canceling the memorial reception, but Billy had wanted only one thing, and it was a farewell party at Farm Neck. And besides, in a text sent late Sunday night—when Harper was lying facedown in bed, determined never to rise again—Reed said that he’d managed to calm Sadie down. He said he’d convinced her that what she saw wasn’t Reed and Harper screwing but rather Reed embracing Harper in an attempt to comfort her after the death of her father. Yes, he understood it seemed odd and, possibly, unprofessional—meeting a patient’s family member at midnight in the parking lot of Lucy Vincent Beach, but that was why they loved the Vineyard, right? Because it was a close-knit community where people genuinely cared for one another, and Reed had a long-established history of going above and beyond the call of duty for his patients. Sadie should also remember that she’d had a lot to drink at the barbecue at Lambert’s Cove—a lot—and therefore she couldn’t trust anything she thought she’d seen.
She was lucky she hadn’t been pulled over.
With these assurances from Reed that Sadie had been neutralized, Harper proceeded with her plan. That Sadie had then, apparently, gone all Nancy Drew on him—checking Reed’s phone records and quizzing Dee, Billy’s nurse at the hospital, who said that yes, she had been suspicious about an affair all along—came as a surprise to Reed but not to Harper.
Sadie’s outburst at the reception had, initially, worked in Harper’s favor. It was wildly inappropriate—bursting into a beloved islander’s funeral, dousing his daughter in drink, then striking her.
In the seconds after Sadie slapped Tabitha—Tabitha, not Harper, a mistake Harper deeply regretted—Drew had appeared out of nowhere to subdue Mrs. Zimmer. He pried the empty champagne flute from her hand—no one wanted to see any breaking glass—and gently restrained her by holding both wrists.
Sadie spat in Tabitha’s general direction. “That woman is an evil bitch.”
“That woman,” Drew said, “is my girlfriend.”
“No,” Tabitha said. “Not me. My twin sister.” She offered her hand to Drew. “I’m Tabitha.”