A Vineyard Vow (The Vineyard Sunset Series Book 6)

by Katie Winters

  “Penelope, don’t,” Richard tried.

  “Because we don’t have any mail for you here,” Penelope retorted. “All we have is — hmm.” She paused, tapping a nail on her lip before beginning again. “I guess all we have here is your father’s girlfriend, who is being forced to announce the big news. That’s why you brought her here, right, Richard? You weren’t man enough to tell her yourself.”

  Amanda stopped breathing. Her eyes raced between Penelope and her father. She crossed her arms and waited for the ax to fall. She could feel it, hovering above them.

  “I’m pregnant,” Penelope blurted out finally. “There, Richard. Are you happy now? I did it for you.”

  Chapter Four

  The following morning, Amanda flung a suitcase on the mattress she shared with Chris and assessed her closet with her hands on her hips. In the living room, Chris’s football game blared on the screen. It was a collection of squawks and bright horns. Chris had stationed himself on the couch with a bag of chips and a bottle of beer. He was in his happy place and he would remain there. Just an hour before, he’d explained to Amanda that he wouldn’t make it to the Vineyard for New Year’s Eve, as he had meant to. There was just too much work to be done.

  Disappointed wasn’t the word for it. Amanda wasn’t sure exactly how to decipher what she felt. Slowly, she grabbed various sweaters and dresses from the closet, folded them nicely, and checked things off of her to-pack list. Besides the list of clothes and toiletries she’d packed for herself, she had listed various items she’d wanted to pack for Chris. Now, she scratched out that list and tried to tell herself it didn’t matter. He couldn’t come and it was out of her control.

  At a commercial break, Chris headed up to the kitchen area to grab another beer from the fridge. He hovered outside the bedroom door for a moment. Amanda could feel his eyes on her, even as she faced the closet.

  “How’s it going?” he finally asked.

  Amanda gave a half-shrug. “Fine, I guess. I’m almost done.”

  “You shouldn’t have even unpacked after Christmas. You’re always back and forth, back and forth.”

  Amanda turned. She wanted to check his face, see if there was any sign of a smile. But no, it seemed that he meant it all seriously and wanted to hurt her.

  “Well, I can’t miss the Sunrise Cove New Year’s Party,” Amanda replied. “Mom’s brought that place back to its former glory. She needs me there.”

  Chris arched a single eyebrow. “Does she need you? Or do you just want to run away from Newark?”

  Amanda tried to laugh. Really, she tried. But the laugh rang out, strange and false, and she regretted it immediately. “You know I love Newark. I love Rutgers. I love you, I love my dad... I just, you know. I have to be there for my mom. She’s been through hell and back this year. I want to help her through to the next one. You of all people, I thought, would understand that.”

  Chris turned as he cracked open his new bottle of beer. He stood with his nose toward the far wall, as though he couldn’t bear to face her. Amanda realized, at this moment, that she hadn’t yet told him about her grades for the semester or about her father’s girlfriend’s pregnancy. It had seemed clear that he didn’t care at all, not about anything except this dumb football game and whatever went on at work.

  “What are your plans for New Years'?” Amanda finally asked. She took to the suitcase and began to yank at the zipper, as though just latching up the thing would fix whatever problems stirred in her heart.

  “Not sure. I think we have to take those clients out,” Chris faltered slightly. His eyes seemed to turn toward the game as the commercial break filtered out. “I’m sure it’ll be boring. Just drinks and business talk as usual.”

  “But it’s all for the future, right, so it’s good,” Amanda said, feeling unsure of her own words.

  “Something like that,” Chris affirmed. “Sure.”

  Hours later, Amanda found herself again on the ferry as it dragged her toward Martha’s Vineyard. She grabbed a cup of mulled wine from the stall in the belly of the ferry and blinked out across the Vineyard Sound. She had a horrible sense of dread in the pit of her belly. If she’d been asked at gunpoint, what it was she dreaded, she doubted that she would have been able to answer. It was just one of those awful feelings.

  When Chris had first asked Amanda to marry him, he had told her that he couldn’t imagine sharing the secrets of his heart with anyone else. He’d told her that she was the only woman for him and how she was the only one he ever trusted in the world. He’d told her how much she mattered to him. He’d told her.

