A Vineyard Vow (The Vineyard Sunset Series Book 6)

by Katie Winters

  “I don’t know why I didn’t ask you for help sooner,” Susan said as the hug broke. “I just wanted to do it all on my own.”

  “I know that instinct. I have the same one,” Amanda replied, flashing a wink at her mother.

  “Hence all the cleaning and cooking and taking care of everyone?”

  “It’s what you would have done if you had the time,” Amanda said with a shrug.

  “Is there anything you can’t do?” Susan asked with a laugh.

  Amanda’s eyes darkened at this. Susan could almost feel the words rolling around in her mind. Marry the love of my life. Start a family—all the things I always wanted to do.

  But instead of allowing her daughter to dwell, Susan said suddenly, “Why don’t you continue to help me with the case? I would have gone crazy without you tonight. No reason why you can’t be in the room with me when we defend Russell.”

  Amanda’s eyes held hers for a long time. “I’d really like that, Mom.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The court proceedings for Oak Bluffs versus Russell Whalen lasted no more than twenty minutes. Within that time, Amanda and her mother were able to prove that not only was Russell not to blame for the enormous funds that had been spent at the expense of the taxpayers, but they also hinted that someone had set up Russell Whalen. Someone related to the Montgomery family. They reported that they would turn over their findings to the prosecution for them to dig deeper into this mess. They were grateful that the proceedings were fluid. Amanda spoke, then Susan, until finally, the judge ruled that he couldn’t see enough evidence to convict Russell of what he’d been accused of.

  “As you all know, I must be presented with enough evidence in order to rule a conviction. Prior to these proceedings, it seemed clear that Russell Whalen was the only one whose hands could have committed these crimes, as it seemed clear he was the only one to be able to access most of these funds,” Judge Harriett said. “However, thanks to Ms. Sheridan and Miss Harris, it’s become clear to me that this has moved entirely in the incorrect direction. I hereby declare Russell Whalen not guilty. Russell, you have been an upstanding member of this community for a number of years. I hope you won’t see this brief time as a bruise on all you’ve accomplished. We appreciate you, and we see your worth. Thank you.”

  Outside, Susan flung her arms around Amanda and breathed, “That was incredible, Mandy!” into her ear.

  Amanda, for one, wanted to jump up and down with excitement. She hadn’t felt that good in what felt like months. She leaned back from her mother’s embrace and grinned madly, then turned back to find Russell, Claire, Uncle Trevor, Aunt Kerry, Everett, Charlotte, Steven, and Andy, who’d all come to watch the proceedings. They all beamed at Susan and Amanda. Aunt Kerry looked on the verge of tears.

  Russell stepped toward Amanda and Susan and cleared his throat. He didn’t seem to be the kind of man who broke down easily, but when he opened his mouth, his voice cracked strangely, as though he really might this time.

  “Seriously, Susan, Amanda. I don’t know how I can possibly thank you.”

  Aunt Kerry smacked her hands together and called out, “I know how I can start!”

  Kelli chuckled softly and linked her arm with Andy’s. “She’s going to say she made enough clam chowder for all of us.”

  “Don’t give it all away, Kelli,” Aunt Kerry stuttered. Her glove found her cheek and wiped another tear away. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “Christine’s got everything set up back at your place,” Charlotte announced brightly. “We thought it would be a good time for a proper Sheridan and Montgomery family dinner—regardless of what the results would have been.”

  “And the results were nothing but spectacular,” Uncle Trevor affirmed. “Although, this news about Mike being the potential criminal and setting up a family member...”

  Kelli grumbled. “Let’s not talk about that quite yet. I don’t know if I have it in me to consider that he actually went that far.”

  They fell into line together and walked back to their various parked cars. Aunt Kerry landed herself close to Susan and Amanda. Through tears, she whispered, “When you first called to say you suspected Mike, I told Kelli immediately, and she asked her daughter to come live with us. I had wanted her to do that from the get-go, but of course, Kelli didn’t want to disrupt her daughter’s last year of school.”

  “I wondered if she would do that,” Susan said. “I don’t blame her.”

  “Do you think they’ll investigate him?” Aunt Kerry asked.

  “Absolutely, especially after the evidence we brought in today, they’ll have to,” Susan told her. “Although we never know what goes on in the minds of prosecutors.”

  Aunt Kerry clucked her tongue. “Listen to you. You sound like a real lawyer, Susan Sheridan.”

