A Vineyard Thanksgiving

by Katie Winters

  Although Everett appreciated the show, he needed to find Charlotte. He asked them if they’d seen her at all.

  “Nope,” Lola said. “Maybe she ran away? I might have if I had to deal with that horrible Ursula woman. You know, Rachel told me that Ursula pinned Charlotte in that side parlor earlier and reprimanded her about the decorations?”

  “What?” Everett demanded.

  “Yep. I’m sure it was just to put Charlotte in her place or something. But still. The nerve of this woman! After all, Charlotte has done to make this night special.”

  “And to think. We’re only on night one of two,” Christine said somberly.

  Everett thanked them for their help, then shot out into the ballroom again. He nearly staggered directly into Rachel, who seemed in the middle of a hefty flirt session with someone she introduced as Orion’s cousin. Like Orion, the teenager was headed toward seven feet tall.

  “He doesn’t play basketball, though. He’s into baseball,” Rachel said proudly.

  “That’s great. America’s pastime.” Everett cleared his throat. It wasn’t that he didn’t care; it was just that... he had bigger fish to fry. As if any fish in a party like this would ever go near a fryer.

  “Have you seen your mom?”

  “Not lately,” Rachel said absently, her eyes turned toward Orion’s cousin’s bored-looking hazel ones. “I’m sure she’s just busy.”

  Everett hustled across the ballroom, nearly toppling over a congo line, which resulted in several actresses scream-crying overly dramatically. Probably, they always thought there was an agent nearby, waiting to cast them in some film.

  When Everett reached the parlor where Christine and Lola had suggested Charlotte was, he stopped short.

  Sure enough, he heard Ursula’s voice on the other side of the thick, ornate door.

  “I have never seen a party get so out-of-hand,” Ursula said. Her voice broke a bit. It wavered between crying and screaming. “And you know, the first moment I saw you, Charlotte—I knew that you couldn’t handle something like this. I knew that I had given the job to the wrong woman. I knew that you—”

  Everett didn’t know what came over him.

  He only knew that—famous woman or not, Charlotte’s client or not, the very woman who had once won two Oscars in back-to-back years, defeating the likes of Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep—nobody would talk to Charlotte that way.

  He couldn’t allow it.

  He burst through the door, lifted his camera, and, without thinking, snapped a photo of Ursula.

  Ursula looked like she had been involved in some kind of accident.

  Black ink streaked her cheeks and the area around her eyes. Her lipstick had smeared all the way down her chin and appeared on the backs of her hands. Her hair was all mussed, the curls falling over her cheeks and over her ears, and she actually shook with either rage or sadness or both.

  As a contrast, beside her, Charlotte stood pristine as ever. She looked like the famous one, in Everett’s eyes: beautiful, regal, her shoulders back and her chin lifted to look up at the horrendous woman who yelled at her.

  After Everett snapped the photo, Ursula turned horrified eyes toward him.

  She looked at him like he had just shot her.

  “What. Did. You. Just. Do,” Ursula growled at him.

  She looked a lot like one of the roles she had gotten an Oscar for, actually—the one where she had played a mother who had been on a drunken rampage, whose young children had been taken away from her. Everett had taken a date to the film during another stint in LA. Neither of them had liked the movie; neither of them had liked the other person, either.

  Everett lifted the camera in the silence. Ursula looked on the verge of tearing him apart with her bare hands.

  “Listen to me very carefully,” Everett said. He was surprised to find that he sounded articulate and clear-headed. “If you don’t stop berating your wedding planner, I will send this photo to TMZ in five seconds flat. Everyone will know what a crazy bridezilla you are.”

  Ursula placed her hands on her hips. Her lower lip bubbled around for a second like she was a toddler who hadn’t gotten her way. Charlotte’s eyes scanned him, then Ursula, then back. Ursula collapsed on the little fainting couch with her head in her hands.

  “Just make me look pretty again,” she howled into her palms.

  Charlotte and Everett again shared a moment. Charlotte looked on the verge of either tears or endless laughter. Everett felt on the verge of wrapping her in a big hug, dotting a kiss on her forehead, and...