  To Amanda’s surprise, when she ducked off the ferry with her suitcase in-hand, she discovered Audrey, her beautiful and terribly pregnant cousin, stationed on the dock. Her mittens were on either side of her rotund stomach, and her eyes glittered with the late-afternoon sun. In nearly every way, Audrey looked like Amanda’s sister — even a twin, some said and when the two girls had first met on the ferry, of all places, months before. They hadn’t been able to shut up about it.

  “There she is!” Audrey called out, beaming from ear to ear. “My brilliant future lawyer!”

  Amanda blushed as she gave her cousin a side-hug, careful not to bump her huge stomach. “I know it’s only been a few days, but I have really missed this place.”

  Audrey giggled. “Everyone’s missed you too, of course. Aunt Susan hasn’t been able to shut up about your grades. Grandpa thinks you’re the smartest woman in the world, and Aunt Christine already wants you to handle the proceedings when she inevitably murders Zach—that is when she gets too annoyed with him in the kitchen at the Bistro.”

  “A crime of passion! How exciting,” Amanda laughed.

  “Oh, yes. Those two love each other to bits. Bits and bits, if you catch my drift,” Audrey winked.

  Amanda scanned the dock for some sign of her other family members yet found no other familiar Sheridan eyes peering back. “They sent a pregnant woman to pick up a traveler?” she joked.

  “Oh, no. Not really. Mom, Aunt Christine, and your mom are at the little wine bar down the road. I told them I wanted to stretch my legs. It’s kind of my thing these days. If I sit still for too long, I start to think about, you know, the heavy things in life—childbirth and all that jazz.”

  After they dropped off Amanda’s suitcase at the house, they decide to walk to the bar that the girls were at. Snow fluttered around them and dusted their shoulders as Audrey finally broke the silence.

  “It’s too bad Chris couldn’t make it!”

  “Yeah! Work’s gotten kind of crazy,” Amanda replied. She could feel the false brightness of her own voice. “I’ll miss him, but I guess we have the rest of our lives to hang out on New Year’s.”

  Audrey smiled as she drew open the door of the bar. “You have to be the most mature twenty-two-year-old I’ve ever met.”

  Once inside, Amanda felt herself thrown into a series of hugs and “You’re back!” exclamations. Her mother dragged a chair out for her to sit on, and Aunt Christine poured her a half glass of merlot as she chortled, “You’re going to be a bride so soon!” Aunt Lola chimed in, “Sure she is. Look at that perfect skin! That beautiful face! You’re going to be the most beautiful bride Martha’s Vineyard has ever seen. Ursula has nothing on you.”

  Amanda felt herself blush as she lifted her glass toward the ceiling and clinked with her mother and her aunts’ glasses, along with Audrey’s glass of water.

  “I see you guys kept the party going as long as you could,” Amanda noted after she took a sip.

  “We try,” Aunt Lola said with a dramatic flip of her hair. “To be honest with you, I’ve been worried sick because Tommy convinced me to let him go on a little sailing expedition the day after Christmas. He’s supposed to be back New Year’s Eve, but every time I look out at that dark water, I get the heebie-jeebies.”

  “But you know Tommy knows his way across the water,” Aunt Christine said, trying to assure her sister.

>   “I know that,” Lola replied with a heavy sigh. “I just worry about him now. Maybe it was a stupid thing, falling in love with such a reckless and free-spirited soul.”

  “But that’s what you are,” Susan said with a laugh. “I don’t see how you two could have avoided each other.”

  Lola chuckled, seemingly grateful that her eldest sister had said it. “Maybe. I hope you’re right.”

  Susan drew her arm over Amanda’s shoulder and tugged her tightly against her. “Thank you for coming back, honey. I’m sure all this back-and-forth is tiring for you. But lucky me! I get to celebrate my daughter’s stellar grades with her in-person! I mean, come on—nearly a four-point-zero during your first semester of law school? That’s insane.”

  Amanda let her head fall heavily onto her mother’s shoulder. She could have kept it there a long, long time. She suddenly felt too exhausted to keep going. Her mother’s hand-stretched over her hair and stroked it.

