“You ruin everything,” Tabitha says. “I’ve basically lived in fear of people spitting on me since I’ve been here. Random strangers are bad enough, Harper. But this. This!”
“You should have told me you were seeing Franklin,” Harper says. “I would have warned you.”
“Warned me you were screwing his sister’s husband?”
“Yes,” Harper says.
“You are incredibly selfish,” Tabitha says. “And you always have been. You went with Billy. You left me and never looked back.”
Harper stares. Tabitha is hurting, she reminds herself. She is venomous like this because she hurts. But now that Tabitha has brought it up, Harper is being given something she has never had before: a chance to defend herself. “That’s not true. What we did was fair. We shot for it. I even gave you best out of three, Pony, and you still lost. And no one was more surprised than I was. Getting to go with Billy was the only time I ever beat you at anything. And you’ve made me feel awful about it for my entire adult life.”
“After Julian died, I promised myself—”
“What happened with Julian wasn’t my fault,” Harper says. “And it wasn’t your fault. It was nobody’s fault, Tabitha.” It feels wonderful to state her case after all these years of silence. “Julian was sick. He died. It was tragic, Tabitha, and I can’t pretend to know what it feels like to lose a child, but I assume it’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt times a thousand, or times a hundred thousand. I never understood why you blamed me, why you ordered me out of the house, forbade me from coming to the funeral, and banished me from your life, but you are always right and I am always wrong, so I didn’t even question it. I accepted the blame! For fourteen years, Tabitha, I thought I was evil. That’s probably why I got messed up with Joey Bowen. I thought so little of myself: what did it matter if I delivered a package for him? What did it matter if I went to jail? What did it matter if I ended up floating facedown in Edgartown harbor? You had already made me feel despicable. And come to think of it, maybe that’s why I’ve had such trouble with men. Because I was waiting for one of them to assure me I had value. Reed Zimmer was the person who finally did that. He loved me, which made me feel like I was better than I had believed myself to be since Julian died. I knew he was married, and I knew what I was doing was wrong. But I was powerless in the face of how much I loved him and how much I needed him to love me. Maybe now that you’re in love with Franklin, you can understand that.”
“Forgive me if I don’t equate destroying someone’s marriage with love,” Tabitha says. “You are selfish and reckless and—”
“And I’m always wrong,” Harper says.
“You were wrong in stealing another woman’s husband,” Tabitha says. “And you were wrong the night that Julian died. Admit it.”
“If it helps to hear me say it, I’ll say it. I’ll scream it. I was wrong. The night that Julian died, I was wrong. I made a decision for both of us. I was pushy. But even if I hadn’t been pushy, even if I had never come to Nantucket at all, he would still be dead. You know that. In your heart, I believe you know that.”
“Get out,” Tabitha says.
“Tabitha.”
“Get out,” Tabitha says.
Back at her duplex, Harper throws her bag and Ainsley’s bag into the rented Jeep. She is still shaking when she goes to pick Ainsley up at Five Corners.
“Change of plans,” she says with false cheer. “We’re taking the ferry home tonight.”
“Aww,” Ainsley says. “How come we can’t stay?”
“Because,” Harper says. “We can’t.”
TABITHA
She watches Harper screech out of the driveway. After feeling a vengeful sense of triumph, she collapses on the bed and cries fresh tears. She goes all the way back to the original hurt: it’s not fair that Tabitha got paired up with Eleanor and has spent her adult life being held to impossible standards while Harper got to go with Billy and do whatever the hell she felt like doing. Running drugs! Sleeping with Billy’s married doctor!
What happened the night Julian died was Harper’s fault! Who else’s fault would it have been?
And yet, with Harper gone, Tabitha feels an absence way down in her core. Harper is, for better or worse, her twin. They aren’t the same person, not at all, but Tabitha knows Harper, knows her down to her bone marrow, her tiniest cells. Does she love her sister? Yes, she acknowledges this. But the anger is all-consuming. Tabitha needs to even the score. She needs to exact revenge so that she and Harper are on equal footing. Tonight is her chance. Right now.
She gets into the FJ40 and drives to Our Market, in Oak Bluffs, where she buys a very cold bottle of Domaines Ott rosé and a basic corkscrew—and, while she’s at it, a couple of nips of J?germeister. The cashier looks at her strangely and says, “Harper? I thought you left island.”
Tabitha smiles brightly. “I’m back!” she says.
She drives up island on South Road. She turns off on a dirt road because she needs a quiet place to drink and think. The road dead-ends at some trees, but beyond the trees, Tabitha sees water. She carries her purchases out to a small beach, where she is instantly attacked by mosquitoes and no-see-ums. She doesn’t care. This place has what she needs: solitude.
She has forgotten to bring a cup; she will have to drink the cold rosé from the bottle, like a Proven?al hobo. Oh, well. Since she is pretending to be Harper, she might as well start acting like Harper.
She takes long draughts of the wine, then sucks back both nips. Her head spins. She hasn’t eaten in… days. Since lunch the day that Franklin first vanished. The wine loosens Tabitha up; she’s able, finally, to breathe all the way in and all the way out, to loll her head on her neck, to stretch out her arms. Another few sips, and she will be on her way.
Back in the car, she regroups. She collects her hair in a ponytail and smiles into the rearview mirror. In her own mind she looks as different from Harper as anyone could, but the rest of the world sees them as identicals. Even Eleanor and Billy used to have trouble telling them apart. One year, Eleanor mislabeled the twins in the photo she sent with the Christmas card, and she never noticed. Tabitha and Harper had debated pointing it out, but they ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the uproar. Eleanor would either have thrown the batch of cards away and made them sit for the photographer again—or, worse, she would have stated that no one would know the difference and so what does it matter?