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  Grace’s home life was structured and conservative. They lived in an eight-bedroom Tudor-style home, a mansion to some, that was always spick-and-span; the live-in housekeeper, Ophelia, made sure of that. Their Arizona address was one of many around the world.

  Harper always knew it was time to split when she heard Cilla

  yell from the back door at dinnertime. Seven sharp. “Gra-a-ce.”

  She always carried the “a.”

  Beyond their ordered house, the Dunlops, without fail, attended Mass each Sunday. A full Mass, too. Not just an in-and-out-Hail-Mary quickie. Sleepovers on Saturday nights were always tricky for this reason. Harper hated to get up early.

  Highly-educated, Grace’s parents both had doctorate degrees and had begun their love affair at Oxford. He was studying law, she, English Lit. On their anniversary one year, Cilla told the girls how he proposed.

  “The summer we met,” she explained, her British accent even stronger than Grace’s, “we traveled the Mediterranean by boat. On the top of Mount Etna, Daddy asked for my hand.” She was still whimsical about it.

  Cilla had kept her maiden name: Dunlop. It was a commandment of Cilla’s granddaddy’s will, along with a number of other strange conditions. Harper didn’t remember all the details, even though Grace shared them one day, but she thought this alone was crazy. Women were supposed to take the guy’s name.

  An eccentric man who wanted things how he liked them, Grace’s great-grandpa was an empire builder and had invented the first pneumatic tire. Generation after generation reaped the benefits. Following his quirky, peculiar dogma was the price they had to pay for wealth.

  Harper could tell it bothered Benson, Grace’s father, who was born Benson James Mulroney III. Had the circumstances been different, he would have been unequivocally set on Grace taking the family name. The Mulroneys were as traditional as the Dunlops sans the loony patriarch.

  In contrast, Harper’s family was a juxtaposition of her artistic parents, laid-back and fluid, and her old-money grandparents, with whom Harper had lived with during large patches of her childhood. Their home, her parents’ home, looked like it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It had been featured in Architectural Digest one summer. Modern. Clean edges. Lots of contemporary art. Interesting stone water features.

  Harper’s parents, both professional photographers, had met

  in Africa on assignment, when her mom was twenty-two and her dad was forty. A considerable age difference, but Ana was an old soul. You could see it in her baby pictures; the eyes of a ninety-year-old in an infant’s body. Wise beyond her years.

  Of Harper’s father, “He was a rogue photographer,” Ana would say, sitting at her easel painting watercolors of the desert.

  “I saw her through the brush in Kenya,” her dad, Blue, explained, “and I hunted her like she was a gazelle.”

  They had a beautiful love affair, were always dancing.

  During Harper’s youth, her parents traveled a lot and had become a packaged deal, working exclusively together, capturing exotic places and people. While each had their own collection of photography, they had published three coffee table books together.

  “Life is to be lived, Popina,” they said, both fierce dreamers, infusing Harper with an intrepid, entrepreneurial spirit.

  They called Harper Popina because, even though it was more information than she wanted, it was the name of the island where she was conceived. A part of Romania, Popina Island was a small game reserve where they were working on a piece about Shelducks.

  Despite her parents’ good intentions, Harper’s grandparents, Nonna and Papa—the two who’d really raised Harper—

  experienced most of the important moments of her youth: lost teeth, broken bones and her transition into womanhood. With thoughtful orchestration, her folks had been around for other significant, planable milestones like senior prom, graduation and Harper’s debutante ball.

  Even though Paradise Valley was Ana’s hometown, both of Harper’s parents struggled with its pretension.

  When Ana got pregnant, they had moved here from Manhattan to put down roots for Harper.

  Harper overheard her parents talking about it one night during a dinner party.

  “We did it for our baby,” Blue said. The table, full of artsy, academic friends in town for a conference, toasted the sacrifices her parents had made.

  “She needed stability in her life,” Ana said.

