Harper goes home briefly to let Fish out. He is a dog, not a person, yet he’s standing by the front door waiting for her even though, more often than not these days, he sleeps on his Orvis bed and barely turns his head when Harper comes in. But today he’s right there, paws on her thighs, licking her face, giving her all the love he can. He knows. This brings Harper to tears. Her dog knows Billy died, but she feels the need to deliver the news herself. She grabs Fish by the muzzle and looks into his glacier-blue eyes and says, “Pops is gone, bub.” He keens and rubs his flank against Harper’s leg, and she has to practically push him out the door to her front yard, where he pees on the biggest hydrangea bush on the property. Then he comes trotting back into the kitchen, where Harper says, “Lamb tonight, in honor of Pops.” But Fish doesn’t snarf down his food, as he normally does; instead he looks up at Harper, as if for permission. “Go ahead,” she says. And with something like mournful dignity, Fish lowers his head to the bowl.
When Harper leaves the house, she drives to Our Market to grab a six-pack of Amity Island ale and three nips of J?germeister. The cashier, Robyn, has known Harper for twenty years, but Robyn is a close friend of Jude’s, so Harper is always wary and reserved.
“You want a bag?” Robyn asks.
“Please,” Harper says.
Maybe Robyn has heard the news about Billy already, because she throws a Milk-Bone for Fish into the bag for free.
It’s eight thirty, and the sun has just set. Harper prefers winter, when it gets dark at three thirty and is pitch black by the time she finishes her shift. The summer sun reveals too much.
Harper opens one of the beers using the metal end of her seat belt and chugs half of it, then she upends one of the nips of J?ger into her mouth. Her mother would be appalled.
Harper should have taken Middle Road, because State Road brings her right by Jude’s house, where Harper sees cars and trucks lining the street on either side of the Garden Goddesses sign. It’s Jude’s annual start-of-summer party for her staff. She has a pig roast and makes cornbread and green-apple slaw from scratch, and there’s a big galvanized tub filled with beer. Jude’s partner, Stella, makes mudslides in the blender and everyone listens to Jack Johnson and the newbies think, Wow, what a great place to work! Only the returning employees know that this is the last day they’ll have off until Labor Day, when Jude throws a second party, with lobsters.
Harper hits the gas. She can’t get past Jude’s property fast enough.
Siren. Lights. Harper checks her rearview.
Police. She hisses and looks at the open container next to her, but there’s no time to dispose of it and no place to hide it. She puts her blinker on and pulls over.
This is the last thing she needs. Her reputation has already been shredded, sullied, and stomped upon with steel-toed boots. Three years earlier, Harper was arrested for doing “a favor” for a man named Joey Bowen, whom she knew only casually; he was a frequent patron at Dahlia’s, where Harper waitressed one night a week. The “favor” was to deliver a package to the son of one of Jude’s landscaping clients, the Monacos; Harper was scheduled to mow the lawn and weed the beds at the Monaco house the following day. All she had to do was hide the package in her wheelbarrow beneath the mulch and fertilizer and bring it to the house. The Monaco son would come outside to collect it. Harper was supposed to park the wheelbarrow outside the side door and turn her back—and for this, Joey Bowen would pay her three thousand dollars. Harper realized she was probably delivering drugs, but the offer was too tempting to turn down; she needed the money. At that point, she was still living in Billy’s house. She wanted a place of her own, but the Vineyard was expensive, and it was hard to get ahead.
Little did Harper know that the state police and FBI had been watching the Monaco house for weeks, waiting for this particular delivery. When the son grabbed the package, agents hopped over the fence, dropped out of trees, and came charging across the lawn. The kid got cuffed, and so did Harper.
During the interrogation, Harper explained to the police that this was the one and only time she had ever delivered anything for anybody. Joey Bowen was a customer at the restaurant where she worked, she said. They informed her that Joey Bowen was wanted for drug trafficking from the Upper Cape all the way down to New Bedford.
Harper spent eighteen hours in lockup until Billy found her an attorney. She was released, receiving only six months’ probation, but she lost her job, both at Garden Goddesses and at Dahlia’s. Jude Hogan openly despises Harper for tainting her landscaping business. The other people who hate Harper are a scarier but far less visible lot—the people who used to buy their drugs from Joey.
But the worst thing, perhaps, was that the Monacos’ next-door neighbor was a woman named Ann-Lane Crenshaw, who also happened to be Eleanor Roxie-Frost’s college roommate. Eleanor heard about Harper’s arrest immediately, and she no doubt shared the appalling news with Tabitha. How could Harper not suddenly feel like the blackest of sheep?
Anyone else would have left the Vineyard. It’s a testimony to how pathetic Harper is that she has stayed.
She has nowhere else to go.
And her father is here. Was here.
Tears arrive unbidden. Her father has just died. She’ll just tell the officer that. Play the sympathy card.
She puts down her window. She has pulled over about a hundred yards beyond Jude’s property line; she dreads anyone from that party seeing her.
“Hey, baby.”
She looks up. It’s Drew.
“What?” she says. She checks her rearview. It’s an Edgartown police car, not a car from West Tisbury. She sinks back in her seat while relief drains through to her feet. “Did you really have to pull me over?”
“You’re so beautiful you’re breaking the law,” he says. He leans in her window to kiss her. “Plus you were speeding.”
“I was?” she says.
“Why are you all the way out here?” he asks. “I’ve been trailing you since I saw you leaving Our Market.”
“You have?” she says. Drew is a little stalkerish by nature. Possibly he suspects she’s keeping a secret. “Don’t you have work?”
“I’m on break until nine,” Drew says. “I was driving out to meet you at the hospital, actually, when I saw your car.” He eyes the beer. “You’ll want to be careful with that.”
“I’m going to drive to Aquinnah, clear my head,” she says. “It’s sweet that you’re worried about me, but like I said on the phone, I think I just need to be alone.”
Drew nods. She’s a sucker for him in his uniform. He’s so handsome, so upright, such a relentless do-gooder. Why can’t she be in love with Drew?
“The aunties are making you a pot of lobster stew,” he says. “I’ll bring it by tomorrow.”