Ainsley dials her father’s number, but after six rings it goes to his voice mail. Ainsley hangs up. She’s not sure whether Tabitha has told Wyatt about Ainsley stealing the car and throwing the party, but if she has then it’s safe to say a summer on the Cape is out of the question. Becky, Ainsley’s stepmother—or, more accurately, Wyatt’s wife—hates Ainsley. She doesn’t allow Ainsley within five feet of the boys.
Ainsley’s phone rings. It’s her mother.
“Grammie broke her hip,” Tabitha says.
Ainsley exhales. “But she’s okay otherwise? She’s alive?”
“She’s alive, but the break is bad, and they’re flying her to Boston on the MedFlight helicopter. I have to fly to Boston, too. I would have you come with me, but I don’t want you to miss any more school. So… what do you think? Can you stay home by yourself tonight? There’s cash in the tea tin if you want to order a pizza for dinner, or there’s a hunk of low-fat Gouda in the deli drawer. No rice crackers, though. We finished those up last night.”
“Will you be home tomorrow?” Ainsley asks.
“I’m not sure, sweetheart, but I have to go with your grandmother. She doesn’t have anyone else. Please, please just be good until I get back. Do your homework, take the bus to school. No smoking, no drinking, no parties—okay?”
“Okay,” Ainsley says. “I promise.”
She hangs up. Broken hip: not the worst news, but still serious; Ainsley gets that. Why do old people always break their hips? It’s like a thing.
So now Ainsley has the house to herself—overnight and maybe longer. Three hours ago, this was exactly what Ainsley dreamed of, but right now… well, she feels more miserable than she has in all her life.
HARPER
When she wakes up the morning after Billy’s memorial reception, the answer is clear: she has to leave the Vineyard.
Harper’s phone continued to blow up the night before, to the point where she wished her phone would actually blow up. There were texts from Drew and from an unfamiliar number, which turned out to be Drew’s cousin Jethro, the son of Wanda, the aunt who made the stew. Harper deletes these texts without reading them. She feels anew the shame of three years earlier. What had she learned then? The Vineyard is a great place to live… until you screw up. Being part of a community means you have a responsibility to behave, to obey the laws, to act like a decent human being. And when you don’t, you let everyone else in the community down.
There was a text from the other Rooster Express driver, a former addict named Adele, that said, Is it true???? There was, most frighteningly, a text from Jude, Harper’s former employer. Harper wasn’t sure why she even kept Jude’s contact information in her phone; they had agreed never to communicate again. Harper stupidly thought that maybe Jude had heard about Billy’s death and decided to reach out. But the text said: SCUM.
After that, Harper was determined to flush her phone down the toilet, but then a text came in from Rooster, her boss, and Harper thought it might have been a change to her work schedule. The text said: Listen to your voice mail, please, Harper. Or just call me back.
Harper sighed, then played her voice mail. “Hi, Harper. It’s Rooster. Sorry I missed Billy’s reception. I was in the weeds with you taking the day off. I heard some pretty weird shit went down at the golf club, and it sounds like maybe you have some personal issues you need to work out. So anyway, I’m relieving you of your delivery duties for the foreseeable future. Sorry about that, Harper.”
Harper replayed the message because she couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell her. Relieving her of her delivery duties for the foreseeable future? Was he firing her? Yes, it seemed he was.
There was also a voice mail from Tabitha. It had come in at two thirty in the morning. Harper hadn’t listened to it, because how much abuse, really, was she expected to take?
Reed gone.
Drew gone.
Her job gone.
She has to leave. Where she’ll go is less of a concern than the steps she needs to take to wrap up her life here.
She has to go over to Chappy to see Brendan, but that will need to wait.
She has to pay Ken Doll at the golf club, as the reception was far from free, but she’ll deal with Ken Doll by e-mail because by now he’s probably heard the reason for Sadie Zimmer’s outrageous behavior. It was justified: Harper had been sleeping with her husband, the wonderful member in good standing, the island’s favorite doctor, a man as squeaky clean as Marcus Welby, MD—Dr. Reed Zimmer.
No, Harper thinks. Sadie’s behavior was not justified. Showing up at Billy’s memorial to slap Harper in front of the assembled guests—unacceptable. And why is Harper the only one being held accountable for the infidelity? She isn’t married. She isn’t betraying anyone at home. Well, okay, she was betraying Drew. He thinks they agreed to be exclusive, but they’ve only been dating for three weeks. They haven’t even slept together, and Harper knows the word exclusive never crossed her lips. But why isn’t anyone vilifying Reed? Why is it Harper who is cast as the evil seductress? Does it go all the way back to Nathaniel Hawthorne? Yes, she supposes it does.
The house. She has to sell Billy’s house—and fast. She needs a real estate agent. Is there anyone left on the Vineyard who might still speak to her?
She snaps her fingers. Polly.
Polly Childs has been through this. Back when she was a sales associate at Shipshape Real Estate, she slept with her boss, Brock, while Brock and Polly were married to other people. Both marriages broke up, and Polly took a trip to Ethiopia, where she traced her ancestry back to the royal family—at least, that was the rumor—and did some humanitarian work. When she returned to the Vineyard, she had reinvented herself enough to get a job at Up-Island Real Estate, where her African princess self proceeded to make a killing. She immediately sold a harborfront home in Edgartown to the famous talk-show host Sundae Stewart. This had been major Vineyard news! It was made even bigger when Polly and Sundae were caught fooling around in the master bedroom suite by Sundae’s actress lover, Cassandra K. The public relations frenzy had been insane on a national level—the supermarket tabloids, TMZ. For a full celebrity-gossip news cycle—nine days—Polly Childs’s name was mentioned everywhere you looked.
Harper would have locked herself in a car and driven off Dike Bridge—but Polly had held her head high. Harper had seen her in the produce section of Cronig’s that week, and in an attempt at normalcy Harper had asked Polly the best way to tell if a pineapple is ripe. Polly had informed Harper in a normal, cheerful voice that if a whole pineapple gives off a sweet fragrance, it’s ready to eat.
Harper calls Polly and says, “Polly, it’s Harper Frost. I’m looking to sell my father’s house. I need to get off this island.”
There is silence from Polly, and Harper thinks that maybe even Polly Childs is unwilling to do business with her, for she’s certain that Polly has already heard the rumors. The real estate offices are hotbeds of gossip. If Polly can’t help, then Harper has truly sifted down to join the caste of untouchables.
Finally Polly says, “I know the house. Daggett Avenue? I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”