This is what baffles Ainsley about the olden days, before technology: people didn’t know anything. There were no ultrasounds to tell Grammie she was having two babies instead of one. There was no Internet. How did anyone know anything without the Internet? Really, Ainsley can’t figure that one out. And there were no cell phones. How did a person live without a cell phone? Ainsley was doing it right now, and it was very stressful. She might have logged on to her laptop and checked Facebook or Instagram to see if Emma had posted anything about going to the Jetties with Teddy, but Tabitha had changed the Wi-Fi password, just as she’d promised.
Most of the rest of the pictures were of her mother and Aunt Harper. They looked exactly alike: there was no possibility of telling them apart, and Ainsley wondered if when they were babies their identities had been switched, then switched again—maybe switched infinite times—until the day they were old enough to speak and say their names out loud. Then whoever they happened to be that day stuck. Eleanor always dressed them in matching outfits that she made herself, using her turquoise Singer sewing machine (which she still had and always claimed she was going to donate to the Smithsonian). There were green gingham jumpers with giraffes appliquéd on the front; there were pink party dresses with borders of purple sequins at the bottom; there were black velvet dresses at Christmas. Who put two-year-olds in black? Ainsley wondered.
Only Eleanor. It was well documented that Eleanor Roxie-Frost got her big break in fashion when Diana Vreeland happened across the twins wearing yellow linen shifts during a playground outing on Boston Common in 1980. Those dresses were miniature versions of what would become the Roxie. It had been in the era of women’s lib, and Eleanor Roxie-Frost became a textbook case. She went from being a stay-at-home mother of twins designing clothes for her daughters and herself to a fashion-design sensation featured in Vogue nearly every month. When the twins were in high school, Eleanor found retail space on Newbury Street and opened her flagship store there. The store had been a good thing and a bad thing, because Eleanor became so busy being a famous fashion designer that something in her life had to go. That something was Billy. Ainsley’s grandparents got divorced, a fact that Ainsley always found embarrassing. Around half of her friends’ parents were divorced, but grandparents were meant to stay together until they keeled over from being so old.
Even stranger and more unsettling was that, after the divorce, Aunt Harper had gone with Billy and Tabitha had stayed with Eleanor, a custody agreement that seemed to have been borrowed from The Parent Trap. The Frost family had split right down the middle, like one of these photographs torn in half—Billy holding one twin, Eleanor the other.
When Ainsley had gone to replace the photo album, she came across a tattered envelope wedged between two other books on the shelf. The envelope had an important, secret look, so Ainsley pulled it free. Inside was a plastic hospital bracelet bearing the inscription JULIAN WYATT CRUISE 5-28-03. It was her baby brother’s bracelet. Also in the envelope were three snapshots: one of a teensy-tiny Julian at the hospital enclosed in what looked like a plastic display case with tubes and wires running from his mouth, nose, chest, and feet. The second was a photograph of Tabitha holding Julian in two hands. Really, he was no bigger than a submarine sandwich; he had only weighed one pound and ten ounces when he was born, she knew. The third photo was of Tabitha, Wyatt, Ainsley, and Julian all together in a house Ainsley didn’t recognize, although they were sitting on the dark brown leather sofa that had predated the turquoise-tweed Gervin. Julian was free of wires, and he was a little bigger, maybe the size of a bag of flour. Ainsley was a pudgy-faced toddler with barely enough hair to make pigtails. But the real shocker was how young Ainsley’s parents looked. There were seniors at Nantucket High School who looked older than Tabitha and Wyatt did in that picture. Both of them were smiling—laughing, even—as though the photographer had just said something funny. Who took the picture? Ainsley wondered. Not Eleanor, certainly; she didn’t believe in joking around.
Ainsley scrutinized the photo for another moment. It was the only photograph of her nuclear family that she had ever seen. She knew why it was hidden away: Tabitha found the loss of Julian, and maybe the loss of Wyatt, too painful. Ainsley was grateful that Tabitha hadn’t kept Julian’s death certificate or anything morbid like that. The hospital bracelet was jarring enough. Ainsley returned everything back to the envelope, then the envelope back to its hiding spot between the two books on the shelf. She turned to check on her mother, who was still snoring softly on the sofa. She resisted the urge to kiss her mother’s forehead, although she did gently nudge Tabitha awake.
“Hey,” Ainsley said. “It’s time to go to bed now, Mama.” And like a dutiful child, Tabitha had risen and followed Ainsley down the stairs.
Now it’s Monday, and Ainsley should be at school, where she finally might discover what had happened during the remainder of everyone’s weekend. Maybe she hasn’t been the only one to get punished; maybe the unthinkable happened and Emma has been grounded as well—although Ainsley doesn’t think so, because it had been Emma’s father, Dutch, who provided the weed and the beer for the party. He had actually asked Emma if she wanted any coke (not the drink, he said, wink, wink), but Emma had used common sense and said no, thank you. Ainsley had really liked Dutch until she heard that; now she questions his ethics. To provide beer and weed to your sixteen-year-old daughter makes you not only a “cool” parent but also kind of a criminal. To offer coke makes you only a criminal.
Ainsley wonders if Teddy got into any trouble and decides the answer is also no. Graham is an uncle. The whole parenting thing was thrust at him because his brother died fighting a fire and his sister-in-law, Teddy’s mother, is a suicidal depressed anorexic back in Oklahoma. Graham is only now mastering the basics: food on the table three times a day, making sure Teddy gets to school and sports practice on time—he’s a star at baseball, which is big in Oklahoma, whereas lacrosse is big in Nantucket—make sure he’s doing his homework, take him to get his driver’s license, give him chores so he learns responsibility. This summer Teddy is going to work as a bellhop at the boutique hotel 21 Broad. Teddy is so grateful for Graham’s steadying presence in his life that he doesn’t like doing anything that might land him in trouble. He did borrow Graham’s truck and say he was going on a date with Ainsley, and Graham did hand him forty bucks, which Teddy gave to BC to buy cups and vodka. But Teddy didn’t smoke or drink anything. He only came to the party to be with Ainsley.
Candace Beasley probably got in trouble. This time last year, Ainsley would never have invited Candace to a party. Candace and Ainsley had been best friends when they were little girls. They had the same teachers, participated in the same activities; in fourth grade, when Tabitha took Ainsley to Los Angeles for spring break, Candace came along. They rode the Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier together; they ordered room service in their suite at Shutters on the Beach while Tabitha went to the bar to conduct business meetings. They went to the spa and got their nails painted the same color.
They used to pretend they were sisters. They used to pretend, at Ainsley’s insistence, that they were not only sisters but also twins.
But there had been some essential difference between Ainsley and Candace, and it concerned the way they were being raised. Ainsley—because she spent so much time with her mother and grandmother—was always encouraged to act older than she was. She accompanied Tabitha and Eleanor to the Galley for lunch and, when they were in Boston, to tea at the Four Seasons. Ainsley had been allowed to stay home by herself during the day starting when she was eight years old. She could use the microwave to make popcorn and then melt extra butter; she was allowed to watch Gossip Girl. She had a triple-decker pink aluminum case filled with makeup that Tabitha had bought her. Once when Candace had been over for the afternoon—on what Candace’s mother, Stephanie, still called a playdate—Candace had gone downstairs made up with foundation, powder, blush, eyeliner, eye shadow, mascara, and lipstick, and Stephanie had screamed as though Candace were missing a limb. She had yanked Candace into the powder room and scrubbed her face right there and then with one of the blue soaps shaped like a scallop shell that nobody ever used.