They had sat at the picnic tables under the oaks for the better part of an hour. They started out talking about Billy—Harper confessed that Billy was still smoking one cigarette a day despite the fatwa on tobacco—then they wandered off topic, experimentally at first.

Dr. Zimmer had said, “Do you have siblings? Other family?”

Harper sipped her pumpkin-flavored coffee; this was the first time it had been available since the previous fall. It was a natural question to ask, she supposed, but it put the pleasantness of the encounter at risk.

“I have an identical twin, actually. She and my mother live on Nantucket.”

Dr. Zimmer had slapped a hand down on the green painted wood of the picnic table. Like most doctors, he had beautiful hands; he didn’t wear a ring, but Harper knew he was married to the woman who owned the pie shop in Vineyard Haven. She had, at least, done that much research. “An identical twin on Nantucket?”

Harper pulled off a chunk of muffin, then opened one of her three foil-wrapped pats of butter. Normally Harper dragged the muffin through the butter, making a mess of the butter and her fingers, but that day, in the polite company of Dr. Zimmer, Harper had used a plastic knife. The muffin was already rich and moist, and adding butter was like dipping jelly beans in icing. “You wouldn’t be able to tell us apart.”

“Come on.”

“I’m serious. We look exactly alike. The teachers at our school never figured it out. Neither did our camp counselors or our friends. Our own parents. Lots of other people.”

“And she lives on Nantucket with your mother. That’s crazy, right? You and your father live here, and your identical twin and your mother live on the other island?”

“Crazy,” Harper said in agreement.

“Are you close?”

“No,” Harper said. “Our parents’ divorce drove a wedge between us, then my sister and I had a pretty serious falling-out fourteen years ago now.”

“That’s too bad,” Dr. Zimmer said.

Harper shrugged. “I talk to my mother periodically, although she’s tough. Her name is Eleanor Roxie-Frost. Have you ever heard of her?”

“No,” Reed said. “Should I have?”

“I guess not,” Harper said. “She designs dresses. She’s a pretty big deal in the fashion world, or she used to be.”

“You’re single, right?” Dr. Zimmer asked. “Are you dating anyone?”

Again, Harper shrugged. “I date here and there. I’ve never been married, no kids. Do you have kids?”

“No, no kids,” Dr. Zimmer said. “I want them; my wife doesn’t. And to be fair, when we got married I didn’t want them, either. Apparently changing one’s mind about wanting children isn’t allowed…” He let his voice drift off. “What do you do for work?” He was changing the subject. No kids with Mrs. Zimmer was a sore spot.

Harper smiled. He obviously hadn’t heard about her involvement with Joey Bowen. “I deliver packages for Rooster Express.”

The next time Harper saw Dr. Zimmer, they were back at the hospital. It was late evening, and Billy had been urinating blood. Dr. Zimmer had him admitted and told Harper she could go home for the night. He was leaving the hospital as well, and he had walked her to her car. It had been the quintessential autumn night, cool but not yet cold, the air smelling of wood smoke and leaves.

“Would you like to go get a drink?” Dr. Zimmer asked.

They went to the Brick Cellar at Atria, a place Harper liked but where she would never go alone. Reed ordered a glass of wine, and Harper followed suit, although she preferred a beer and a shot. Reed—as soon as they got out of their respective cars to go inside, he had insisted Harper call him Reed instead of Dr. Zimmer—said he was hungry, and since Harper could always eat, they ordered a grilled Caesar salad, the lobster tacos, and the peach-blueberry cobbler and shared everything. When Harper groaned over the cobbler—which was a rather orgasmic groan, because the cobbler was so good—Reed turned to her and said, “You know that’s arousing, right?”

That had been the start of things, Harper supposed. Her inadvertent food groan elicited Reed’s choice of the word arousing, which automatically gave their new friendship a sexual edge.

It had been Reed who ventured there first, not Harper.

