Page 51 of The Identicals
“How about a week from Sunday?” Ramsay says. “The boutique will be closed. Day of rest and all that.”
“I don’t know,” Harper says.
“Please?” Ainsley says. “Let’s do it.”
“Don’t you want to hang out with your friends?” Harper asks.
Ainsley’s face darkens. “Not really.”
“Okay,” Harper says to Ramsay. “That sounds like fun. Thank you.”
On the way home, Ainsley sips her frappé in silence.
“I’m not sure about interviewing Ramsay’s ex-girlfriend,” Harper says. “Much less hiring her.”
“Do it,” Ainsley says. “Mom will flip. She was, like,sojealous when Ramsay started dating her. She’s young. Like, just a few years older than me.”
“What do you think about going to the beach with Ramsay next Sunday?” Harper says. “Is that something you want to do? We could blow him off and just go you and me and Fish instead. Fish is fun at the beach.”
“I want Ramsay to come,” Ainsley says. “Mom and I always went to the beach with Ramsay on Sundays before. I think I need some consistency in my life.”
Harper laughs, though she’s still not quite comfortable with the beach plans. When Harper and Tabitha were growing up, lots of people thought they were interchangeable. They looked exactly alike, so therefore theywereexactly alike. But Ramsay isn’t that simple, is he? He realizes that Harper isn’t Tabitha, not at all. She has different proclivities and aversions, different passions, a different life philosophy. If he doesn’t realize it now, he’ll figure it out soon enough.
Harper is so consumed with these thoughts as they turn into the driveway and get out of the car that she doesn’t notice the front of the carriage house until Ainsley screams. And once Ainsley screams, Fish starts barking from inside.
The front door, the porch, and the flagstone walk have been bombarded with raw eggs, probably four or five dozen of them. In the hot sun, it smells like a sulfurous fart.
Harper nearly gags, but she holds herself in check in front of Ainsley.
Sadie,she thinks. Sadie has found her here. In blue sidewalk chalk on the flagstone, it says:YOU SUCK EGGS.
Ainsley sees it and squawks.
“Emma,” she says. “This was Emma. And Candace, too, maybe.”
Harper closes her eyes. Of course it wasn’t Sadie Zimmer. For the first time in her life, Harper understands what it feels like to be a parent: she wants to take every bullet; she wants to protect Ainsley from every insult and affront. Harper can handle an egging. But Ainsley races into the house, sobbing, her sparkling flip-flops crunching on the broken shells and sliding through the albumen slime.
Harper closes her eyes and sends a brief prayer for strength to the universe. Then the smell gets to her, and she vomits in the bushes.
At the beginning of the week, Harper interviews Caylee alone at a place called the Lemon Press on Centre Street, which Caylee suggested. The Lemon Press has Mocha Joe’s coffee and an organic menu. Harper doesn’t enjoy food that is aggressively healthy, but she has to admit that the offerings look delicious. Caylee has ordered an iced jasmine tea and an assortment of avocado toasts—some with radishes, some with heirloom tomatoes, some with hard-boiled egg. Unfortunately, at the sight of the egg, Harper feels queasy, hot, and dizzy. She orders a hot water with lemon.
Caylee is young—too young for Ramsay—and pretty in a wholesome way: long dark hair, big blue eyes, and a crooked nose that keeps her from being too beautiful. She has a tattoo of a pink ribbon on the inside of her wrist, and initially Harper thinks,Uh-oh, tattoo,but when Caylee sees Harper looking at it, she says, “I lost my mother to breast cancer three years ago.”
Harper feels herself misting up. “I just lost my father,” she says. “It’s hard.”
Caylee reaches a hand across the table and squeezes Harper’s forearm.
“You’re hired,” Harper says. She doesn’t care if Tabitha objects. Caylee is going to work at the boutique. Caylee has a fresh energy, and she looks great in all the clothes. She is bubbly and fun, she needs a job, and she can work whenever Harper schedules her to work—the more hours the better. She doesn’t have any actual retail experience, but she spent all last summer and the first part of this summer bartending at the Straight Wharf, so her people skills and customer service are on point. Also, and possibly most important, she has friends—lots of friends, many of them girls from privileged families with unlimited discretionary income. Others work in the service industry on Nantucket, making hundreds of dollars in tips per night, and they just might need a new outfit for their days off.
When Caylee takes a tour of the store and picks out her six outfits, each one cuter than the last, she says, “I promise you—my friends have no idea you carry lines like Milly and Rebecca Taylor. They think it’s just ERF, which is what our mothers wear. We have to get the word out. We have to have a party.”
They plan the party for Friday, despite Meghan saying, “I’m going on the record. Tabitha wouldnotallow a party in here. Never mind Eleanor.”
“We need to lighten things up,” Harper says. “We need a new image.”
“We needcustomers,” Ainsley says. She, even more than Harper, has fallen under Caylee’s spell. Caylee is kind and solicitous, sort of like an older sister. Harper understands the attraction. Ainsley needs a friend, especially since the egging. But Harper worries that Caylee is just a little bit too old. She’s twenty-two, and her friends go to the bars at night—Cru, Nautilus, the Boarding House, the Chicken Box.
Harper has done her damnedest to keep an eye on Ainsley without seeming overbearing. There is always a glass next to Ainsley’s bed, and Harper checks at every opportunity to make sure it contains water and not vodka. She sniffs Ainsley’s bottles of Vitaminwater as well. So far so good.
