Page 80 of The Identicals
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Ainsley says. “But I need to tell you something.”
Harper sits up—gingerly, it seems—with her arm bracing her midsection as though her stomach hurts, and she brings her feet to the floor. “What is it?”
“I talked to Tabitha,” Ainsley says. “My mother, I mean.”
“Okay…”
“She found out about the party. She says we’re sullying the ERF brand. Making it less distinctive or distinguished or whatever.”
Harper scoffs. “Of course she said that. She must not care about actual money.”
“But that’s not what I’m worried about,” Ainsley says.
“What are you worried about?”
“She asked who we hired to work in the boutique, and I told her it was Caylee, and she hung up on me.”
“She’ll get over it,” Harper says. “Caylee is a stellar employee. Tabitha is just bitter.”
“But what if she comes back here and fires Caylee?” Ainsley says. “What if she shows up and undoes all the changes we’ve made?”
Harper stands up to give Ainsley a hug. “You don’t have to worry about this. This is old, old stuff between me and your mom coming to the surface. We disagree on… well, just about everything. I don’t want you getting caught in the middle.”
“I just want things to stay like they are right now,” Ainsley says. “If Tabitha… if my mother comes home, everything will go back to the way it was. But I think maybe she’s too busy renovating Gramps’s house to come back here.”
“We’re tearing Gramps’s house down,” Harper says.
“No,” Ainsley says. “Mama is renovating it, she said. I guess she found some kind of special wood under the carpet.”
“What?” Harper says. Her voice is suddenly loud and sharp, and Ainsley takes a step backwards. She congratulates herself for somehow managing to make things worse. “Does she not understand I need money? I can’t wait six months or a year to see the sale proceeds! I can’t spend a hundred and fifty thousand dollars on achair railandBerber rugsand aclawfoot tuband whatever else she thinks that house needs. I need money! I need security! I need a nest egg!” Harper grabs her phone. “I’m putting an end to this.”
No!Ainsley thinks.
Harper goes down to her bedroom. Ainsley hears her shout, “Tabitha, what have you done? We agreed to tear the house down! Put the land on the market! And sell it!”
Ainsley collapses on the sofa and holds her head in her hands. She had thought the experiment of her mother and aunt switching places was working.
“You don’t know what the Vineyard Haven real estate market is like!” Harper screams. “It could be a year—or longer—until we see any money.” She pauses, and Ainsley assumes her mother is talking. “It’snottit for tat! I threw that party because I was trying to help the store! I was trying to improve sales and make some money to pay the rent—and I did! You’re renovating Billy’s house because… because you want a vanity project! I should file a cease-and-desist order! Well, fine, maybe I will! We’ll see how little you care when the sheriff comes to visit!”
Ainsley groans. The experiment is not working.
The following afternoon when Ainsley enters the carriage house, she hears Fish barking, and she knows there’s trouble.
Her mother is here, she thinks, and her stomach drops to her feet. The FJ40 wasn’t in the driveway, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s high summer; maybe she couldn’t get it across on the ferry. Maybe it’s parked over in front of Seamless. Ainsley didn’t think to look.
Ainsley takes the stairs two at a time and finds Aunt Harper kneeling on the living-room floor, her phone in one hand, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open but no sound coming out.
“Aunt Harper!” Ainsley says. “What is it? What happened?” She immediately thinks this is her mother’s fault. Or her grandmother’s. Maybe they’re the ones who have called the sheriff or filed legal action.
Her aunt rocks back on her heels and lets out a strangled cry.
Ainsley instinctively knows that something big has happened, something bigger than a disagreement about store policy or Vineyard real estate.
Someone is dead. But who? Who?
It takes a few minutes for Ainsley to get Harper calmed down enough to piece together the story. It’s not her mother, and it’s not Eleanor. It’s a friend of Aunt Harper’s, a close friend, a boyfriend, maybe. A man named Brendan. He killed himself, overdosed intentionally on pills.
Ainsley’s stomach sours. Suicide combines the awful shock of an unexpected death with something even more sinister. To kill yourself means to experience the ultimate blackness; it means inhabiting a room with no air, no light, no hope. It terrifies Ainsley.