  “And we sleep a lot better in those pop tents in Africa knowing she’s well taken care of by her grandparents,” Blue added.

  A witty, commanding man, Blue was handsome and well-proportioned. A force. On most days, he pulled his sandy hair into a ponytail and wore khaki cargo pants. Not exactly country club fashion. It drove Nonna crazy.

  Every weekend when he was in town, Blue made his Sunday gravy. A big stewing, bubbling pot of Alessi marinara with special fennel sausage balls. It was something he and his brother, Alvaro, both did on Sundays. Growing up, they’d learned the secret recipe from Harper’s grandmother, Gemma, whom Harper had never met because she died of polio in her forties.

  In addition to the Sunday gravy, Blue also made homemade pastas to pair with them. Depending on his mood, it could be sun-dried tomato linguini, spinach fusilli, pappardelle, simple angel hair or ravioli, Harper’s favorite.

  And he always let Harper help. At a very young age, she learned how to make the perfect ravioli. On a step stool, she’d stand by her dad and mimic everything he did. He taught her how to build a volcano with the flour and crack her eggs right in its caldera. Like a children’s book, he broke everything down for her.

  “And then justa pinch of Fleur de Sel,” he added, pinching her too. “And a dash of Alessi oil.” The olive oil was from the Alessi vineyard in Italy, where Uncle Alvaro and Aunt Amelia still lived.

  After the oil, Blue taught Harper the proper way to knead.

  “You want it to feela like baby skin,” he’d say, showing her carefully. Together, they filled each pocket. The final touch, Harper sealed them with the fork.

  Although her parents went against the grain, Harper realized early on what they did for a living was envied. Understanding this candy-coated their sacrifices, somehow made them worth it.

  During the holidays, if they were on assignment, one of them would fly home and pull Harper out of school, whisking her off to a tent in the Serengeti Plain, or to a green canopy in the Madagascar rainforest. It infuriated Nonna, like so many things; she’d gotten used to having Harper around and thought a

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  traditional holiday—a traditional anything—was more suitable.

  No matter, wherever they were, Blue would decorate a tree and turn on his satellite radio while they opened gifts. Harper worried that the reindeer would overheat and it wowed her that Santa could find them in Tanzania or along the banks of the Amazon.

  Even though Harper and Grace came from different soil, over time they grew into one family because Harper spent so much time at the Dunlop house. Gymnastics in the grass and monthly piano concerts. At a young age, Grace was already an amazing pianist. A near prodigy. She taught Harper how to play Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” and “Danny Boy.”

  Every week there were slumber parties and pool parties, where they dove onto the Slip ’n Slide and ate Otter Pops in the hammock. It was under the old cottonwood tree in the Dunlops’

  backyard where they both first kissed a boy. Jimmy Sachs for Harper. Kip Kelly for Grace. It was the same afternoon.

  Throughout their summers, Harper and Grace spent nearly every day at the local country club. It was a safe haven, a spot where parents could drop kids off and not worry.

  By sweet-talking the coach, Grace and Harper managed to get into the same swim group every June. One year it was the Dolphins, the next the Porpoises. Each day they swam hard, preparing for the big swim meet at the end of summer, where, after the competition and the awards were handed out, they dumped hundreds of goldfish into the pool for the k
ids to catch.

  This became the real competition for Grace and Harper, even though they were two of the oldest who still participated in the Goldfish Plunge.

  With sunscreen on their faces, the swimmers teetered on the water’s edge. Grace, in her suit, swim cap and goggles, was always the first to jump. Water sloshed as bodies disappeared into the pool, and Harper screamed as she surfaced with her first fish. As high as she could, she held a flimsy cup up for her nanny, Mariana, who was standing nearby with a plastic bag. Easily excitable, Mariana, along with the other nannies, cheered, her black hair wild with Medusa coils, her sagging arms swinging in the sun like she’d just won bingo. Ana and Blue had met Mariana

  in Ecuador. She’d been living in a dire, abusive situation, so they saved her, bringing her back to America. Kids fought for each fish, swimming erratically, dodging cups and ingesting chlorine, until few remained.