  No. He couldn’t think about that. Not now.

  “Just let me put this woman back together,” Charlotte said softly.

  “This woman?” Ursula cried. “Did she really just call me that? I’m beloved—” She hiccupped, then, only adding insult to it all.

  “Just do what Charlotte tells you to do, and the world won’t see this photo,” Everett said.

  God, he had never felt so much power in all his life.

  Charlotte shooed him toward the door. He shrugged and mouthed, Let me know if you need anything else? And she nodded and rolled her eyes.

  When he returned to the hallway, he clipped the door closed and listened for a moment as Ursula howled with tears.

  “I’m so sorry!” she cried.

  You had to feel a bit bad for her, he guessed. All that pressure. All that fame.

  Sure—the money would have been nice.

  By the time he reached the ballroom again, the party had reached more dramatic heights. A musician he recognized reared a beer bottle back, then smashed it across the ground and said, “Monica! I told you to stop CALLING me that!”

  Everett caught sight of Lola, Tommy, Christine, and Zach on the other side of the ballroom. Rachel appeared beside Lola, her eyes buggy. How had they lost such control? Lola beckoned for Everett to join them. He did and huddled beside them, at a complete loss of what to do.

  “It’s barely midnight,” Lola breathed.

  “Maybe Charlotte will know,” Everett said.

  “Where is she?”

  “Almost ready, I think. There was a little snag in the parlor with Ursula.”

  “Did she yell at her again?” Rachel demanded.

  Luckily, the few security staff members they had hired for the event hustled toward the man who had thrown the beer bottle and gave him a stern talking to. Another member of staff rushed toward the glass, made a perimeter, and began to sweep it up. Still, everyone seemed oddly manic; the air shivered with tension.

  At that moment, Charlotte and Ursula appeared on the other side of the ballroom. Ursula looked very-nearly cleaned up, but still a little ragged. Charlotte sliced a finger across her neck and shook her head.

  “Nothing good happens in this crowd after midnight,” Tommy affirmed. “Let’s get them out of here.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Charlotte couldn’t believe what Everett had done for her.

  He had risked his own career and the wedding itself.

  And miraculously, the plan had worked.

  Now, Ursula stood beside her a broken woman: no longer the demanding “famous actress” she had been moments before. It had been oddly sweet when Ursula had allowed Charlotte to put together the pieces of her beautiful face: mopping up the eyeliner and drawing fresh lines, cleaning up the lipstick and added it to her unique, large lips.

  “They’re fake,” Ursula informed her as she hiccupped again.

  “That’s okay,” Charlotte had said, furrowing her brow in concentration.

  “I just. I never wanted my face to be made of plastic. But there’s so much pressure on you in this industry,” Ursula continued. Another tear streaked down through the eyeliner Charlotte had only just drawn.

  Now, out in the ballroom itself, Charlotte watched as Everett walked across the ballroom, lifted the microphone that was attached to the speaker system, and announced, “Good evening, everyone. It looks to me like tonight got us off to a fabulous start for
the marriage between Ursula and Orion. Congratulations!”

  Some of the guests clapped and howled with laughter. Specifically, the guy who security had off toward the side: he yelped with excitement, having apparently created some kind of chaos. What had he done? Charlotte had only gotten the security guards as a precaution. She hadn’t actually thought they would be necessary.

  “I believe many of you are staying in this very mansion tonight,” Everett said. “Although I’ll leave that up to you. The rest of you, with hotels and BnBs, booked in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs, call your limo drivers up and head out. It’s a beautiful night out there—one rife for whatever madness you want to get into in the comfort of your own hotel rooms. Good night, everyone. And we’ll see you in the other ballroom tomorrow!”

  Everett’s eyes connected with Charlotte’s over the sea of grumbling partygoers. He gave a light shrug, as she mouthed, Thank you. Again. Already, it felt like they could communicate without words, even across hundreds of people.

