Where was Wyatt in all this? Tabitha wonders now. He was at the hospital: he must have been. Or did he stay home with Ainsley? Yes, that was it—Wyatt was at home, asleep in Ainsley’s twin bed, a copy of Curious George Goes to the Zoo open on his chest, Ainsley fast asleep next to him. It would have made sense for Tabitha to blame Wyatt. The one and only night he was left home to care for the children ends in tragedy. But Tabitha had never blamed Wyatt for what happened. He was, at the time, as heartbroken and sick as Tabitha was, if not more so.
No, the person Tabitha blamed was Harper. Harper had brought a bouquet of wildflowers into the house; quite possibly it was the pollen from the Queen Anne’s lace or the foxglove that overtook Julian’s delicate lungs. Harper was the one who had insisted Tabitha go out. She led Tabitha astray. If Tabitha had stayed home, this wouldn’t have happened.
Harper’s fault.
Harper’s fault.
Harper’s fault.
Tabitha turns the car around and drives back to the cottage where the Lexus and the racing bike are. This is where Dr. Zimmer is living; Tabitha feels sure of it now. She swings into the driveway and kills the ignition. She strides up the walk and knocks on the front door, then waits. Her eyes burn; her tongue thickens. What is she doing here? What is she going to say? She’s not sure, but she can’t seem to stop herself.
The door opens. It’s the doctor. She recognizes him instantly, from just that one glimpse of him at the reception. It’s more than that, though. It’s that Dr. Reed Zimmer recognizes her. His eyes fill with… well, the only word that comes to mind is wonder. And love.
“Harper?” he whispers. There is a catch in his voice. He can barely speak.
This, Tabitha thinks, is how she wants Franklin to look at her. This, she realizes, is how Franklin does look at her. But that doesn’t matter anymore.
“Hi,” Tabitha says. And she steps inside.
NANTUCKET
The Hy-Line ferry accommodates wheelchairs, and so this is how Eleanor Roxie-Frost travels back to Nantucket, accompanied by her sister, Flossie, and her longtime housekeeper, Felipa Ramirez. Eleanor doesn’t love everyone on the boat treating her like an invalid, but—although she can now take several steps by herself—she isn’t able to make it up the ramp unassisted, so a wheelchair is a necessary evil. Her consternation about her disability is overshadowed by her relief at getting home to Nantucket.
Boston has been her home all her life, but in the summertime, there is no place like this island.
How many of us remember the summer of 1968, when Eleanor first set foot on Nantucket? She was on her honeymoon with Billy Frost. The two of them were cruising Nantucket Sound in a fifty-foot Hatteras captained by a retired Cape Verdean fisherman named Barker. Barker had taken them to the Vineyard for three days, where Eleanor and Billy had stayed at the Katama Shores Motor Inn. Billy had rented a CJ-7 and driven them out to the nude beach. He had gone into the water without his trunks, but Eleanor kept her suit on, despite the other beachgoers looking at her like she was the odd duck. They had danced until the wee hours at the Dunes a Go Go, and it was quite fun, but Eleanor had felt altogether more at home once they got to Nantucket, where things were a bit more staid. They had a suite at Roberts House, amid the cobblestone streets; they walked two blocks each night to dine at the Opera House. They rented bicycles and rode to ’Sconset, where they lunched on oysters and vichyssoise at the Chanticleer. As they were leaving that lunch, they spied Paul Newman playing tennis across the street at the Casino.
“Shall we go introduce ourselves?” Eleanor had asked.
“Absolutely not, darling,” Billy had said.
Eleanor had been keen to buy property on Nantucket, but Billy favored the Vineyard, where, admittedly, prices were more reasonable. They quarreled about it for twenty years until they divorced—and then they both got what they wanted, Eleanor supposed, although she had certainly had moments when she’d wished she’d been more flexible.
Eleanor has heard from Tabitha a handful of times—and from Harper twice—although conversations with both twins have been decidedly one-sided. Eleanor talks about how she’s doing, how she’s feeling, her progress with physical therapy, and her struggle to get off the painkillers. One morning she realizes that neither twin has said a word about herself, but then Eleanor realizes that if she asks how they’re doing, they’ll candy-coat the truth. To figure out what’s going on, Eleanor will have to get home and see for herself.
She is met at the ferry by her usual cabdriver, Chet Holland. Chet’s sister is a transgender woman in Toronto named Desirée, and Desirée Holland loves to wear the ERF label, a fact that secretly thrills Eleanor. Eleanor beams at Chet and introduces him to Flossie. “My baby sister, Flossie.”
“Oh, yeah?” Chet says. The sister is a younger, perkier version of Eleanor with platinum-blond instead of silver hair. And fake breasts, if Chet had to guess. “You happy to be back on the rock?”
Flossie rolls her eyes. “You can keep your Boston baked beans and foggy gray islands. I’m a Florida girl.”
Hell, yeah! Chet thinks. He fills his own idle time daydreaming about Florida himself. He checks out the left hand of Eleanor’s baby sister, Flossie, thinking he might like to take her out and show her what Nantucket has to offer. But Flossie sports a rock the size of the Titanic iceberg on her ring finger. Never mind.
Chet pulls into Eleanor’s driveway, on Cliff Road.
“Wait a minute,” Eleanor says. “Is this the right house?
“Sure is,” Chet says. True, he hasn’t driven Eleanor anywhere all summer, but this is her house, of that he is certain. He hits the brakes and waits for Eleanor to orient herself. She’s getting older, plus she’s a creative genius (at least according to his brother/sister Dave/Desirée), so maybe her brain is too crammed with new designs to recall what her house looks like. Einstein had a problem like that—he didn’t know his own phone number!
“I haven’t been here since Slick Willie was president,” Flossie says. “But it’s just as I remember it, Ellie. Prettier, even.”
The housekeeper says something in Spanish that sounds urgent. She’s pointing to the house.
“Wait a minute,” Eleanor says. She’s confused. It is her house, but something is off. She curses herself for taking the extra oxycodone that morning. She felt she needed it to get through the ordeal of traveling, but it has left her addled. She snaps her fingers. “I know what threw me,” she says. “I do not recognize that car.” Here she points to the navy-blue Bronco in the driveway of the carriage house. Whose car is that? It looks like something a spoiled teenage boy would drive, or a man going through a certain kind of midlife crisis. Maybe it belongs to a boyfriend of Ainsley’s. Or possibly a boyfriend of Tabitha’s. Someone new? Eleanor does not at all understand why Tabitha broke things off with Ramsay Striker. Eleanor didn’t convey to Tabitha how heartbroken she was about the split. She dealt with it the same way she handled all unpleasant topics: by ignoring it.