  When it was over, Grace and Harper tallied their catches side by side on the lip of the pool. In a wide hat, Cilla sat next to them on the cool deck, dipping her long legs into the water.

  “How’d you girls do?”

  “I won,” Grace said, the fierce competitor.

  “No. We haven’t finished counting.”

  Cilla grabbed their bags and inspected them. “Looks like a tie to me.” She was a mom, a regular peacemaker who liked things neat and orderly with no surprises. Grace was full of surprises.

  In the shade, Cilla’s skin was perfect and looked too young for her years spent in the sun. Sisley face creams, she said. “I swear by them.” Her stomach was flat, almost as if she’d never had Grace.

  Standing on the edge of the pool in his blue Speedo, Grace’s Uncle Dean stood over the girls. His legs were bony and hairy, much different than his muscular, hairless upper half.

  “Look out!” Dean said, stepping back a few feet. “Captain Chlorine incoming.”

  Grace, still recounting, stopped and watched him jump over their pruned bodies in a cannonball. She was the first one to push off the cool deck and join him.

  Taking turns, Harper and Grace climbed on Dean, a hip, aspiring actor living in Los Angeles. By their ankles, he would launch them across the lane dividers and into the deep end, where they would do swan dives and belly flops.

  “My turn,” Harper said, getting into position on his shoulders.

  “I’m next,” Grace would say.

  Twenty years older than Grace and Harper, Dean was a kid at heart and always ready to roughhouse. It was something both girls could always count on. They loved Deano.

  After Dean tired out, the girls practiced their synchronized swimming routine. In the sun, they hooked their legs together and spun like a propeller.

  “Faster,” Grace said, tightening her legs around Harper’s.

  She was intense. Focused. “Faster.”

  As they twirled around, Harper liked the way Grace’s skin rubbed against hers when it was wet; it was different than it felt when they had sleepovers, and their legs touched under the covers.

  Dean and Cilla looked on. Harper could overhear them.

  To Dean, Cilla said, “I don’t like it when they do that windmill thing. The way they wrap their legs around each other.”

  “For crying out loud, sis, let them play,” Dean snapped.

  “They’re kids.”

  From her lounge chair, Cilla studied Grace and Harper in the pool. “Girls,” she barked. “Come dry off. It’s time for dinner.”

  The sun was setting, so Harper, wrapped in a towel like a burrito, dropped down onto a lounge chair next to Dean. He was staring at the mountain in the distance.

  “Doesn’t it look fake?” Dean asked.

  From the country club, they had a perfect view of Camelback Mountain. As the light of day melted into the horizon, the head of the camel looked less like a pile of enormous rocks and more like the inside of an abalone shell, its sprays of color dissolving with the falling sun from scarlet to purple to deep violet.

  Lazily, Dean rolled over to Harper. “You did great today,” he said. “Let me see that ribbon.”

  Digging in her bag, she pulled out her red second-place ribbon.

  He admired it. “Nice work. I bet your parents are sorry they missed it. Where are they this week?”

  Harper envisioned their shooting schedule, taped to her bathroom mirror. Each morning she checked off where they were.“Rackavajeck. I think,” she said, doing her best to pronounce the name.

  Dean smiled, knowing she meant Reykjavik, Iceland. “I’d kill to have their job,” he said, looking back to the mountain.

  “Being an actor is cool. You were on that soap opera. And in that movie. When you played the security guard.”

  Pulling his glasses down, Dean said, “I’ve got another spot on The Young & the Restless coming up.”

  “Rad!”

  Ever since she’d visited him with Grace the summer before, Harper was easily excited by all things Hollywood. Dean was a movie star!

  “But I’ve always loved photography,” Dean said, still dreaming. “And National Geographic. That’s got to be like the top place to work.”

  “Yeah,” Harper said, recalling off the cuff what she’d read.