  Orion himself appeared beside Charlotte, wrapped his arm around Ursula, and said, “Let’s get you to bed.”

  This was the first act of any sort of love Charlotte had seen out of the weekend’s groom, which half-way warmed her heart (but only half-way). She watched for a moment, as Orion and Ursula kind of limped toward the corridor, which led toward the staircase that wrapped up and up, grandly, in a circle, toward the separate suites Charlotte had booked for them. She hadn’t had time to show Ursula where they were, but she had instructed Rachel to show them to Orion. She was grateful to see that had actually happened.

  As a wedding planner, it was essential that all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place at the right time.

  Right now, however, she felt as though most of the pieces of the puzzle remained on the floor, covered in mud.

  It wasn’t going to be easy to get all these intoxicated people out of the ballroom. Nobody seemed keen on going out into the cold. Those who had rooms at the mansion hardly understood where they were any longer. Charlotte made another announcement over the speaker system to say that keys were located at the front desk in the foyer for those who hadn’t checked into their rooms yet. This had been answered with another howl, a series of jeers, and then the crash of a champagne glass against the floor.

  Great.

  Tommy, Everett, and Zach seemed to create a superhero force-team after that. Charlotte watched them in awe as they marched through the tables, dropped down to demand action from various members of the party, and then even occasionally helped them into their coats or jackets with words of encouragement, like, “Be safe out there! See you tomorrow!” When Charlotte heard Tommy say words like that, he grunted at her and said, “Listen. I’m a moody SOB, but there’s no way I want to give your party a bad rep.”

  This warmed her heart more than almost anything else. She had never really bonded with Lola’s newfound beau, the handsome Tommy Gasbarro, but she now totally approved of him. She made a mental note to tell Lola. Finally, she had found somebody to love and worthy of her grandness.

  Rachel, too, found her way with the kick-out crew. Charlotte watched as Rachel placed a hand on an unsteady actress, who stood in six-inch heels and blubbered drunkenly to herself.

  “It’s okay! Your limo is just outside,” Rachel said, sounding every bit like a twenty-one-year-old. “Remember? I called your driver?”

  “Rachel! You’re such a darling,” the actress returned in a British accent.

  She was good. Charlotte couldn’t tell if she was actually British or not.

  “You’ll call me when you come to London, won’t you, Rachel?” the actress cried, as Rachel walked her toward the door.

  “Yes. You’re going to show me your favorite fish and chips shop,” Rachel said. Her voice was flat and patient.

  “You’re going to love it. Oh, Rachel, why wasn’t I as wise as you when I was your age?”

  Charlotte giggled inwardly. When Rachel turned back, having delivered the actress to her limo, she rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t let me ever drink alcohol,” Rachel said. “It turns people stupid.”

  “You might want to feel a little stupid sometimes,” Charlotte said, rubbing her daughter’s back.

  “I do not understand that,” Rachel said, bug-eyed. “But I’ll take your word for it.”

  Finally, after what seemed like an hour or more, the only people who remained in the ballroom were: Zach, Christine, Lola, Tommy, Charlotte, Claire, Rachel, and Everett. Zach was still hot-headed from earlier. He stomped over to the bar and poured himself two fingers of whiskey. Nobody spoke for a long time.

  “Well,” Tommy said, looking on the verge of spitting. “Looks like that’s it, then. We lived through night one.”

  Charlotte burst forward. “I can’t thank you guys enough. I know that was hell.”

  “It was. But it was also hilarious,” Zach said, already buttering himself up with the whiskey.

  “Really?” Charlotte asked.

  Zach took a sip, furrowed his brow, then said, “No. But I’ll remember it, I guess. That’s something.”

  “What about clean-up?” Lola asked.

  “We aren’t using this space tomorrow,” Charlotte said. “So it’ll get it cleaned in the morning, while we’re setting up ballroom number two.”

  “So those crazy kids are really going to go through with it?” Zach asked.

  “Don’t jinx it,” Christine said. She walked toward him, wrapped her arm around him, and dotted a kiss on his cheek.

