Chapter 2 #2
She uncapped the pen and wrote on the napkin in her sharp, slanted, professional handwriting.
The Pact.
In big, bold letters.
“Oh, good Lord,” Nina said. “What kind of craziness are you concocting now?”
Harper kept writing.
“Number one. We do something every month that scares us. It can’t just be an inconvenience or a mild annoyance. It has to scare us.”
“Harper.” Claire said her name like a warning.
“Number two. It has to be something none of us has ever done before. So if you’ve already done it, it doesn’t count. It has to be genuinely new. And since the three of us have lived very small lives up until now, that shouldn’t be too hard.”
“Are you writing a contract on my napkin?”
“Number three. We have to do it together. All three of us. No backing out. No excuses. No, I have a headache, or I have a meeting, or I need to reorganize my pantry.”
“I reorganized that pantry one time, and I’ll never live it down.”
“It was alphabetical, Claire.”
“Well, alphabetical is a valid system.”
Harper held the napkin in the air. It felt almost official, but mostly ridiculous. Again, wine was involved.
“One year,” she said. “Twelve months, twelve adventures, and we take turns picking. And it has to scare all three of us. And nobody can quit.”
Nina stared at the napkin as if it might bite her. “But everything scares me. I’m scared of my own mailbox. Trust me, for me, the bar is extremely low.”
“Good, then you’ll have plenty of options.”
“What if one of us picks something that’s genuinely dangerous?” Claire asked. “Like bungee jumping or swimming with sharks or eating that sushi down at the gas station on the corner?”
“Well, then we die doing something interesting for the first time in years,” Harper said, shrugging.
“Okay, that’s definitely not comforting.”
“It’s not supposed to be comforting. It’s supposed to be a wake-up call. We’ve been stuck in our lives for years, and now we’re a half a century into this thing. It’s time to shake it up!”
Harper looked at her friends. Claire had her flour-dusted hands folded in her lap. Nina was wearing her dead husband’s sweater, trying desperately just to feel something, anything.
And then there was herself, Harper Ellis, fifty years old, vice president of a division that generated more revenue than most companies, eating toast over the sink five nights a week because setting a table for one person felt like the ultimate defeat.
“Look, we’re three intelligent, interesting, capable women,” Harper said. “We’re currently living as if we decided the good part of our lives is over. And I refuse to accept that. I refuse to think that fifty means we’re done.”
“Okay, I need a system,” Claire said.
“Of course you do.”
“I mean, like a rotation. I pick one month, you pick one month, Nina picks one month, and then we cycle around. Four rounds of three.”
“Is it going to have to be color-coded?” Harper asked, rolling her eyes.
“Do not test me.”
Nina had not said a word. She was just staring at the napkin in Harper’s hand.
“You know, David would have loved this,” she finally said. “He would have made such a spreadsheet, and it would have been color-coded by difficulty level. He was such a nerd.”
“He was the best nerd,” Claire said. “He would have signed that napkin so fast that the ink would not have even been dry.”
She smiled, this time a real one. It was like a tiny little pilot light that had been out for a long time and was just flickering back to life.
“He would have told me to say yes.”
“So then say yes,” Harper pleaded.
Nina looked at her, then looked at Claire, looked out at the marsh for a moment, and then held out her hand.
“Give me that pen.”
Harper handed it over, and Nina signed her name on the napkin beneath the rules in that looping cursive script that she’d had since college.
She passed the pen to Claire, who signed in her small, precise handwriting, the same handwriting that had shown up on decades of Christmas cards and grocery lists.
Harper signed last.
Her signature was sharp and slanted, the same one she put on contracts worth a lot of money, but it had never felt more important than it did on this dusty rose napkin on a screened porch in Beaufort at 10:30 on a Tuesday night.
“Well, it’s official,” Harper said.
“It’s a napkin,” Claire said.
“But it’s a napkin with intentions.”
Claire rolled her eyes. “That’s not legally binding.”
“Listen, Claire, I’m the one with the lawyers, okay? You let me worry about what’s binding.”
Nina took the napkin from Harper’s hand and stared at it.
Three full signatures, three rules, and a napkin that was so thin you could see the porch light through it.
“I want to pick first,” Nina said quickly.
Claire and Harper both looked at her with something close to shock because Nina had not volunteered to do anything in eighteen months.
“I thought we were doing a rotation,” Claire said.
“Well, we are, but I’m rotating myself to the front.”
Harper tried not to smile. “What did you have in mind?”
“Not yet. I have to think about it, but I’m going to make sure it scares all three of us.”
“More or less than gas station sushi?” Claire asked.
“Oh, much more.”
Nina stood up from her chair, still holding the napkin.
She looked at it one more time and then handed it to Claire.
“Put this somewhere safe.”
Claire took it like it was something precious, which it was.
“I’ll just put it on the fridge.”
“The fridge?” Harper said. “You mean we just made a life-altering pact, and you’re going to stick it under a magnet on the fridge?”
“The fridge is the most important surface in the house. Everything that matters ends up on the fridge.”
“She’s right,” Nina said. “I mean, permission slips, report cards, that kind of thing. Drawings, wedding invitations. It all goes on the fridge.”
Harper rolled her eyes. “Nothing goes on my fridge.”
“The fridge it is,” Claire said.
They stood on the front porch for another minute, the three of them, and Harper felt something she had not felt in so long.
Anticipation. Maybe even a little excitement.
“I should head back,” Nina said. “Lucia has probably burned the house down by now.”
“She’s sixteen, not six,” Claire said.
“Which is why I said burned, not flooded, because now she knows how to use the stove. Unfortunately, she does not always remember to turn it off.”
They pulled each other into a tight group hug, something they’d done when saying goodbye since they were in college.
They walked Nina to her car. The night air was thick and warm. All the stars were out, and the crickets were giving the frogs a run for their money in the who-can-be-louder competition.
Nina got into her car and started the engine. She rolled down her window.
“Harper?”
“Yeah?”
“Call him back.”
Before Harper could say anything else, Nina pulled out of the driveway and disappeared down the dark road toward Edisto Island.
And Harper just stood there in Claire’s front yard at eleven o’clock at night, watching the taillights fade and thinking about the man who built rocking chairs out of old barns.
“You okay?” Claire asked from beside her.
“I’m fine.”
“Harper.”
“I’m terrified.”
Claire put her arm through Harper’s, and they stood there, two women in a front yard, looking at the place where Nina’s car used to be.
“Good,” Claire said. “I think that’s the whole point.”