They each had another glass of wine, then a glass of some persimmon cordial that the bartender pressed on them—she had received a complimentary bottle from her wine rep and was anxious to be rid of it—and the next thing Harper knew, she and Dr. Zimmer were kissing like teenagers in the backseat of his Lexus. The details were hazy, but Harper knows that she did not invite herself into his car, so he must have enticed her.

It went on like that—clandestine meetings whenever Reed worked late. They would meet by the East Chop Beach Club or in the back parking lot of the ice rink. And then, in the spring, Reed finally agreed it would be safer to meet at her duplex. Three weeks ago, when Harper told Reed she was going on a date with “Sergeant Andrew Truman of the EPD—you know him, right?” Reed had left the hospital to meet her at her duplex in the middle of the day.

He was jealous, he said. He knew it was unfair, but he didn’t want Harper to start dating Drew.

She had laughed. You can’t ask me to do that, she said. You can’t ask me to do anything. You’re married.

Harper stares at the Lexus a few seconds longer. It’s a black car, baking in the sun.

Good-bye, Reed, she thinks. Her stomach is hollow and sour. She wants to leave him a note or a sign—a heart drawn in the yellow pollen on his back window—but she can’t.

She pulls out of the parking lot and considers driving by the Upper Crust to see if it’s open, if Sadie is there. Harper would just as soon believe that Sadie is back at work as that she has hung a sign on the door that reads: CLOSED: HUSBAND CHEATED ON ME. Harper is afraid to drive by the shop; she’s afraid that Sadie will see her. She’s afraid to drive around the island. She could bump into Dee, Billy’s nurse, who sold Harper and Reed out, or she could bump into Franklin Phelps, Sadie’s brother, whom Harper had always counted as a friendly acquaintance. She loved going to hear Franklin sing at the Ritz—now she can’t show her face in the audience again. She could bump into Drew or Chief Oberg or one of the Snyder sisters, all of whom would know by now that Harper is a faithless catastrophe.

But Harper has to drive through Edgartown—right down Main Street, in fact—to get to the Chappy ferry. There’s simply no way around it.

Before this week, Harper had loved Edgartown. There are certainly things to love about the rest of Martha’s Vineyard—the low stone walls, the farms, the cliffs of Aquinnah, the wild beauty of Great Rock Bight, the gritty fishiness of Menemsha, the Methodist campground and Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs—but Edgartown is still the crown jewel of the Vineyard, in Harper’s mind. Or maybe that’s just because of a snobby aesthetic preference she inherited from Eleanor. Edgartown is like Nantucket: it has an architectural integrity and an elegance that Harper finds powerful. The Old Whaling Church and the Daniel Fisher house are like the grandparents of town—old, white, and stately. Harper loves all the clapboard homes with the voluptuous window boxes on North Water Street. Main Street has the best shopping and the restaurants with the most delicious food. Edgartown has the prettiest harborfront and the most picturesque lighthouse.

Edgartown would be a fine place for Eleanor to open a boutique. Harper had long thought this and even suggested it once, but her mother had merely laughed.

Not on Billy’s island, she’d said. That would be the last place I’d pick.

Harper lines up for the Chappy ferry. She has to say good-bye to Brendan, not only for her own peace of mind but also because she can’t stand to think of him wondering why she’s disappeared.

How can Harper explain what exists between her and Brendan Donegal?

Harper had known Brendan when she was younger, in her twenties, and spending every spare moment on South Beach. This was before she worked for Jude. Back in Harper’s first days on the Vineyard, she scooped ice cream at Mad Martha’s and sold tickets at the Flying Horses carousel. On her days off, she cultivated a group of friends at South Beach—surfers and the girls who loved them. Among this group, Brendan Donegal was legend, the best surfer the Vineyard had seen in fifty years. He had been sponsored by Rip Curl since he was in high school, and although he had traveled all over the world—Oahu, Maui, Tahiti, Sydney, Perth, South Africa—he always spent the month of August at home on South Beach.