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The sun hasn’t even set outside on the late June evening, but the women get to work inside the bookstore, planning and scheming together until it gets so late that they all drive their golf carts home under a bright, full moon with the sound of the waves crashing in the near distance.
Harlow
Being away from New York has been amazing. For the first couple of weeks Harlow was so traumatized by the shooting that all she did was eat, sleep, and hide inside her mother’s house. Talking to her therapist has given her strength to make all kinds of baby steps, and now being a part of her mother’s book club (while at first a seemingly lame thing to do) is restructuring her life and giving her purpose.
As soon as Ruby told them all what she wants to do with Jack’s letter, Harlow had jumped into action. She’s been working remotely for the marketing firm in only the most bare bones way, answering emails, taking phone calls from existing clients, finishing projects, and kind of drifting away from her job as she sits on her mom’s porch with whatever book they’re currently reading for book club, or taking shifts at the bookstore and laughing at whatever dark or twisty thing Tilly is currently saying. There’s only the tiniest sliver of the old Harlow still kicking around inside of her, feeling worried that she might be fired from her job, lose touch with pop culture, or become totally irrelevant and morph into a middle aged woman in a young woman’s body. The rest of her is a new, more relaxed Harlow—one who is learning how to be her real, authentic self outside of the public eye—and she likes this new Harlow a heck of a lot more than she ever thought she would.
Sitting at a little table by the window inside The Scuttlebutt, Harlow sips her chai latte and skips the Taylor Swift song that’s playing in her AirPods in favor of an upbeat 90s dance jam. Molly has kindly given her a spot to do her work and use the coffee shop’s WiFi, and Harlow loves having a place to work that’s not her mother’s house or the bookstore. The added bonus is that she can hit pause on her music and keep her AirPods in, listening to people come and go and as she picks up on all their gossip while still pretending that she’s not able to hear them.
So far, Harlow has discovered that: the original teacher for the entire island was a beautiful thirty-one-year-old Canadian woman who left with a boy named Jeff Absos the minute he had his diploma in and hand and had turned eighteen. The scandal rocked the island, but apparently Miss Breck and Jeff are happily married now, living in Saskatchewan and raising two kids on an alpaca farm. Harlow also overheard two women discussing the fact that the former owner of Chips Ahoy was arrested for money laundering and had some connection to the mob, and the very minor detail that Bev Byer has been in love with Molly for almost twenty years.
This last bit of gossip interests her the most, as she’s grown to love and appreciate Molly’s totally down to earth persona, and finding out that there’s even a whiff of romance to the staunchly loyal widow’s life is completely intriguing. Harlow tucks this information away to share with her mom and sister over dinner and refocuses on the task at hand.
Her immediate concerns are all about making the event her mother wants to hold a raging success. She chews on her pen and looks out the window at Seadog Lane as the dance song playing on her AirPods changes to a jazzy lounge cover of Radiohead’s “Creep.”
Hearing her dad’s words read aloud by her mom had been eye opening for Harlow—and for Athena, based on the way her sister had cried wordlessly as they both listened—and now she is wholly committed to making sure that they do something big here. This event will be everything Ruby needs it to be on a personal level and on a public level, because if there’s anything that Harlow can do well right now, it’s coordinate and market the crap out of this shindig.
So far, Harlow has arranged for the weekend in question to be a full package deal: The Flora—Shipwreck Key’s only inn—has agreed to only rent out all of their rooms as part of the package, which also includes coffee and pastries both mornings at The Scuttlebutt, lunch and dinner both days at the cafe and restaurant on the island, and entrance to the actual event, which is going to be held at Marooned With a Book.
As for the event itself, Ruby wants to make sure that it will be highly covered and reported on, but only by a select few news outlets, which is why she’s asked Harlow to coordinate the weekend and present it as an opportunity for the ten highest bidding journalists or organizations to attend, film, and report on exclusively. And it’s working: so far, the website that Athena built to host the auction for tickets to this exclusive weekend is showing high levels of traffic, and the bids are currently at fifty thousand dollars for each of the individual packages. With ten rooms up for grabs, Ruby is already banking on half a million dollars that she’ll be able to turn around and donate once everything is said and done—and that’s assuming that the bids aren’t driven even higher than that, which Harlow predicts they will be.
