“Mrs. Zimmer? Dr. Zimmer? Were you sleeping with Billy’s doctor? His married doctor?”

Harper said, “I think you’d better go.”

“Yes,” Eleanor said. “For once, Pony, I agree with your sister.”

At six o’clock that evening, when Harper pulls her Bronco up to her duplex and unloads the bakery boxes filled with leftover tea sandwiches, she understands that there will be backlash.

Drew is sitting on her front step in street clothes—jeans, a blue chambray shirt, and navy espadrilles that he wears despite the ribbing he receives from the other officers and from Harper. He is also wearing the face of dejection.

“You were sleeping with Dr. Zimmer?” he asks.

“No,” Harper says automatically.

“Dr. Zimmer is such a great guy. I love that guy. I look up to that guy. He’s a hero of mine. He wanted to work with me on a drug awareness program in the middle school because he agreed with me that we have to reach kids while they’re at their most impressionable.”

“Drew,” Harper says. She steps around him, opens her front door, and carries the bakery boxes to the kitchen, with Fish in hot pursuit. Fish has never met a bakery box he didn’t like; Billy used to buy a dozen doughnuts and give a third of them to the dog. The white powdered-sugar variety is his favorite.

“These are sandwiches,” Harper says. She tosses Fish one made from egg salad and watercress, which he devours, then a radish-and-butter sandwich, which he sniffs, then leaves on the floor. “Yeah. I don’t blame you.”

Drew stays on the front porch.

No, Harper thinks. Whatever is going to transpire here will not happen in full view of the street.

“Come in, please,” she says.

“I tried calling your cell phone,” he says. “I called seventeen times and left eleven messages because I want to know if what Mrs. Zimmer was accusing Dr. Zimmer of is true.”

Harper’s mind wanders, as it tends to do when she is hearing something unpleasant. She sings off-key, “I saw her today at the reception, a glass of wine in her hand…”

Drew says, “She said you were having an affair with Dr. Zimmer. She said she has proof.”

Harper’s insides freeze with fear. Proof?

Harper pulls Drew by the arm back to the front door. There’s no sign of a vehicle.

“How did you get here?” she asks.

“I had the chief drop me off.”

“The chief?” Harper says. “Chief Oberg?”

Drew nods. “When we started dating, he tried to warn me about you. He told me you used to be a coke dealer.”

Harper shakes her head. “Not even close.”

“But you did something wrong.”

“If I had, Drew, the last person I would admit it to is you.”

“I want you to confess that you were having an affair with Dr. Zimmer.”

“No,” Harper says. “There was a misunderstanding.”

“That’s crap.”

“Please don’t go around talking about what happened at my father’s reception,” Harper says. “People love to gossip on this island, Drew. Even good, well-meaning people like Chief Oberg.”

“Why would Sadie Zimmer act that way if she didn’t have proof?” Drew says. “You were having an affair with Dr. Zimmer. You’ve been lying to me, Harper. I thought we were exclusive. My aunties made lobster stew for you!”

“Please,” Harper says. “Please, Drew, do not talk about this to your family.” She closes her eyes as she imagines Drew’s four aunties and his mother, Yvonne—Oak Bluffs’ all-time favorite selectman—gathered around the kitchen table with their coffee and their homemade cinnamon rolls, one minute thinking, Isn’t it nice that handsome child Drew found a woman he likes, even if she does live in Vineyard Haven?, the next minute learning that the woman is a cheat, sleeping with nice, kind Dr. Zimmer, who prescribes their blood pressure medicine, and as it turns out the woman is not only a cheat but also a former criminal, which escaped their previous notice because Joey Bowen only sold drugs to white people. Once the aunties and Yvonne get hold of the story, it will spread like a raging forest fire through the Methodist campground, through their church, through the town administration building, the public library, the hair salon, the Steamship Authority terminal, and finally to the Lookout, where every local person Harper knows likes to go for a drink in the summer. The influence of the Snyder sisters knows no bounds.

“People are going to find out no matter who I tell or don’t tell,” Drew says. “I’m an officer of the law. I can’t date a woman with a reputation like yours. We have to break up.”

This pronouncement comes as an unexpected relief.

“Okay,” Harper says.

“Okay?” Drew says. “You’re just going to let me go?”

“You don’t trust me,” Harper says. “You believe the talk. There’s no hope for a relationship without trust, Drew.”

“But—” Drew says.

“I’m too old for you, anyway,” Harper says. “Find someone younger. Get married. Have a baby.”

“I don’t want a baby,” Drew says. “I want you.”

“Don’t second-guess yourself,” Harper says. “You’re doing the right thing.”

“But I think I might be in love with you,” Drew says.

“I’ll call you a cab,” Harper says.

She and Fish eat the rest of the tea sandwiches for dinner, and Harper throws back a six-pack of Amity Island ale. The beer makes her brave, at least temporarily. She turns on her cell phone.

She sees the eleven voice mails from Drew. There is also a voice mail from her boss, Rooster, and a voice mail from a local Vineyard number that Harper suspects is Sadie Zimmer’s cell phone. There are seven text messages from Drew and a text from Reed. This last message is the only one she cares about.

It says: Sadie on a rampage, telling everyone about catching us at Lucy Vincent. I just got a call from Greenie. Pls don’t contact me for a while. I’m sorry.

Harper squeezes her eyes shut. It’s over with Drew, and now it’s over with Reed. Greenie, Adam Greenfield, is the president of the hospital’s board of directors. Uncharted horrors and humiliations lie ahead. How did Harper not understand this three days ago?

Her phone rings, and she thinks: Reed. He loves her; of this she is certain. She felt it most keenly in the parking lot. It was more than sex. It was love. Would it be naive of Harper to believe that Reed might leave Sadie for Harper? Reed and Sadie don’t have children—they don’t even have a dog—so what reason would there be for Reed to stay?

But when Harper checks her display, she sees that the person calling is Tabitha. Harper groans. Nothing from the woman in fourteen years, and now she’s blowing Harper up. What are the chances that Pony is calling to check on Harper, see how she’s doing, ask if there is anything she can do to help? What are the chances that Tabitha is calling for any reason other than to thank Harper for mucking up her own life so badly that Tabitha became a victim?

Zero chance, Harper decides. She lets the call go to voice mail.

TABITHA

She hopes things will get better once they leave the golf club and are on their way home, but instead things get worse. Once the taxi driver—who doesn’t know where he’s going and nearly gets into three separate wrecks—delivers them to the ferry, Tabitha and Ainsley go to the office to exchange their tickets so they can take the earlier boat, and Eleanor wanders away like a person with Alzheimer’s.

They find Eleanor sidled up to the bar at Coop DeVille, where she has ordered a glass of champagne (Tabitha assumes that at this establishment, it’s prosecco) and is telling the buxom young bartender, Carmen, that she is Billy Frost’s widow.

“I knew Billy well,” Carmen says. “He came in here all the time. That was his usual stool over there.” She points to an empty stool at the far end of the bar, farthest from the dock and closest to the TV.

“Well, then,” Eleanor says. “That is where I shall sit.”

Ainsley nudges Tabitha. “Grammie is drunk.”