  “He looks like he’s on the verge of walking right out,” Tommy said.

  Lola swatted his bicep and gave him an ominous look. He shrugged and said, “What?”

  “I don’t care how long they stay married. I just need this entire event to fall through without a hitch,” Charlotte said. “If they divorce in a year? I’ll hardly bat an eye. But we need them to walk down that aisle tomorrow, or else I’ve failed.”

  Everyone fell silent. After a little while, Christine suggested that they all head home to get some well-needed rest. Charlotte stared at her shoes, embarrassed. Had she made everyone mad? Uncomfortable? Of course, she had. It hadn’t been necessary. She supposed she just didn’t have total control over her own emotions just then.

  Suddenly, Everett appeared beside her. She knew it first by the musk of his smell, mixed with his cologne. Something inside of her swirled with anxiety and she felt her heart beat faster. Was that excitement? Attraction? She wasn’t sure because these new feelings were so strange to her.

  “I just called myself a taxi,” he told her under his breath, while the others spoke. “I wondered if you and Rachel wanted to leave with me. You’ve had one hell of a night.”

  Charlotte turned her eyes toward his cerulean ones. Her stomach stirred with exhaustion, but she felt her lips creak up into a smile. “Are you sure?” she breathed.

  “Of course. It’s just across the island. If you think you can handle a taxi ride with me after the night, you’ve had...”

  “Of course,” she insisted. “I appreciate it. I’ll let Rachel know we’re about to go.”

  Just before the taxi arrived, Charlotte grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the open bar and stuffed it in her bag. It wasn’t the high-end stuff, more the medium-variety—something these high-rollers wouldn’t remember. In the midst of a multi-million-dollar wedding, Charlotte supposed one bottle of whiskey back at her place wouldn’t hurt.

  She then hugged her family members—first Lola and Christine, of course, then Tommy, then Zach, then Claire, who she found in another heap of flowers in the parlor, brimming with tears.

  “You should go home,” she told Claire, placing her hand on her sister’s tender cheek. “I promise. Everything will be brighter in the morning.”

  “The very early morning,” Claire corrected. “I need to fix this bouquet before that lady walks down the aisle.”

  Charlotte chortled. “That lady. You just called Ursula Pennington that lady.”

&n
bsp; Claire burst into laughter. “I know. She would hate it, wouldn’t she?”

  “So much. I love it, though,” Charlotte affirmed.

  Charlotte, Rachel, and Everett stood out on the snow-capped curb, waiting for the taxi. Above them, the stars twinkled daintily, as though they had secrets of their own. Rachel lifted her chin toward the black night sky and said, “They’re much more beautiful in winter, aren’t they?”

  “I always thought so,” Charlotte replied. “But I never thought anyone else did.”

  “They’re beautiful here,” Everett said. “I’ve never been here in the summertime. But I can’t imagine anything better than this.”

  “You should come back in the summer,” Rachel said brightly. “It’s really magical. Swimming and boating and... Well, Mom doesn’t like to swim that much.”

  “Really?” Everett said. He casted her a funny smile. “Surrounded by water, and you hate it?”

  “I don’t hate it,” Charlotte said, sniffing. “I just find it beautiful to look at. I don’t necessarily need to be in it.”

  Everett and Rachel both shrugged.

  “Suit yourself,” Everett said.

  When the taxi pulled up, the three of them piled in: Rachel in the center of the back, Charlotte on the left, and Everett on the right. Charlotte couldn’t help but wonder: did the driver think they were a family? What did that make her feel? Was it a betrayal to Jason?

  Should I somehow express the fact that Everett is nothing to me? Just a new friend?

  But how could I say that without totally killing this mood between Everett and I?

  Focus. It doesn’t matter.

  Nobody else is thinking about this except you.

  “We’ve sure got a lot of snow this year,” the taxi driver said suddenly.

  “Sure do!” both Charlotte and Everett answered at once.

  Both of them sounded strange, so strange that they turned their eyes toward one another and burst into laughter.

  Okay. She was overreacting, probably.

  They were just friends.