Aunt Harper peers down over the stair banister. The house smells delicious—like sautéed onions and bacon. Ainsley can’t remember the house ever smelling so good before.
“Hi,” she says shyly. It’s still surreal to see her mother peering down on her, only now her mother is smiling, friendly, happy to see her. Only now her mother isn’t her mother. “You brought the dog? You’re cooking?”
“That’s Fish,” Harper says. “Where I go, he goes. He’s a very good boy. And for dinner, I’m making my famous pasta carbonara. Your grandfather loved it. And salad and garlic bread. We’ll eat around seven. Is that all right? I figured that would give you a chance to do some homework. And I brewed some iced tea. It looks like you and your mom drink a lot of Coke Zero, but you know that stuff will kill you, right?”
“Right,” Ainsley says. Her stomach is now growling. When is the last time she ate? A few radishes and green beans from the salad bar at lunch, but before that? Dinner the night before had been half a bag of cheddar SunChips. She ascends the stairs to find her aunt filling a glass with ice, then tea, then squeezing a wedge of lemon into it; the drink could be on the cover of a magazine. Ainsley sucks the whole thing down, and Harper laughs. “Thirsty?”
“I walked home from school,” Ainsley says. “My ride cut out.”
Harper pours another glass of tea, then pulls out a jar of mixed nuts and a container of marinated mozzarella balls. “Snack?”
Ainsley’s eyes fill with tears. Someone is here, taking care of her. Someone loves her. Ainsley reaches for a pecan, blinking her eyes, then she quickly wipes away the tear that falls. Harper must see it, however, because she holds open her arms. “Give me a hug,” she says. “It’s good to see you.”
Ainsley goes down to her room. She doesn’t have any homework, but finals start in a few days. It would be wise to buckle down, pull some good grades out of her ass to end the year, but all Ainsley can think about is Candace. Since Candace has gotten suspended, will she even be able to take finals? Ainsley checks her phone, afraid of what she might find, but there’s nothing. She’s tempted to call Emma and tell her what Teddy said. Maybe she can convince Emma that turning themselves in is the best course of action.
Emma will never agree. They will fight. It will end badly, and Ainsley is too exhausted for another scene. She lies back on her bed. From out of nowhere, a smile crosses her face. Aunt Harper is here.
HARPER
She can’t get over the sense of exhilaration that fills her when she drives her Bronco off the ferry onto Nantucket. She hasn’t been here in fourteen years, but even so, everything is basically the same: Young’s Bicycle Shop, the Juice Bar, Steamboat Pizza.
But by far the best thing about Nantucket is that here, nobody knows her! There is no one to avoid, no one to be scared of.
She drives to the house from memory, making a wrong turn only once before turning into the white-shell driveway of 776 Cliff Road. It’s as stunning as ever. There are hundred-year-old trees and a verdant lawn, hydrangeas on the verge of exploding into bloom, neatly trimmed boxwood hedges, and window boxes on both houses. The window boxes have mandevilla trellised in the back going up in spires. Between the spires are bursts of Whirling Butterfly gaura, thick, silvery Provence lavender, and Fairy roses. Fountains of Silver Falls dichondra and hot-pink million bells spill out over the edges, and tucked into the crannies are dark leaves of ipomoea and sprays of Diamond Frost euphorbia. This is an extravagant combination not unlike those at the estate Jude used to privately call the floral whorehouse, which she charged seven hundred and fifty dollars per container to plant and maintain.
Harper parks at the carriage house and, finding it unlocked, lets herself in.
The house smells like Evening in Paris, the scent Eleanor wore all through their childhood. Harper supposes that Tabitha must now wear it, because she is slowly but surely turning into Eleanor. The carriage house is upside down—three bedrooms and two baths on the entry floor, then stairs that lead up to the living space. Fish goes nuts with the cornucopia of new smells; he is in and out of every bedroom, his tail slamming against the door frames.
Harper identifies Tabitha’s room—all-white bed, fifty million pillows in different sizes, and a bolster the size of a fallen tree. She probably still sleeps on top of the covers, because getting underneath them messes up the sheets, and somewhere within the logic of Tabitha’s brain, it is better to have crisp, clean sheets than to enjoy sleeping in them.
Whatever.
Ainsley’s room is the one that smells like pot and has a highball glass filled with—Harper takes a tiny sip—vodka on the dresser. Okay! Harper dumps the glass in the bathroom sink and throws her duffel bag in the third bedroom, which appears to be a catchall. There’s a bed with a full-size mattress and a coverlet that Harper remembers from… from… wow… the cottage on Prospect Street. It’s white matelassé, yellowed now.
There is a desk covered with shelter magazines—Domino, House Beautiful, Traditional Home, Architectural Digest. (Someone is an interior designer wannabe. Ainsley? Tabitha?) There’s a Windsor chair at the desk, but aside from that, nothing else. Plenty of room for the dog bed.
Upstairs is more formal—a gorgeous cherry dining table with six low-armed chairs around it and a tall bouquet of fresh delphiniums in the center; there’s a turquoise tweed sofa with swanky 1960s curves, above which hangs a rectangular mirror. There is a TV on a glass-and-acrylic console and dressmaker’s dummy in the corner wearing the Roxie in lime green, which initially gives Harper a fright. She thinks, for an instant, that it’s Tabitha.
The kitchen is beautifully outfitted and well equipped, but it’s too clean—never-used clean.
Shame, she thinks. What she could have done these last fourteen years with a kitchen like this.
Fish comes to bury his snout in her crotch, a sign that he approves.
“Well, good,” Harper says, scratching his ears. “Just don’t get used to it. Six days. Seven at the most.”
Harper finds the grocery store. It’s a Stop & Shop, and Harper feels a pang of longing for Cronig’s and the Reliable Market, which is really reliable only for being expensive.
As Harper is climbing out of her Bronco, she feels a hand on her arm.
“Tabitha?”
Harper looks up to see a very handsome, clean-cut man in a shirt and tie and horn-rimmed glasses. He looks like Superman before he’s Superman. He looks like Clark Kent.
“I’m not—”
“Did you get a new car?” Clark Kent asks. He gasps when he sees Fish asleep across the back. “Did you get a dog?”
The look of utter shock on Clark Kent’s face is enough to make Harper laugh. She nearly plays along. How many times in their early life did one twin pretend to be the other? A twister, they called it, short for “twin sister.” No one could tell them apart.