Page 37 of The Identicals
“Tabitha?”
Harper looks up to see a very handsome, clean-cut man in a shirt and tie and horn-rimmed glasses. He looks like Superman before he’s Superman. He looks like Clark Kent.
“I’m not—”
“Did you get a newcar?” Clark Kent asks. He gasps when he sees Fish asleep across the back. “Did you get adog?”
The look of utter shock on Clark Kent’s face is enough to make Harper laugh. She nearly plays along. How many times in their early life did one twin pretend to be the other? A twister, they called it, short for “twin sister.” No one could tell them apart.
No one.
Harper nearly says,Yeah, I traded in for this old clunker. Can you believe it?What does Tabitha drive? Harper wonders. A red Mercedes convertible, as sleek as a woman’s shoe?And I got a dog. I figured I needed one more pressing responsibility.
But Harper can’t do it to this guy. She grins. “I’m not Tabitha.”
“Tabitha,” Clark Kent says, “I know the other night was awkward, and I’m sorry—”
Harper is, naturally, dying to hear about Tabitha’s awkward night, but she interrupts because to let him continue only to satisfy her wanton curiosity seems cruel. She’s on Nantucket, it’s a fresh start, and she’s going to be nice. “I’m Harper Frost, Tabitha’s twin sister.”
“Her…” Clark Kent fish-mouths as he searches for words.
“Her twin sister. I live on Martha’s Vineyard.”
Clark Kent nods once. “She told me about you.”
“Well, that’s something,” Harper says. “We haven’t communicated much in the past decade and a half, but last week our father died…”
Clark Kent’s eyes widen.
“…and on Monday evening, our mother fell down and broke her hip.”
Here Clark Kent gasps. “Eleanor?”
Harper tilts her head. “How do you know my sister?”
Clark Kent straightens up and offers Harper his hand. “I’m being terribly rude. I’m sorry. My name is Ramsay Striker. I’m… or I was… well, I lived with your sister… Tabitha… I dated Tabitha for four years, lived with her for three. We broke up in February.”
“Ah,” Harper says. She studies the guy: tall, successful looking, well dressed. Tabitha’s type, or what Harper has always pictured as Tabitha’s type, although the onlyrealboyfriend of Tabitha’s that Harper has ever met is Wyatt, who wasnotTabitha’s type. Which is one reason—of many, she supposes—that it didn’t work out between them.
Harper would like to pin Ramsay Striker to a board like a butterfly specimen and ask him ten thousand questions.
As if reading Harper’s mind, Ramsay Striker checks his watch. “Do you want to go grab a drink?” he asks.
It’s the lunch hour, and places will be crowded, Ramsay says, so he suggests “the brewery” because Harper can bring her dog.
Brilliant,Harper thinks. Ramsay is thoughtful. And, as it turns out, the brewery—CISCO BREWERS, the sign says—is the perfect laid-back place to go on a mild, sunny afternoon.
Harper loves Nantucket already!
The brewery features a large brick patio surrounded by rustic farm buildings. One building sells beer, another sells wine, and yet another sells spirits. Perched on a stool with a golden retriever at his feet is a long-haired guy playing the guitar. There are a few dozen people sitting at picnic tables, drinking and eating guacamole and chips or oysters from the food trucks.
Ramsay and Harper choose an empty picnic table, and Ramsay says, “How does a beer and a lobster roll sound?”
Harper loves a man who instinctively knows what a particular moment calls for. “Like heaven,” she says.
Harper limits herself to two beers and just a sip of the third because she still has to go to the store and make it back to the carriage house before Ainsley gets home from school. She has told Ramsay about herself and Tabitha growing up—all the way to the divorce and the family divided between two islands.
Ramsay says, “So why the rift between you and Tabitha?”
