You need to go see him, she said. Especially now.
“Nervous doesn’t begin to cover it,” Harper says. “How about you?”
“Why would I be nervous?” Tabitha asks.
Harper shrugs. A little while later, she says, “Was it real between you and Franklin? I mean, it happened really fast.”
“Harper,” Tabitha says. “It was real.”
They don’t say much on the ride to the house. Tabitha has been gone less than a full day, but she’s relieved to be back on the same island as Franklin. She wants so badly to believe that he’ll come to his senses and live his life for himself.
She and Harper walk in the back door of Billy’s house into the kitchen. Tad is on his hands and knees in front of the refrigerator. He’s putting in the last of the new floorboards. When he looks up, his eyes dart back and forth between the twins.
“Whoa,” he says.
“Hi, Tad,” Harper says. “Freaked out by the twin thing?”
Tabitha doesn’t care if he is or isn’t. “Is Franklin here?” she asks. “Have you seen him?”
Tad gets to his feet and wipes his hands off on his Carhartts. “He was here earlier today, actually.”
Tabitha’s heart feels like a bird smacking against a window. “He was?”
“He was. He asked for you. I told him you left.”
“You told him… did you tell him where I went?”
“I didn’t know where you went,” Tad says. “You bolted out of here without a word. He could see, obviously, that you’d left your car behind.”
“So then what happened?”
“Then he left,” Tad says.
“How long ago was that?” Tabitha asks.
“Hours ago,” Tad says. “And no, he didn’t tell me where he was going or when he’d be back.” He turns his attention to Harper. “How have you been?” he asks.
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Harper says.
HARPER
She has a harder time leaving Nantucket than she thought she would. It doesn’t take her long to pack, and with one hour in town, she’s able to say her good-byes. At the boutique she hugged Meghan and gave baby David Wayne a kiss on the forehead.
Then she held out her arms to Caylee. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You saved the store.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Caylee said.
“Tabitha was angry when she found out you were working at the store,” Harper said. “But even she can’t argue with a five-hundred-percent increase in sales.”
“Is she going to let me stay?” Caylee asked.
“Absolutely,” Harper said. “I bet you’ll even grow to like her.”
“You think?” Caylee said.
“But not as much as you like me, of course,” Harper said.
Harper walked up Main Street to the offices of Striker & McClain. The receptionist, Bonnie, narrowed her eyes at Harper.
“Which one are you?” she asked.
“Harper,” Harper said.
“I only ask because I heard Tabitha is coming back,” Bonnie said.
Wow, Harper thought. Nantucket gossip moves even faster than Vineyard gossip. That must be because it has a shorter distance to travel… and less traffic to deal with.
“That’s right,” Harper said.
At that moment, Ramsay appeared to save her.
“If you’re leaving, then I assume your sister is coming back,” Ramsay said.
“She is,” Harper said. She considered informing Ramsay that Tabitha had fallen in love over on the other island, but she bit her tongue. For all she knew, Tabitha was planning to get back together with Ramsay—and wouldn’t it be just like Harper to ruin that, too? Harper gave Ramsay a hug. “The Vineyard is only eleven miles away, you know. You’re welcome anytime.”
“I’ll come in the fall,” Ramsay said. “How about that?”
“Great,” Harper said. She figured he was just being polite. People on the Vineyard always vow to do things “in the fall,” when the hectic pace of summer is over, but then the fall becomes busier than anyone could have predicted, and the holidays loom on the horizon. Harper had offered the Vineyard up to Meghan and her husband as well, but she doubted they’d ever come. Those eleven miles might as well be eleven hundred; the Vineyard might as well be Vegas or Venus.
If Ramsay does come in the fall, he will learn that Harper is pregnant. She imagines meeting him at the ferry with her rounded belly—surprise!
It had been hardest, of course, to say good-bye to Ainsley. There were so many things Harper wanted to tell her niece: Be a good girl, be kind to your mother, be patient with your grandmother, don’t drink until your twenty-first birthday, then you and I will drink together, good champagne. Don’t smoke, ever. Never fall in love, fall in love with abandon, things will make sense when you’re older, things will never make sense. Life isn’t fair, make good decisions, don’t beat yourself up when you make bad decisions, value yourself the way I value you. Travel. Listen. Question. Wear sunscreen, use birth control, don’t buy tomatoes out of season. I will miss you. You are a wonderful, talented child, Ainsley, and I’m only ever a boat ride away. And then, last but not least: Scissors cut paper, rock smashes scissors, paper covers rock.
Ainsley said, “Next summer can I come live with you on the Vineyard and be your nanny?”
Nanny? Harper hadn’t yet thought of herself as a person who would need a nanny. But for Ainsley’s sake, she smiled and said without hesitation, “Absolutely.”
She leaves Tabitha at Billy’s house to take a shower and pack, and she drops Fish and her belongings off at the duplex. Fish collapses on his Orvis bed and closes his blue eyes and Harper is glad. She feared he would want to go with her when she left, but she needs to do this alone.
“I’ll be back in a little while, bud,” she says.
Fish doesn’t even lift his head.
Sheep Crossing: she knows the road, although as a delivery person she has overshot it half a dozen times at least. It’s nothing more than a slender dirt-and-sand path, really, with a tiny wooden sign half hidden by overgrown brush. Harper turns onto the road, blood rushing in her ears, anxiety coursing through her in a way that can’t be good for the baby.
We’re going to meet your father, she thinks.
She pulls into the first driveway on the left, as Tabitha said to do, and there is the Lexus and there is Reed’s bike. Harper is sweating now, and her breathing is shallow; her nerves are in control. She turns off the car and sits, then thinks, Well, this is it. She walks up to the door and knocks.
“Hello?”
Harper turns at the voice. A man—not Reed—is strolling across the lawn holding a bottle of Scotch. The man has a handlebar mustache waxed into curlicues, and despite the heat, Harper shivers. She can handle just about any variation on a man’s appearance—after all, for three years she lived with Rooster’s cockscomb, and before that she lived with Joey Bowen’s mullet—but she cannot tolerate a handlebar mustache.
The man offers his hand, and Harper shakes it expediently.