Page 18 of The Identicals
Ainsley drinks that flute of champagne, then Smitty, the ringleader among Billy’s golfing buddies, procures her another. The champagne goes right to her head on an empty stomach, but she doesn’t care; she kind of likes it. She is a celebrity here, at least among these men and all the people Smitty introduces her to, such as the woman in the Lilly Pulitzer shift, presented to Ainsley—with a nudge and a wink that make Ainsley think she should pay special attention—as Mrs. Tobias.
“I loved your grandpa,” Mrs. Tobias says. “He was a dreamboat.”
Mrs. Tobias is very tan. She’s somewhere in her midfifties, which is too old to pull off the kind of sundress she’s wearing—it’s best suited for someone Ainsley’s age—and her frosted blond hair is styled like Rachel’s fromFriends. But she’s pretty. She’s a heck of a lot younger and sexier and more attractive than Eleanor, although she lacks Eleanor’s elegance and grace.
Dreamboat,Ainsley thinks. Was this her grandfather’s girlfriend? Or maybe just his paramour? What to make of the name Mrs. Tobias? Where, if anywhere, is Mr. Tobias?
But before Ainsley can formulate the kind of probing questions that will yield more specifics, her attention is snagged by something happening over by the entrance. The tent has filled up with people, and servers are now passing trays of hors d’oeuvres—shrimp cocktail, radish sandwiches, pigs in a blanket—so it’s hard to see, plus Ainsley’s vision is hazy, thanks to the champagne. But she hears a woman shouting.
“Where is she? Whereisshe?”
The voice carries over the polite cocktail party chatter, and soon heads turn and voices are hushed. Ainsley sees a couple enter the tent, the woman petite, with very short hair and bug eyes, and a man in a suit and tie, following her, reaching for her arm, trying to quiet her down.
Who isthis? Ainsley wonders, and at the same time, Mrs. Tobias murmurs, “Oh, shit. Here it comes.”
Herewhatcomes? Ainsley’s eyes widen in wonder, then shock, as the bug-eyed woman approaches Tabitha and Eleanor.
“You!” she says. The person she seems to be addressing is Tabitha.
Wha…?Ainsley thinks. She sees Aunt Harper enter the tent just as the bug-eyed woman throws a full flute of champagne all over the front of Tabitha’s black Roxie dress, and then, with a whip-quick motion, slaps Tabitha across the face.
The sound of the slap reverberates through the tent. The crowd gasps, then goes silent.
HARPER
She understands the timing is bad: her father’s memorial reception is held only three days after Sadie catches her and Reed together in the parking lot of Lucy Vincent. Three days is long enough for the rumor to spread but not long enough for people to forget about it and move on.
She considered canceling the memorial reception, but Billy had wanted only one thing, and it was a farewell party at Farm Neck. And besides, in a text sent late Sunday night—when Harper was lying facedown in bed, determined never to rise again—Reed said that he’d managed to calm Sadie down. Hesaidhe’d convinced her that what she saw wasn’t Reed and Harper screwing but rather Reed embracing Harper in an attempt to comfort her after the death of her father. Yes, he understood it seemed odd and, possibly, unprofessional—meeting a patient’s family member at midnight in the parking lot of Lucy Vincent Beach, but that was why they loved the Vineyard, right? Because it was a close-knit community where people genuinely cared for one another, and Reed had a long-established history of going above and beyond the call of duty for his patients. Sadie should also remember that she’d had a lot to drink at the barbecue at Lambert’s Cove—a lot—and therefore she couldn’t trust anything she thought she’d seen.
She was lucky she hadn’t been pulled over.
With these assurances from Reed that Sadie had been neutralized, Harper proceeded with her plan. That Sadie had then, apparently, gone all Nancy Drew on him—checking Reed’s phone records and quizzing Dee, Billy’s nurse at the hospital, who said that yes, she had been suspicious about an affair all along—came as a surprise to Reed but not to Harper.
Sadie’s outburst at the reception had, initially, worked in Harper’s favor. It was wildly inappropriate—bursting into a beloved islander’s funeral, dousing his daughter in drink, then striking her.
In the seconds after Sadie slapped Tabitha—Tabitha, not Harper, a mistake Harper deeply regretted—Drew had appeared out of nowhere to subdue Mrs. Zimmer. He pried the empty champagne flute from her hand—no one wanted to see any breaking glass—and gently restrained her by holding both wrists.
Sadie spat in Tabitha’s general direction. “That woman is an evil bitch.”
“That woman,” Drew said, “is my girlfriend.”
“No,” Tabitha said. “Not me. My twin sister.” She offered her hand to Drew. “I’m Tabitha.”
Harper had been amazed that Pony had been able to regain her composure so shortly after being slapped. Her cheek was a hot, blazing red. It was one benefit of spending so many years with Eleanor, Harper reasoned. Tabitha knew how to take a hit.
Despite Harper’s mortification, she had the wherewithal to take the crowd’s temperature. The friends and neighbors assembled to mourn the passing of Billy Frost seemed aghast—not at Harper or Tabitha mistaken for Harper—but rather at Sadie Zimmer. The island girl who had made such a success of her mother’s pie business was revealed to be a raging psychopath! She had slapped one of Billy Frost’s daughters—the wrong daughter, as it turned out, the one who lived on Nantucket. As distressing as the matter had been thirty seconds earlier, now that Mrs. Zimmer had been restrained, people became titillated rather than alarmed.
Billy’s friend Smitty turned to Roger Door, who was standing next to him, and said, “This has to be the greatest story from any memorial reception ever.”
Roger Door raised a glass. “Leave it to Billy,” he said.
But it was Eleanor who had the final word. Oh, how Harper disliked her mother at times, yet she couldn’t dispute the fact that Eleanor had the countenance of a queen, a regal bearing, an unassailable authority. She had been raised a Brahmin and remained one to her core. Eleanor approached Sadie and said, “I don’t know who you are, but showing up at an event like this to air your personal grievances is nothing short of disgraceful. A man has died and deserves to be remembered fondly and cheerfully, so please take your petty drama elsewhere.”
Sadie’s bulging eyes narrowed with this reprimand. “Your daughter is a tramp,” she said.
“I don’t care,” Eleanor said. “Please go.”
Sadie allowed herself to be escorted from the tent by Reed and Drew. A waiter brought Tabitha an ice pack for her face. Some genius in the clubhouse found a way to pipe in music, and immediately Mozart restored civility to the proceedings. Harper, for a second believing she had survived the worst-case scenario unscathed, helped herself to another glass of champagne.
