Out back, Richie is driving a front-end loader and directing his crew of five. He already has half the yard cleared; Tabitha can’t get over how much better it looks.
She is thrilled at the transformation of the house, but something feels off. Maybe it’s Richie, she thinks. Franklin and Richie ate their sandwiches out back, sitting side by side on the bumper of Franklin’s truck. Tabitha decided to let them have time alone to catch up, and Franklin either noticed and didn’t say anything or didn’t notice. His attitude toward her is one degree cooler than usual, she thinks. She worries that the story about Julian has changed things. Franklin sees her differently—and not for the better. He must see her now as a person who failed at the most basic task that we, as humans, are given: to keep our children alive.
Tabitha closes herself in the powder room—which, at the moment, is the only functioning bathroom—and splashes water on her face. She needs to get a grip! There is no way someone as evolved as Franklin would think less of her because she lost a child. He went through so much with his girlfriend Patti; surely of all the men Tabitha knows, Franklin is the most equipped to handle the story of Julian.
So then what’s wrong?
Probably he’s just tired. And Tabitha is tired and upset about Harper. And it’s hot. She needs to stop imagining things.
That night, Franklin announces that he and Richie are going to dinner at Offshore Ale and then, most likely, they’re going night fishing.
“Oh,” Tabitha says. “Okay.” She feels stung but tries not to let it show.
Franklin kisses her good-bye on the nose. The nose, as though she’s five years old! Richie is already outside climbing into Franklin’s truck, so Tabitha grabs Franklin by the shirt buttons and says, “Hey.”
“Hey what?”
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” Franklin says.
“Then kiss me like you mean it, please.”
Franklin looks at her a second, then he places his hands on either side of her face and delivers the sexiest kiss she has ever received. It’s not too much; if anything, it’s just shy of enough. She wants—needs—deeper, longer, harder. Her legs have turned to sawdust, dandelion fluff, something that can be blown away.
“Was that what you wanted?” he asks.
She can’t speak.
“Okay, then,” he says. He turns and walks out the door.
Tabitha puts a second coat of Paul Revere’s Ride on the powder-room walls—then, since she’s on a roll, she starts on the lavender room with an oil-based primer called Kilz. She bids the lavender adieu. There is zen in painting, she finds, but her mind keeps turning over the slight changes in Franklin’s behavior. They went from a full-on sex-and-love binge to… well, they’d had sex early that morning before Tad and Richie arrived, but sex isn’t exactly what Tabitha is craving. She misses tenderness: hand-holding, Franklin’s finger running along her cheekbone, his mouth on the back of her neck.
Tabitha imagines Franklin and Richie out at Offshore Ale, flirting with the young waitresses in tight T-shirts and short shorts; Franklin probably knows them all by name. As the walls of the lavender bedroom become white, Tabitha writes a story across them. Franklin follows one of the young waitresses into the kitchen; they find a dark corner—a pantry, maybe, or the room where the kegs are stored—and Franklin kisses the waitress the way he has just kissed Tabitha. The waitress slides her hand down the front of Franklin’s jeans.
Tabitha wonders what he meant by “night fishing.” Will they actually go fishing at night, or is it a euphemism for something else?
Stop! she tells herself. The door to the bedroom is closed; possibly the fumes are getting to her. She has no reason to doubt Franklin. But he is a single man out with one of his single friends; they are drinking. And who’s to say this relationship is exclusive? They haven’t defined it; they haven’t set any boundaries or parameters. They’ve basically been living together for two weeks, but Franklin hasn’t called her his girlfriend. He didn’t take her to meet his parents. She hasn’t been back to his house since that first night; she never learned the address, and she isn’t confident she could find it again, although she’s pretty sure it’s somewhere in Oak Bluffs.
What does Tabitha know about him, really? He picked her up at a bar. Who’s to say he won’t pick up someone else tonight? She should go somewhere—to dinner or the movies. She overheard someone at Skinny’s today talking about eating at Alchemy. Tabitha could easily take a shower, put on a dress, and go find trouble of her own.
Instead she pulls a beer out of the cooler that Franklin keeps on the back deck, then she fishes one of the Ambien she stole from Eleanor’s stash out of her purse. She is so agitated that she takes a second Ambien and wanders up to the master bedroom because it’s now the only place to sleep. She lies facedown on her father’s bed and thinks that she would like to cry. Except that she’s suddenly too tired to summon the effort.
She hears footsteps on the stairs and opens her eyes to see Tad in his Carhartts, carrying his tiling trowel. He walks past her into the master bathroom. Tabitha’s mouth is cottony. She wants to sit up, but she can’t. She succumbs.
She opens her eyes. Where is she? It takes her a minute: Nantucket, she thinks. No—the Vineyard. Billy’s house, Billy’s room. She turns her head; her neck is stiff.
There’s an old-fashioned clock radio on the nightstand. The glowing blue numbers say it’s one thirteen. Billy’s clock is wrong, which is not surprising. Everything about this house is wrong! Tabitha reaches her arms out to her sides so that her body is in the shape of a cross. No Franklin. She eyes the door to the master bathroom. It’s closed tight, and there doesn’t seem to be any activity on the other side. But wasn’t Tad just there? Or did she dream that?
When she checks her phone, she sees that it is quarter after one. In the afternoon! She is appalled at herself. The Ambien knocked her out for fifteen hours, and she still feels woozy. There are no texts and no missed calls from Franklin, which is a good thing. He must be downstairs, working. She can’t imagine how she’ll explain sleeping the morning away.
She slinks downstairs and is met with the powerful smell of polyurethane. The Portuguese Paulos are varnishing the floors. They look gorgeous, honey-toned and silky. And they were there all along, smothered underneath the hideous carpeting.
“Franklin?” she calls out.
“No here,” one of the Paulos says.
“No?” Tabitha says. She tries to remember what was on the docket for today. Kitchen, she thought. Getting to the kitchen can only be done by walking the far perimeter of the living room past the powder room and into the dining area. Through the skinny dining-room windows, Tabitha sees Richie on a spade digging a hole for the mature hydrangeas, whose roots are wrapped in burlap. Richie is here—that’s good, she supposes. He and Franklin didn’t get lost down the rabbit hole.
Tabitha finds Tad in the kitchen, tiling the backsplash behind the range.