The whole thing is fairly genius, in Harlow’s opinion, pitting news organizations against one another to drive up the bids and benefit charity, and it will also give Ruby the opportunity to use this platform in the way that she wants to. Harlow and Athena know exactly what’s going to happen, but no one else does, although the book club is aware of the event and each woman has offered to chip in and help to ensure that the weekend is successful. It will be, of course, because Ruby never does anything halfway, and Harlow has seen her when she sets her mind to something, pulling together functions, getting people to do things they wouldn’t normally do, and turning anything she does into solid gold.
But this…this is personal. This has meaning. And if it goes the way Harlow thinks it’s going to go, it could possibly bring closure not just to her and her mom and sister, but to anyone who felt touched in any way by Jack Hudson’s death. A lot of people took the sudden death of a relatively young president quite personally, and Harlow hopes that they feel the same sense of peace and understanding that her family has felt since reading her dad’s letter.
“Hey, kiddo,” Molly says, walking over to where Harlow is sitting by the window. “How’s tricks?”
Harlow takes a sip of her chai latte. “Everything is good. Thanks again for letting me set up shop here.”
“Not a problem.” Molly is holding a blue and white checkered rag in one hand and she slaps it into the palm of the other, tugging on both ends of it nervously. “Hey, Harlow…question for you.”
“Shoot.”
There’s no one else in The Scuttlebutt at the moment, so Molly pulls out a chair and sits across from Harlow.
“Is your mom really okay with this whole book thing? I mean…she’s a special lady, which I’m sure you know, but I worry about her having pressure from everywhere to share the kinds of things that most of us never have to share with the world. Do you think it bothers her?”
Harlow squints her eyes as she thinks about this. “Actually, I don’t think it does,” she decides. “My mom has always been a First Lady, even when she wasn’t technically one. She understands that being a part of people’s lives means that you’re there through thick and thin. And she didn’t just lose her husband when my dad died—the whole country lost a president, and all those people want answers just as much as we do.”
Molly folds her arms and leans on the table, shoulders slightly hunched. “When my husband Rodney died, I didn’t want to do anything for a year—even get out of bed. I didn’t want to see anyone, talk to anyone, or explain how I felt to a therapist, to my mother, or to my friends. I just wanted to close my eyes and make it all go away, and some days I still feel that way, even though it’s been forty years,” Molly says with a sad smile. “So watching your mom get her life in order is inspirational. I consider myself a relatively tough old broad, but your mom’s got real gumption, and I admire it.”
Harlow feels a warm glow of pride spread through her. “She does have a lot of gumption,” she agrees. “And so do you. You’re a businesswoman with a fierce love of the island, and everybody knows you. I’ve been sitting here long enough to realize that every single person who walks into this coffee shop feels like they’re your friend, and that’s a gift, Molly. Not everybody can put the people around them at ease, but you do. And I didn’t know him, but I think Rodney would be proud.”
Molly smiles at her indulgently. “He would,” she agrees, nodding her salt and pepper head up and down slowly. “He definitely would. That man was a lot of things that drove me insane—he was stubborn, a loud and off-key singer of love songs when he drank a couple of beers, and he never remembered to leave his sandy shoes on the porch—but he was the most supportive husband you could have imagined. I miss him everyday.”
Harlow bites her lower lip before saying what’s on her mind. “Have you ever thought about dating since he died?”
Molly gives an unexpected whoop of laughter as she leans back in her chair. Her eyes twinkle with mirth. “Dating? Honey, I’ve dated a plenty since then,” she says, watching Harlow’s surprised face. “I’m still a woman even though the love of my life is gone—I’m still breathing!”
Harlow laughs. “Wow…I guess I just assumed that you hadn’t gone out with a man in all these years.”
“Well, you know what they say about people who assume,” Molly says, standing up and pushing in her chair. She whacks the table with her dish towel and gives Harlow a wink before walking behind the counter to greet the woman who has just walked in.
Harlow finishes sending an email to the boat services that she’s hoping to hire to bring the highest bidders to the island, then closes her laptop and packs up her things.
Shipwreck Key is no New York City, but with every passing day it’s getting more interesting and beginning to feel more like home. Harlow is almost happy to have traded the nights on the town, the fast subway rides, and the frenetic energy of the big city for nights at home playing Scrabble with her mom and sister, slow walks on the sand, and the peacefulness of life on a tropical island.
And with the event that she’s currently planning, she knows in her heart that there’s no better place to be once the contents of her dad’s letter hit the world square in the face. She, her mom, and her sister are going to need to be someplace where they can huddle together, ride out the storm of publicity, and start the process of healing and letting go.
