Chapter 5
For the first few seconds, she thought about quitting this whole pact thing, moving to Switzerland, and changing her name before these women could find her.
But she got up because Harper Ellis never quit.
She quit people occasionally. Sometimes she quit relationships and hobbies, even a pottery class she had signed up for in a moment of weakness, but she did not quit commitments she had signed her name to, even if the commitment was written in bleeding ink on a dusty rose napkin and the result was nothing more than disappointing two women she loved.
Now that she thought about it, that was really the worst consequence she could imagine.
The condo was on the fifth floor of the building with a view of the harbor that she paid a small fortune for but rarely looked at.
It was beautiful. It was immaculate. It had exactly one houseplant, a fiddle leaf fig that her assistant James watered on Wednesdays because Harper kept forgetting to.
The plant’s survival was, in many ways, a testament to James rather than Harper. He was patient and wanted the plant to live a full life. She, on the other hand, didn’t care what happened to the plant.
She drank her espresso standing at the kitchen island because she didn’t have a kitchen table. She had meant to buy one. Actually, she had meant to buy one for over four years, since the day she moved in.
But every time she looked at tables online, she would think about who was going to sit at it, and the answer was always just her. So she would close the browser, eat standing up, and try to move on with her life.
Her phone buzzed. It was a text from Claire.
I’m picking up Nina at 5:30. We’ll meet you at Folly by 6:15. Please tell me you didn’t forget.
Harper:
I’ve been awake since 4:45. Trust me, I haven’t forgotten. I’m regretting this already, but I have not forgotten.
Claire:
Wear something warm. It’s December.
Harper:
I’m aware of the calendar, Claire.
Claire:
Bring towels.
Harper:
I know how to prepare for things. This is literally my profession.
Claire:
Okay, bring EXTRA towels.
Harper put her phone down and looked out the window. Charleston was still dark, the harbor a flat black plane dotted with boat lights.
In a couple of hours, she was going to run into the Atlantic Ocean in December on purpose because she had picked this adventure.
Because karaoke night had set the standard, and now Harper’s competitive nature would not allow her to follow it with something tame.
So in the back of her mind, she thought, if I’m going to feel something, it might as well be freezing water. Of course, she had not said that part out loud, because she was not even ready to admit to Claire or Nina that she was searching for some kind of feeling in her life.
Her life was lonely in ways she had a hard time describing. It wasn’t just her empty apartment. It was the way she moved through her day with such precision that there was no room for anything unplanned, no gap in the schedule where a feeling might sneak through.
Her calendar was full. Her life was full. Oh yes, it was full of meetings, strategy sessions, quarterly reviews, and working dinners.
But all of it added up to a life that looked very impressive from the outside and felt like eating toast over the sink from the inside.
The morning prior to the plunge, Harper sat at her desk and had lunch.
This wasn’t unusual for her.
She had lunch at her desk most days, a salad from the place on Broad Street that knew her order, shoveled into her mouth between emails while the city moved on without her.
Her office was on the fourteenth floor with a view of the steeple of St. Philip’s Church, and she had earned every square foot of it through her twenty-two years of being sharper, smarter, and more prepared than anyone else in the room, including the men.
James appeared in her doorway around twelve. He was twenty-eight, immaculately dressed, and the only person in the company who didn’t seem to be afraid of her.
He held a paper bag from the salad place in one hand and his cell phone in the other.
“Your mother called,” he said.
“How many times?”
“Three.”
“What did she want?”
“She said, and I quote, ‘Tell my daughter that her cousin Margaux had her second child, and I’m not saying anything. I’m just telling her.’”
Harper closed her eyes. “Thank you, James,” she said with a sigh.
“Oh, she also said that there’s a cardiothoracic surgeon at her church who’s recently divorced.”
“Of course there is.”
“She said he’s very tall.”
“Height has nothing to do with personality, James.”
“I told her you were in a meeting, and she said she would call you back around two.”
“Then I will be in a meeting at two.”
“But you don’t have anything at two.”
“Then schedule something.”
James gave her a look that was part sympathy and part amusement. He was very perceptive for someone his age.
He set the salad on her desk and left while Harper sat there in her corner office on the fourteenth floor and thought about her mother and cousin Margaux’s second child and all the tall divorced surgeons who were probably very nice but very boring and would want to talk about their boat.
