Onward: as per Billy’s wishes, his body will be cremated, and his memorial reception will be held at the Farm Neck Golf Club. Once Harper sells Billy’s house, she will be able to quit her job at Rooster Express, a desperation job she got three years ago when Jude fired her from Garden Goddesses following the Joey Bowen catastrophe. And then what will Harper do? She could, in theory, start her own landscaping company. She’s sure the clients still ask for her, and not just because she used to mow their lawns in a bikini top. She is a nice person and a good person, despite circumstantial evidence to the contrary.
Dee reappears with paperwork for Harper to sign and a large Ziploc bag containing Billy’s clothes and belongings, including the gold 1954 Omega watch he inherited from his own father, which was the possession he had treasured the most. Billy Frost had come to Martha’s Vineyard in 1995, left flat broke by his divorce from Eleanor, and he had floundered, Harper knew, just as she had that same year as a freshman at Tulane. Billy had scavenged work as an electrical contractor, picking up scraps and leftovers from people like Buttons Jones. He had befriended the guys who cut down trees and moved houses and insulated crawl spaces; he befriended the fishermen and first mates, the transients and junkies who hung out at the Wharf pub and who, when they were flush, bothered Carmen, the bartender at Coop DeVille.
But Billy always wore his watch, the gold Omega, and this had set him apart.
What will Harper do with the watch? She has no one to pass it on to.
Tabitha has Ainsley, but what does a sixteen-year-old girl want with a gold 1954 Omega? Harper thinks of Ainsley’s father, Wyatt. Billy had been fond of Wyatt, but can Harper ever suggest that Wyatt take the watch? No.
Tabitha is a toothache that can’t be ignored for another second. Six weeks earlier, when Billy got really bad, Harper copied Tabitha’s cell number out of Billy’s contacts and, with the help of half a dozen Amity Island ales and three shots of J?germeister, left Tabitha a voice mail informing her that if she wanted to see Billy one last time before he died, she had better do it soon. Tabitha had never responded—no surprise there. Harper wishes she had called Tabitha while sober, because she fears she slurred her words in the message, making it that much easier to disregard and delete.
Billy’s death warrants another phone call, but Harper is too angry to conduct one civilly. Did Tabitha deign to listen to the message? Did she come visit? Has she set foot on the Vineyard even once since the death of her son, Julian, fourteen years ago? She has not. Nantucket is 11.2 miles away, so it certainly hasn’t been an issue of proximity.
Harper sends Tabitha the same text. Billy is gone. And then, once safely inside her Bronco, Harper breaks down and calls Dr. Zimmer.
The phone rings six times, then he answers, voice hushed. Harper imagines he has stepped away from the bonfire and is standing in the shadows.
He says, “I’m sorry, Harper. I thought there was more time. Weeks.”
What kind of doctor is he? She wants to believe him incompetent or hate him, but she can’t. Reed gives everything he has to his patients. He stays late to do rounds; he never rushes; he is thoughtful, consistent, kind, clear. Not once in ten months did Harper ever feel like he wanted or needed to be someplace else; Billy might have been his only patient. Dr. Zimmer would, on occasion, show up with a surprise or treat for Billy—the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue; an arrowhead he’d discovered on a hike; a box of Stoner Food from Enchanted Chocolates, which he knew Billy loved (and technically wasn’t allowed to have). Reed Zimmer was like a doctor from TV, but better because he was real. He was both handsome and human. Sometimes he had bags under his eyes from staying up all night; sometimes he had scruff on his face or mussed hair. Sometimes he showed up wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt under his white coat. How could Harper have done anything but fall in love with him?
“Come to me,” she says.
“Not tonight. I…” His voice breaks off, and Harper imagines Sadie snatching the phone from his hand. Harper has harbored a sense of foreboding since she woke up that morning. She feels like her Siberian husky, Fish, when his ears prick: that dog can hear a mouse fart three miles away. “I have to stay here with my family.”
It isn’t your family, Harper wants to point out. It’s Sadie’s family.
“My family just died,” Harper says.
Reed is quiet—whether out of guilt or because he’s distracted Harper isn’t sure.
“Have you called your sister?” he asks. “Or your mother?”
My mother? Harper thinks. Ha! If Harper calls Eleanor to say that Billy has died, her mother will sniff or cough in response. Maybe. There was a time, during the heavy shelling of the divorce, when all Eleanor had wanted was for Billy to drop dead. At her most gracious, she might say, I’m sorry for your loss, darling, but with all that smoking, Billy really had it coming.
Eleanor hadn’t always felt that way, of course. Once upon a time, Eleanor Roxie-Frost and Billy Frost were a dynamic, magnetic couple—Eleanor a prominent fashion designer, Billy the owner of Frost Electrical Contractors, Inc. They lived on Beacon Hill in a house they inherited from Eleanor’s parents, and there they raised identical twin girls. They did things properly: they attended Church of the Advent one Sunday a month as well as on Christmas and Easter, like good Episcopalians. They sent the twins to Winsor, the private all-girls school where both Eleanor and Eleanor’s mother had gone. Billy and Eleanor attended parties at the Park Plaza, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Harvard Club. At social events, they were photographed so often that they developed a trademark stance: Eleanor would beam at the camera while Billy snaked an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. They were Boston’s sweethearts; the city adored them.
Ultimately, Harper supposes, it was success that ruined them. Eleanor’s dresses became so popular that she was able to open a three-story eponymous boutique on Newbury Street. For nearly two years, Eleanor was at the building night and day, overseeing renovations and designs. A photograph of Eleanor wearing a pencil skirt, stiletto heels, and a hard hat, giving the camera a working girl’s come-hither look, appeared in Women’s Wear Daily. That had been the first thing to set Billy off.
“Your mother,” Billy said, holding the photograph up for display over the breakfast table, “is only happy when she’s one hundred percent in control.”
The real issue, the twins soon learned, was that Eleanor hadn’t hired Billy’s company to do the electrical work on her boutique. She refused to do so on principle; she said she felt that working together would ruin their marriage.
“That’s a bunch of baloney,” Billy said. “Your mother is a secret snob. She doesn’t want the fancy photographers capturing a picture of her working-class husband. She has always thought she married beneath her.”
There were loud fights that year, Harper remembers. Billy accused Eleanor of abandoning her family for the store; Eleanor resented what she called Billy’s foot on her throat. Why didn’t he want her to succeed? He’d known from the first night he met her that she’d wanted a career.