Ainsley hasn’t responded to the text, which has led Teddy to send more texts, all of them saying he misses her.
“It’s like the only way to get him back is to ignore him,” Ainsley says.
“The conundrum of human relationships,” Caylee says.
On days when Harper isn’t working, she explores the island. She loads Fish into the car and drives up to hike the scenic loop at Squam Swamp. She drives through the moors and swims in the clear green water of Jewel Pond. She packs a picnic and goes to Great Point for the day and climbs to the top of Great Point Light, which even Ainsley and Ramsay, two Nantucket natives, admit they’ve never done. In the evenings, Harper cooks dinner for Ainsley, and once a week they invite Ramsay over. Harper makes huge composed salads with fresh veggies from Bartlett’s Farm and grilled shrimp or scallops from 167; she serves the salads with her famous “frosted garlic bread”—famous to her and Billy, anyway. She makes a chilled Thai cucumber-coconut soup; she makes peach and blueberry hand pies, which leak fruit and sugar everywhere but are delicious nonetheless.
At the end of each day. Harper is more tired than she can remember being in her entire life. She sleeps like a heavy stone resting at the bottom of a pond.
Despite her exhaustion and the fact that alcohol turns her stomach now, she lets Ramsay talk her into having an adult evening at the Pearl. She makes it clear to Ainsley, Caylee—and especially to Ramsay—that this is not a date. It’s dinner with a friend.
“At a very sexy bar,” Caylee says. “Be careful. The tuna ‘martini’ sometimes has strange effects on people.”
“I need help picking out something to wear,” Harper says.
“Why do you care?” Ainsley asks. “If it’s not a date.”
This is a good question. Harper knows what Ramsay will wear: khakis, a Vineyard Vines tie, a navy blazer. His hair will be parted to the side and hold comb marks. He will be clean-shaven and will have polished the lenses of his glasses. Harper could get away with a Lilly Pulitzer or even with the least suggestive dress ever designed—the Roxie—in petal pink or Barbara Bush blue, but now that she has spent the last few weeks dressing people, she realizes that she has wasted almost forty years wearing… what? Her father’s old golf shirts, cutoff shorts, T-shirt dresses from J.Crew, and to “dress up,” things off the sale rack at Banana Republic and Ann Taylor Loft—and everything she owns is three sizes too big. It’s a revelation to finally own beautiful clothes, feminine clothes, clothes that fit. She wants something fun and distinctive for this dinner. It’s her first time going out on Nantucket. She’s a different person here. She wants to dress like it.
She loves the Parker brand, but she can’t pull off sequins or feathers, and their knit dresses are too casual. She tries on dresses by Nanette Lepore and Rebecca Taylor—but the winner, according to both Caylee and Ainsley, is a white silk Alice and Olivia slip dress with three black lace diamond-shaped inserts running down each side.
Because of her dark hair and her summer tan, the black-and-white combo really pops. Ainsley picks out a black suede choker, and Caylee selects a pair of black patent leather slides with kitten heels, which is as much heel as Harper can handle.
Once dressed, she stands for a moment in front of Tabitha’s full-length mirror. She looks good, she thinks—and it has little to do with the dress or the shoes. She is relaxed. She is smiling.
The Pearl is a sexy place—swank and stylish. Ramsay has reserved them two corner seats at the white onyx bar. The bar is lit from underneath; it emits an otherworldly glow.
“Two passion-fruit martinis,” Ramsay says. Harper nearly protests, but a passion-fruit martini does sound delicious, and she hopes her stomach issue has finally resolved itself.
Harper raises her glass and touches it to Ramsay’s. The night is off and running.
Ramsay orders for both of them: duck confit dumplings, the tuna martini with crème fra?che and wasabi tobiko, the sixty-second steak topped with a fried quail egg, the stir-fried salt-and-pepper lobster.
“And another round of martinis!” Ramsay says.
The bartender, a pert and pretty blonde with a posh English accent, gives Ramsay and Harper a smile. “I’m glad to see you two back in here,” she says. “I’ve missed you.”
“Oh,” Harper says. “I’m not…”
“Thank you, Jo,” Ramsay says. “We’ve missed you, too.”
With the third martini—and three will be it, Harper decides, then she’ll switch to water—she can finally talk to Ramsay about the things she’s afraid to talk to him about during the daylight hours.
“Do you miss my sister?” Harper asks.
“I do and I don’t,” Ramsay says. “I’m a fixer by nature. I tried and tried with Tabitha, but I couldn’t help her. She wouldn’t let me.”
Harper nods. “She was born ninety seconds before me. She has always been independent and self-sufficient. Whereas I always needed help.”
“So who is your support?” Ramsay asks.
How is Harper to answer that question?
“In recent years, my love life has been complicated,” Harper says, and she shakes her head at the understatement. “I had a lover, a married lover.”
“Ahh,” Ramsay says.
“His name is Reed Zimmer,” Harper says. It feels so wonderful to say his name out loud that tears stand in her eyes. “He’s a fixer, too. A doctor. He was my father’s doctor, so he took care of my father, and by association he took care of me. He has a quiet authority that made me feel safe when I was with him. Which of course was foolish because I was the opposite of safe. He belonged to someone else. His wife, Sadie. And I fell into the trap that all mistresses fall into: I believed Sadie didn’t matter. I believed he would leave her for me eventually.”
“But he didn’t?” Ramsay says.
“Sadie found out about us,” Harper says. “She caught us together on the night my father died, and then a few days later she made a scene at Billy’s funeral. Reed sent me a text message asking me not to contact him for a while.” Harper stares into the bottom of her martini glass. Truth serum. She never talks this much—but then again, whom does she have to confide in? Only Ramsay, here and now. “I heard from other sources that he moved out. I heard he took a leave of absence from the hospital. I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. I don’t know if he’s still on the Vineyard or if he’s walking around out in the real world. I don’t know if he’s looking for me or looking for himself. I feel guilty about what I did to Sadie, but I feel more guilty about what I did to Reed. Because I believe he’s a good, true person, and yet somehow I led him astray. I stained his character, shredded his integrity. The night Sadie caught us, I asked him to meet me. He didn’t want to, but I begged him.”