  Amanda’s mother beamed and linked her arm with Amanda’s.

  Amanda answered for her. “She is a real lawyer, Aunt Kerry. I grew up thinking she was the smartest woman in the world. Now, I just know for a fact she is.”

  The cars and trucks piled themselves outside the Sheridan house. Amanda hopped out of her mother’s car and hustled in to find Audrey, nibbling on a cookie and watching the Last Holiday with tears running down her cheeks. Beside her was Grandpa Wes, who seemed similarly captivated.

  “What happened!” Audrey asked with the cookie poised in front of her. “Did you get his name cleared?”

  Here, without the others seeing, Amanda did a little jig of joy. Audrey slowly drew herself to a standing position and then threw her arms around her cousin. “That’s the badass Amanda I know and love,” she whispered. “Good job. I know Aunt Susan couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Wes seemed a bit confused about the whole affair, but he, too, stood up and gave Amanda a well-meaning hug. As he scratched the back of his head and prepared to ask a question, the others stomped into the house, removed their boots, and greeted Audrey and Grandpa Wes with uplifted “Hello!”s and “We did it!”s.

  “Well, actually, your beautiful, talented, successful and intelligent daughter and granddaughter did it,” Aunt Kerry announced as she headed into the living room and hugged her brother close. “I don’t know what we did to deserve such a wonderful family.”

  The clam chowder was already cooked. Christine appeared from upstairs to hug everyone and get the last of the rolls out of the oven. Scott stomped in a few minutes later, along with Zach, Lola, and Tommy. Soon after, Steven announced that his wife was on her way, and Kelli said her daughter planned to stop by soon.

  “We’re going to stuff this place to the gills all over again,” Aunt Kerry said as she headed toward the back closet. There, she found another table, nestled in there from Christmastime. Amanda leaped forward to help her undo it and prop it up in the living room.

  “Thanks, Amanda,” Aunt Kerry said. Her eyes studied Amanda’s for a long time.

  It struck Amanda that maybe, she hadn’t had much one-on-one time with her Great-Aunt Kerry. She struggled under the weight of her gaze. What does this older woman think of me, now that I’ve been left at the altar alone? Should I be embarrassed? Does she think I’ve failed?

  But instead, she dipped her head low and said, “You’re a businesswoman beyond anything, aren’t you? A different kind of woman from a different generation. I have to respect that. And in some ways, it makes me jealous. I love my family, and I love my husband, but when I got into the real estate business, I had a knack for it that surprised me. I closed a number of deals Uncle Trevor might have lost out on. That’s just between you and me.” She grinned, wildly and before turning, she winked at Amanda.

  Amanda laughed at that. Warmth flowed through her as she fell into Aunt Kerry’s compliment like it was a cloud.

  Nobody cared that she wasn’t going to marry Chris.

  Nobody cared for anything but her happiness.

  That was why she loved her family so much.

  Together, the Sheridan and Montgomery fa
milies (along with the many people who loved them) sat and ate and drank wine and laughed together. Occasionally, Kelli got up to “act out” Susan and Amanda’s conversation with the judge so that the others could see them in their true “lawyer” fashion. Mid-way through her performance, Andy got up to play the part of the judge, which made everyone burst into laughter, especially because he soon morphed the character into a much more cartoonish judge character. Just as he flung a little towel over his head to act like an old-fashioned “judge wig,” like you see on TV, Beth and her son, Will, walked in to find him all dressed up with a silly grin on his face.

  Beth burst into laughter the second she spotted him, while Will, who had autism, just blinked at him strangely.

  “Andy. What do you have on your head?” he asked, as though it was the simplest question in the world.

  Everyone at the table burst into laughter yet again. Andy dropped down, still with that towel on his hand, and said, “Do you think it makes me look dignified? Important?”

  At this, Will gave Andy one of his rare smiles and then joined everyone else in giggling. Andy stepped past Will and kissed Beth on the cheek as she removed the towel from his head.

  “How was the hospital?” he asked.

  “Just fine,” she said. “Hello, everyone!”

  “Beth, I hope you’re hungry,” Aunt Kerry said.

  “Always,” Beth replied with a smile. “Especially when it comes to your clam chowder.”

  Amanda began to remove people’s bowls to pile them in the sink for later. Audrey joined her at the counter and beamed out across the families as the chatter and boisterous laughter streamed past them.