  “It has a subscriber base of five million. And they not only have magnificent photography, but also captivating storytelling.”

  “Impressive,” Dean said, charmed.

  The evening light cast a blue hue on the pool area and all the families eating around it. From the west, one sharp ray of sun burned through the indigo dusk like a laser.

  After dinner, Harper dared Grace to jump off the high dive.

  It wasn’t the first time the high dive gauntlet had been thrown down, nor the first time Harper would chicken out.

  Each day, it was the same story: Grace, who always went first, would dive straight into the cold water without pause, sometimes even backwards. The occasional flip. Harper, on the other hand, would stand on the diving board for fifteen minutes sometimes, trying to muster the courage as she let other kids go by.

  In the pool below, Grace always egged Harper on. Taunted her. “Sissy!” Grace yelled.

  And she was.

  Grace was the real daredevil; she jumped every time.

  “Wishin’ And Hopin”

  Dusty Springfield

  Grade school blew by for Harper after she met Grace. So did junior high, which both girls finished at Carlyle. It wasn’t until their freshmen year in high school that they entered a public school. Many of their friends were in the Scottsdale School District, but it was still a transition.

  So much was different. New faces, clubs, activities, choices.

  Privilege and exclusivity was all they’d ever known. And the public school system did not play favorites, nor did they get to work on their tan poolside at lunch. This put a small crimp in their style, but they learned to adjust.

  At their high school there were fistfights, drugs used in the bathrooms and lots of people having sex. Much different than Carlyle.

  Grace, who by this time was the number one tennis player in the southwest region, was already being recruited by universities.

  Even when she was a freshman, they all had their eye on her.

  Each summer, she went to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy for a month, where she’d play with some of the best coaches and upcoming players in the world.

  For Harper, whose collarbone eventually healed, she continued cheering from the sidelines. Junior year, she made

  varsity cheer and was selected as the captain senior year. But, like the doctor said, there was no more tennis for Harper.

  Harper had been born a debutante. At least that’s what Nonna used to tell her. “One day,” Nonna would say when Ana wasn’t around, “you’ll be a debutante just like your mother.”

  The Valley Debutante Ball had been transplanted by a southern family who moved to Scottsdale from Texas in the early Sixties. At first, people were leery of such a production.

  “It’ll neve
r fly in Arizona,” natives said, turning up their noses.

  “Let the South stay in the South.”

  Sloan’s mom, Mary Bell Weasle, a Southern, sagging, sun-worshipping gossipmonger who Grace and Harper called The Bitch, was head of the selection committee that year and had been presented, along with Ana, back in the day. Some thirty years later, right before graduating from high school, at their respective front doors, Grace and Harper were both greeted by a barrage of women with flowers.

  “Congratulations,” they squealed, rushing into the house.

  “You’re a debutante!”

  That afternoon, standing in the doorway in her cheerleading uniform—her hair coifed into a bob—Harper listened to The Bitch share details of the upcoming event: “Debutante classes start next month and then, after some good ole southern training, ya’ll be presented onstage at the Valley Debutante Ball in December,” she explained.

  Harper and Grace already knew the routine, had watched their older friends from the country club go through the elemental right of passage. It was just part of the PV culture.

  They talked about it the next day after their golf lesson.

  Swinging her putter, Harper asked Grace a question that had been on her mind since they opened their invitations. “Who are you gonna ask to the ball?”

  “I don’t know,” Grace said, zeroed in on her ball, intently calculating the angle of the grass. “Maybe Jamie.”

  Harper sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

  “Who should I take? Who else is there?”

  “I don’t know. Just not him.”

  “Harp,” Grace said, still analyzing her shot. “Do we have to have escorts? Maybe we could go stag.”

  “Rich would be devastated,” Harper said, leaning onto her putter. “He’s really excited.”

  Grace hit her ball and ignored Harper’s comment about Rich.

  She often dismissed altogether that she even had a boyfriend.