Eloise Ellis had been a Charleston society fixture for forty years. She chaired fundraisers. She wore pearls to the grocery store.
She had married Harper’s father at twenty-two years old, had Harper at twenty-four, and then buried Harper’s father at fifty-eight years old and had spent all the years since maintaining the social calendar of a woman half her age and the disapproval of a mother who had expected grandchildren by now.
She didn’t say it to her directly. She talked around everything. Eloise never said anything directly.
She would say things like, ‘I’m not saying anything, I’m just telling you,’ which was just her Charleston way of saying everything while maintaining plausible deniability.
She talked about other people’s grandchildren the way a meteorologist might mention an approaching storm, factually, repeatedly, and with the clear implication that something should be done about it.
Harper ate her salad and did not call her mother back.
At 1:47, her phone rang.
It wasn’t her mom.
It was Jordan.
She stared at the screen. It had been three weeks since his birthday call. She had told herself he wouldn’t call her again.
She had told Claire and Nina that she had handled it. Her phone rang a second time and then a third.
Harper’s thumb hovered over the screen. She let it go to voicemail.
Then she sat in her office and didn’t listen to the voicemail for the rest of the afternoon, which required a particular kind of discipline that, thankfully, Harper was very, very good at.
Folly Beach at 6:15 a.m. in December looked like the end of the world. The sky was just starting to lighten up with a thin line of gray and blue along the horizon.
The beach was empty except for a few joggers and one man with a metal detector, who clearly looked like he was living his best life. He had a small stack of metal objects piled up near a folding chair.
The ocean was dark and huge, and the air coming off of it had the kind of cold that did not just touch your skin but moved straight through it, settling into your bones.
Claire’s car was already in the lot.
Harper found them at the edge of the dunes, Claire in a puffy coat and sneakers, holding a tote bag that probably had a thermos, extra towels, and some kind of organizational system.
Nina was beside her, wearing David’s old windbreaker, her hands in her pockets, looking at the water.
“You brought towels?” Claire asked.
Harper groaned. “I brought towels.”
“Extra towels?”
“Claire, I brought six towels, a change of clothes, a big thermos full of hot chocolate, and a separate thermos of hot chocolate with some bourbon in it. I’m prepared.”
“And which one has the… which thermos has the bourbon?” Nina asked in a whisper.
“The red one.”
“Well, giving it to you now would defeat the purpose,” Claire said.
“Yeah, well, giving it to me now would ensure I actually get in the water,” Nina said.
They stood at the edge of the dunes and looked out at the Atlantic. It was enormous, and it was for sure freezing.
Harper had to admit that this was completely insane, even though she had been the one to suggest it, which meant she had no one to blame but herself and possibly the second glass of wine she had been drinking when she had texted the group chat about a polar plunge at Folly Beach at dawn.
Claire had replied, “Define polar plunge,” and Harper had replied, “Well, we run into the ocean in December as fast as we can.”
Nina had replied, “I’m going to die,” to which Harper had replied, “That’s the spirit.”
“Okay,” Claire said.
She pulled three bathing suits out of her tote bag. They were matching, navy blue with white polka dots.
They all had retro cuts that suggested Claire had given this entirely too much thought.
“Wait a minute. You seriously bought us matching bathing suits?” Harper said.
“Yeah, I found them at Dedrick’s. They were on sale.”
“Claire Morrison, you did not buy matching bathing suits for a polar plunge because they were on sale. You bought them because you just cannot resist coordinating things.”
“Well, both could be true.”
Nina took hers and held it up. “David’s mother is going to see photos of this and have an absolute panic attack.”
“Elena will survive,” Claire said.
“Elena will show up at my house with a casserole and then lecture me about pneumonia.”
They changed in Claire’s car, which involved a serious level of contortion that should not have been required of three fifty-year-old women at 6:30 in the morning.
Harper got her arms stuck in the seatbelt while trying to pull her top off over her head.
Claire accidentally honked the horn with her elbow, and Nina laughed so hard that she fogged up the windows.
They walked to the water’s edge in matching navy polka dots and bare feet. The sand was cold, and the wind was colder. Thinking about putting their bodies in it seemed insane.