In Tabitha’s memory, Harper had been more upset about the mistake than Tabitha was. She had lobbied to tell Eleanor, but Tabitha silenced her. Tabitha remembers feeling indignant about Harper’s discontent. Why wouldn’t Harper feel grateful about being mistaken for Tabitha? Why did she so vehemently want to establish her own identity?
Back in the days of growing up, Tabitha had loved Harper more than Harper loved her. Is that possible? The year Tabitha had become a pony, Harper was the only person allowed to ride on her back, although friends and younger neighborhood children had asked. And throughout the entirety of their childhoods, Harper was the only person Tabitha would let brush her hair or scratch her back or apply her suntan lotion. Harper had been born with a thicker skin. She didn’t care how she looked; she didn’t care about grades or activities in school. She put in just enough effort to meet Eleanor’s impossibly high standards, although she didn’t much care about Eleanor’s or Billy’s approval.
That indifference, of course, would catch up with her later.
Tabitha drives out South Road toward Aquinnah, keeping her eyes peeled for the simple wooden sign. She can’t remember where it is exactly, but she’s sure she’ll recognize it when she sees it.
Maybe she was distracted and missed it, or maybe it was closer to Chilmark than she thought. When she crosses the bridge, she knows she’s gone too far, so she turns around and heads back. She will find it. She has to. But she hopes it will be soon, because she’s losing daylight.
Good old Sheep Crossing… the first cottage after the turn is where my brother-in-law is hiding out.
Did he say the first cottage after the turn? Left or right? That night at the Outermost Inn seems like a long time ago.
Then, just as Tabitha begins to wonder if she and Franklin even took South Road—maybe it was State Road?—she sees the sign: SHEEP XING. Yes! This is it. She hits the brakes. Doubts gather in her mind like gawkers hovering around the site of an impending disaster. What is she doing? What does she hope to achieve? Tabitha drives past the first driveway on the left very slowly so that she can get a good look at the house. It’s a simple saltbox with gray shutters and white trim; it looks like any one of a hundred homes on Nantucket. There’s a black Lexus in the driveway and a racing bike leaning up against the porch railing. Black Lexus = doctor car? Does Reed Zimmer ride a racing bike? Tabitha knows nothing about the man. She doesn’t even recall what he looks like; she barely glimpsed him after being slapped and doused by his wife. All Tabitha registered was a male presence on the other side of Sadie, trying to control her.
Tabitha drives past. The road becomes a dead end, but there is enough privacy for Tabitha to feel like she can pull over and rest a second.
She swigs from the bottle of wine. And that, as it turns out, is the swallow that unlocks the vault in her mind.
It’s mid-August of 2003. Julian is not yet three months old. Tabitha looks like a woman who has been lost in the wilderness and given up for dead. She hasn’t eaten a full meal or slept more than a few hours at a time since Julian was born. She and Julian are at home with Wyatt and Ainsley now; they have been permitted to leave the hospital, which makes things both better and worse. Better, because who wants to live in a hospital? Worse, because in the hospital, Julian was monitored all day every day.
Now that they’re home, Wyatt has gone back to work, and Tabitha has been left with both Ainsley and Julian. Tabitha is frazzled, but that word is too cute to describe how on edge she is. At the end of their first full week at home, she snaps at Ainsley. When Ainsley cries, Tabitha shakes her, hard. Not hard enough to hurt her, but hard enough to scare herself. Tabitha calls Wyatt at work, sobbing. She can’t do it, she says. She can’t do it alone. He needs to come home and help her.
And then we’ll do what for money? he asks. He flat-out refuses to accept financial help from Eleanor. It’s almost like he’s daring Tabitha to suggest it so he can leave her.
Never mind, Tabitha says.
The next day, Harper walks in the door.
“I’m here,” she announces triumphantly, as though she is the answer to all Tabitha’s problems. “I took four days off work. I don’t have to go back until Sunday.” From her bag, she produces a bottle of Billecart-Salmon brut rosé champagne, which, she says, is ambrosial; she lifted this bottle from the restaurant where she waitresses, Dahlia’s.
“But you paid for it, right?” Tabitha says.
“Right,” Harper says with a wink. “With my hard work and exemplary attitude.”
Tabitha can’t bring herself to care that Harper stole a bottle of champagne from her workplace. What does it matter?
“We won’t get a chance to drink it anyway,” Tabitha says. “I’m nursing.”
“So pump and dump,” Harper says. “I’m sure you have enough breast milk stored in the freezer to feed the Gosselin kids. This bottle has our names on it.”
“Whatever, Harper,” Tabitha says. She feels teary again for no reason; maybe because she desperately wants to drink champagne, but she just can’t. Julian starts to cry, and Harper says, “There’s my baby.” She points at Tabitha. “You sit. Or, better still, go take a nap. I’ll handle the kids, then get started on dinner. You look like Flat Stanley.”
Tabitha wants to protest. She wants to remind Harper that she has no idea how to take care of a toddler or a sick infant; it’s not something she can bluff her way through. But Tabitha is too tired to state her objections. The idea of a nap, an uninterrupted nap, followed by a home-cooked meal is too seductive to turn down.
As it turns out, Harper is a competent nursemaid and an excellent cook. She makes a bouillabaisse filled with scallops, mussels, and chunks of lobster. Tabitha eats three bowls with salad and crusty bread to sop up the juices, and then, amazingly, she feels like a human again.
Harper’s arrival on Nantucket is, in fact, an answer of sorts. Ainsley is two years old and newly verbal; she asks questions nonstop, the most frequent of which is Why? To which Harper chooses among three answers:
Because there is pie in the sky.
Because there’s a sty in my eye.
Because the guy makes me sigh.
Ainsley accepts all three responses with a solemn nod, as though she is being handed valuable pieces of wisdom.
Harper is also terrific with Julian. She doesn’t mention how pallid he looks; she doesn’t compare his feeble crying to the sound of a windup toy that is running out of windup. She treats him as though he were a normal baby. She calls him stud and stallion. And when he’s inconsolable and won’t settle or nurse, Harper dances him around the room, singing “If I Had $1000000,” by the Barenaked Ladies, which puts him instantly to sleep.
Wyatt is impressed. “She’s good with him.”
Tabitha nods. Half of her is resentful that Harper has proved so skillful with the children, but half of her is relieved. She has slept more since Harper has been here than she has in the three months prior.