  “You must be tired,” Susan murmured softly so that the others couldn’t hear.

  “I am. So tired,” Amanda whispered.

  After another drink, Susan called Scott, who’d been assigned to drive them all back to the Sheridan house after their early-evening wine trip. When they reached the cozy interior, Amanda collected herself in a little armchair and turned out toward the Vineyard Sound. Directly beside the armchair, as though she hadn’t been gone a day, was a stack of wedding magazines, the very ones she’d gone through, night after night, while her mother had battled cancer in that very house.

  How strange. She had made so many of her wedding choices right there in that chair. She’d ached over her mother’s health and stayed up long nights and gossiped with Audrey and made list after list so that she didn’t forget a thing.

  As she sat, curled up, the three Sheridan girls popped open another bottle of wine. Audrey dropped back on the couch and groaned with her hands on her stomach. Aunt Kerry, who’d apparently been there to make sure everything went okay with Grandpa Wes, agreed to stay for a brief drink before she asked Trevor to come pick her up.

  “He’s over there with Andy and Beth and Beth’s boy, Will, again,” Kerry said with a funny smile. “Everyone has really taken to Beth’s son. He’s on the spectrum, and he says the darndest things, but there is such goodness to him. He makes you remember that there is a whole lot of love in this world if you know how to accept it.”

  Amanda had met her second cousin, Andrew, only briefly over the holidays. Apparently, he had been away from the Vineyard since age eighteen, then had fought overseas for several years, and had only returned because Uncle Trevor had been in a bad car accident. Susan had seemed mesmerized with his return and had said to Amanda, “There is so much pain between the Sheridan and Montgomery families. I don’t know how any of us see our way through it. But we do. That’s pretty incredible to me.”

  As the conversation surrounding the Montgomery family bubbled on, Audrey dropped her feet to the side of the couch and turned her eyes toward Amanda. Amanda couldn’t help but smile.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  Audrey shrugged. “Can I tempt you with a Christmas cookie?”

  “Of course,” Amanda replied, smiling. “I wouldn’t have come all this way if I thought I would go a full day without a Christmas cookie.”

  Audrey wobbled her way toward the kitchen, piled a few cookies on a platter, and then returned. She placed the cookie plate between them and then dropped a pillow on the ground to sit on. Amanda pulled herself down from the chair and crossed her legs. Together, they nibbled and listened to the older generation gossip and swap stories.

  “Mom’s been staying at Tommy’s mostly,” Audrey said. “And Aunt Susan at Scott’s, and Christine at Zach’s.”

  “Wow. Does that mean it’s just you, me and Grandpa?” Amanda asked.

  Audrey shrugged. “I think so. I like the days when it’s just the two of us sometimes. He is really quiet these days. Maybe he has a lot on his mind. I don’t know.”

  That night, Amanda and Audrey both took to the beds in the two new bedrooms, located on the ground floor. Susan decided to remain at the Sheridan house. She explained that she had a number of things to get done at the Sunrise Cove before the big party and wanted to be close-by, just in case. In reality, of course, Amanda knew that Susan wanted to stay at the house because she was there. Their time as mother-and-daughter was always way too limited.

  She was her best friend in the world.

  Chapter Five

  Susan awoke early in her childhood bed. It took several blinks for her to recognize it — the posters on the wall still hung long-after their stint in the nineties, and the scratchy blankets, which Anna Sheridan herself had picked out. Throughout much of the previous months, she’d spent nights in Scott’s bed. She had grown accustomed to the subtle way he shifted beneath the sheets when he awoke and the soft whistling of his occasional snore: God, how her heart grew, day-by-day for him.

  But today was different. Amanda was back, the Sunrise Cove Inn New Year’s Eve Party was just a day away and they marked time toward the end of a year that had changed all of their lives forever. As she sprung out of bed, Susan couldn’t help but compare her health and vitality to even a month before, when she’d still struggled to walk quickly and her strength had bordered on pathetic.

  Cancer had come for her, and she’d shown it the door. Now she had a bounce in her step that made her grin with happiness.

