Finally, Tabitha thinks. However, this small piece of good news does little to assuage the sense of dread mounting inside her. “Tell me about the party, Meghan.”
“The good news is that the party brought a lot of foot traffic into the store,” Meghan says. “Like, a lot of foot traffic. I rang up over six thousand dollars in sales before my water broke.”
“Your water broke at the party?” Tabitha says. “Your water broke in the store?”
“On the carpet,” Meghan says. “I’m so sorry, Tabitha. Harper said she was calling the carpet cleaners today. Not only because my water broke but also because of spillage.”
“Spillage?” Tabitha says. This is, quite possibly, her least favorite word in the English language.
“There was punch,” Meghan says. “It was called the Foxy Roxie punch. It had cranberry juice in it.”
“Cranberry juice!” Tabitha says. She lowers her voice, remembering that Meghan is in the hospital with an hours-old baby. She doesn’t want to upset Meghan and be responsible for souring the woman’s breast milk. Tabitha staggers over to Billy’s recliner. Despite being as ugly as a hairless rat, it’s very comfortable. Tabitha would like the recliner to swallow her up.
“And there was popcorn,” Meghan says. Her voice becomes livelier, and Tabitha can tell she’s starting to relish her role as tattletale—either that or the hormones are kicking in. Or possibly Meghan has been waiting for the last seven years to deliver this kind of devastating news to Tabitha as payback for any and all of the ways Tabitha and Eleanor might have mistreated her. “And Harper made these avocado toasts with different toppings. They were delicious. And there was music. Loud music. People were dancing. To Beyoncé and Prince.”
Tabitha closes her eyes and imagines Ainsley’s Snapchat: Harper and Ainsley toasting with cranberry punch before spilling it all over the freakishly expensive carpet, Meghan cramming pieces of avocado toast into her mouth until her water breaks all over the aforementioned carpet, couples doing God knows what in the dressing rooms. Women dancing to “Little Red Corvette” and grinding popcorn into the now ruined carpet with their stiletto heels. Tabitha isn’t sure why she’s so shocked that Harper saw fit to throw a rave in the most hallowed, elegant retail space on Nantucket, among dresses that cost anywhere between seven and fourteen hundred dollars apiece, but she is. It demonstrates an appalling lack of judgment, even for Harper.
Tabitha pushes herself up and out of Billy’s recliner. She’s so livid she’s calm. She scares herself with how calm she is. Her next step is obvious: she needs to hop on the ferry back to Nantucket. She won’t tell Meghan this, however, because Meghan might warn Harper, and Tabitha wants to catch Harper by surprise.
She channels her inner Doris Day and feigns a que será será attitude. She says, “Well, the good news is we get to hire someone new to replace Mary Jo.”
“We already hired someone new,” Meghan says, and her voice falters.
“We did?” Tabitha says. “Who?”
“I think you’d better call Harper,” Meghan says.
“Who is it, Meghan?” Tabitha asks.
Meghan says, “They’re bringing the baby in for me to feed. I’ll send you pictures. Thanks for calling, Tabitha. Bye!” She hangs up.
Tabitha stares at her phone as Meghan’s name vanishes from her screen. Harper hired someone new, and from the sounds of it, Tabitha won’t like who it is. Of course Tabitha won’t like who it is! Tabitha needs to go home right this second and take control of the wheel.
The weird thing—no, the truly bizarre and novel thing is… Tabitha doesn’t want to. Let Harper ruin the store! Let her face Eleanor’s inevitable wrath! Let her defile the entire ERF brand—which their mother started building decades ago, which she sacrificed her marriage to Billy for!
Tabitha doesn’t care. Tabitha isn’t going to jump in and save the day again. Tabitha isn’t going to take yet another slap meant for Harper. Tabitha is going to stay put. After all, she and Harper had a deal. Harper is in charge on Nantucket now, and Tabitha is in charge here on the Vineyard. Harper did what she wanted without consulting Tabitha, and now… well, now Tabitha is going to do likewise. She is going to renovate this house, Harper be damned!
Tabitha looks around the living room, newly energized. She is going to turn this toad into a prince.
AINSLEY
She feels like a traitor and a heel, but on Sunday morning, when Aunt Harper goes to the hospital to give Meghan her baby present—after only two hours in labor, she delivered David Wayne Mitzak—Ainsley claims a migraine.
“I need to sleep,” Ainsley says.
Harper gives her a skeptical look.
“Please,” Ainsley says. “It’s eight o’clock on a Sunday.”
“You’ve known Meghan a lot longer than I have,” Harper says.
“She’s a bitch,” Ainsley says. “Kidding. Give her my love. But who names a baby Wayne, anyway? It’s like a name from one of those silent westerns.”
Harper shakes her head. “You’re not getting out of going to the beach,” she says. “Ramsay is coming at noon.”
“Fine,” Ainsley says. “I’ll be ready. I just have to sleep now.”
“I’m leaving Fish here to keep an eye on you,” Harper says.
Ainsley pulls the quilt up over her head.
Ainsley waits until Harper is out of the driveway, then she waits an extra seven minutes on the off chance that Harper forgot something. Then Ainsley slips from bed, pulls on shorts, and shuffles into flip-flops. Fish is in fact standing right outside Ainsley’s door, but Fish is a dog, not a person; he can’t tell on her.
Ainsley slips out the door. Fish barks.
She hurries over to her grandmother’s house. Felipa has gone to Boston to be with Grammie, so there is no one to avoid. Ainsley checks the bar cart first. She took the Grey Goose, and it hasn’t been replaced. She considers walking with the Mount Gay or the Johnnie Walker Black, but she can’t chance Aunt Harper smelling it on her.
And so to the basement Ainsley goes. The clocks chime quarter past the hour; Ainsley inhales the fragrance of her grandmother’s Evening in Paris, which is also the perfume her mother wears. It’s the scent of her oppressors.
The basement of Seamless is like the basement of a morgue, only instead of dead bodies the space is populated by headless dressmaker dummies, which terrify Ainsley and have done so since she was small. Tabitha keeps one as a conversation piece in their living room, despite Ainsley’s protests. Ainsley must have had a nightmare at some point about the dummies coming to life or calling out in agony about their missing heads and limbs, because she can’t explain her fear away. She knows they are horsehair and Styrofoam, but they remind her of deformed bodies.
Ainsley holds her breath the way she and her friends used to when they drove past one of Nantucket’s many cemeteries, and she darts among the dummies to the far wall of the basement, against which Eleanor keeps stacked cases of booze.
A bottle of Grey Goose. Just one bottle, although Ainsley considers taking two. She scurries back toward the stairs while the dummies stand in silent judgment.