  Susan washed herself clean in the shower, donned a robe, and headed downstairs to find Audrey, already upright at the little kitchen table, with a crossword and a cup of tea in front of her. Susan walked toward the coffee maker, which was full of fresh brew.

  “Amanda put that on,” Audrey said, speaking through the pencil she now chewed. “She was just on the phone with Charlotte.”

  “Nice.” Susan poured herself a big cup of black coffee. “I guess there’s still a few things to tie up before the big wedding.”

  “Sounds like it,” Audrey replied without looking up at her aunt. “I caught her diving through those magazines last night like they were about to be burned. I hope she’s not having any second thoughts about the way she chose to decorate everything because there’s no way I’m going through all the stress of November’s wedding again. That was crazy.”

  Susan laughed good-naturedly. It had been chaotic: the Sheridan sisters assisting Charlotte in throwing together the wedding of the century in around three weeks. Susan had still been a bit weak from the chemo and had gotten out of a lot of the grunt work, but Audrey hadn’t yet been pregnant enough to get out of a lot of it. Charlotte frequently said that Audrey’s garrulous personality and joy had lit a fire under a lot of the people who worked the wedding, including Everett, the photographer, who had decided to stay on Martha’s Vineyard much, much longer than his initial plan.

  Already, Susan could see it reflected in his eyes: Everett cared deeply for Charlotte. He thought the world of her. And maybe, just maybe, they could fall in love — the kind of love Charlotte deserved after so much pain and heartache.

  In a sense, Susan was grateful for her own pain and heartache. Richard hadn’t died, of course, like Charlotte’s husband had; he still very much existed on this planet (in the very house they’d bought together, in fact, with his new thirty-one-year-old girlfriend). But just because the world hadn’t lost him didn’t mean that Susan didn’t sometimes mourn him. She’d loved him completely for such a long time. And then, one day, there hadn’t been love between them anymore.

  She’d had to mourn that in her own way.

  Amanda reappeared in the kitchen. She clutched her phone with lily-white fingers and blinked at her mother for a moment before she seemed to force a smile.

  “Oh hey,” she said. “You’re up.”

  “I didn’t realize you girls were such early risers,” Susan said, glancing at each of them. “I think if I hadn’t already had kids at your age, I wouldn’t have wanted to get up before eleven or at l
east noon.”

  Audrey shrugged as she nibbled on a croissant. “To be honest, this baby doesn’t let me do much of anything. It feels like I have to pee all the time and my back... Well, I’ll save that for another day.”

  Susan chuckled then glanced at her daughter. “How was Charlotte? Everything okay with the plans?”

  Amanda nodded. She sucked in her cheeks, as though she planned to say something dramatic. “She said it’s all squared away. All we have to do is appear on the day. Pretty easy, huh?”

  “The woman knows what she’s doing,” Audrey affirmed.

  Amanda’s eyes seemed strange, hollow. Ever since last night, Susan had noticed something about Amanda, something that didn’t add up. Obviously, she knew that marriage was an enormous ordeal for her, that she probably found herself in a flurry of emotions and fears. But Amanda had always known exactly what to do. She’d always had a list.

  Chris was just another part of that list to check off.

  And Susan knew Amanda would do it, and do it well.

  “Too bad Chris can’t be here for New Year’s,” Susan sighed. She sipped her coffee, careful to watch Amanda’s face for clues on her mood.

  Amanda didn’t give anything away. “I know. He just works so hard. It’s for me, for us, for our future family, and I know that. And there will be so many more New Year’s.”

  “That’s right, honey,” Susan smiled, trying to reassure her daughter. “Your dad and I hardly stayed up for the last few that we spent together, as pathetic as that sounds. I guess we just got so bored with each other that we wanted the lights to go out on another year.”

  “And now, with Scott, you want to stay up allll niiiight looonng,” Audrey sang from the table.

  Amanda scrunched her nose. “Gross,” she said, teasing.

  SUSAN CONVINCED AMANDA to head to the Sunrise Cove with her that morning to help with last-second obligations before the big event. Amanda agreed in that same bright, happy voice she’d always had, although her eyes told a story of sadness and fatigue. Susan waited downstairs and nibbled on a scone while Amanda hustled upstairs, showered, and prepped for the day.