  “Isn’t it weird?” Audrey asked suddenly. She placed her hands on her back and leaned into them to puff out her stomach even more.

  “What exactly?” Amanda returned.

  “It’s just that everything has changed so quickly from last year. I mean, a year ago, I lived in a dorm and I drank beer on Friday nights and I kissed cute fraternity boys. And now, I spend my Friday nights watching movies with Grandpa Wes — who, I might add, probably didn’t even know I existed until last June.”

  Amanda chuckled at the truth in her words, even as her heart burned with sadness for the life she had so desperately wanted back in Newark. She could practically see herself, in another dimension: preparing dinner for Chris as she finalized another law school project.

  “You know, I hope you don’t think that was just some kind of small-town thing.” Susan appeared in the kitchen and peered at Amanda, her voice low.

  Amanda placed the rest of the bowls in the sink and turned fully to meet her mother’s eyes. Audrey stepped back toward the fridge and then escaped, sensing an “important conversation” brewing.

  “What do you mean?” Amanda asked.

  Susan tilted her wine glass to make the liquid flow in circles. She stepped closer to Amanda and kept her voice low to ensure the others at the tables couldn’t hear her.

  “That case wasn’t so easy. It wasn’t so simple. It wasn’t just ‘Oak Bluffs small town silliness.’ It had depth to it. And you conquered it easily.”

  Amanda’s cheeks burned at the compliment. “Thank you for saying that.”

  Susan shrugged. “I mean it.” She sipped her wine and then returned the empty glass to the counter. “You should know that I wasn’t exactly pleased with your decision to go online after what happened.”

  Amanda’s nostrils flared. Here it was: the truth.

  “But I knew, somewhere in all this, you’d done what was right for you.”

  “It hasn’t been easy,” Amanda told her. “But I think it was what I needed. Is what I need, I mean.”

  “What if I started my own firm?” Susan said suddenly.

  “Your own firm?”

  “Yes. I know how it goes because your father and I had our own firm back in Newark. This would be just me, Susan Sheridan, with a potential intern, who eventually might agree to be my partner? Somewhere down the line—after she passes the bar.”

  Amanda’s eyes grew enormous when she finally understood her mother’s words. She gaped at her mother, her superhero, the woman she had always aspired to be, and marveled at the idea of this brand-new life:

  A partner in a law firm—a partner to her mother, Susan Sheridan.

  A life on the island, surrounded by loved ones.

  Maybe it was an answer to something.

  “It sounds so wonderful, Mom, but I’ll have to think about it,” she told her mother, even as her heart fluttered in her chest.

  “Take all the time you need,” Susan assured her. “I know it’s a big decision.”

  Later that evening, as the family continued to gather around the table, chat and drink wine, Amanda marched into the bedroom she had taken over the past few weeks. Slowly, with a heavy hand, she grabbed the phone that had been black as night since the Sunday she was stood up at the altar, and she plugged it into the charger.

  In minutes, it pinged with countless messages.

  “Hey, girl! I hope you’re okay? I heard what happened and I—”

  “MANDY! I heard you dropped our class together? I can’t—”

  “Amanda, I just talked to Chris about the rent. Can you send it—”

  “Miss Harris, this is about your request to change your last name—”

  After the wave finished, Amanda smiled to herself. Chris hadn’t sent her a single message. This both surprised and didn’t surprise her. After all, he was probably just as numb and shocked and feeling strange about it all as she was. Probably more, since he had been the one to cause it. She could only imagine the flack his mother had given him. In fact, the idea of it made Amanda laugh aloud.

  Finally, she pressed her thumbs to the screen and wrote:

  AMANDA: Hey, Chris. Longtime, no talk.

  AMANDA: And by that, I mean, I think we need to talk.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Scott and Susan hovered outside the truck window. Amanda was reminded of how nervous Susan and Richard had looked, four and a half years before, when she’d gone off for undergraduate school, making them empty-nesters. She had seen the fear reflected in their eyes—the fact that their baby was leaving for her own adventure to find herself.

  This was different, in a way, but not by much.

  Amanda rolled down the window to speak with Scott and Susan one final time before she wheeled off.

  “The seat all adjusted?” Scott asked, anxious. “It can sometimes stick.”

  “I think I got it,” Amanda told him.

  “And the radio? You can change that to whatever you want. I don’t have any kind of way to hook up your phone, or...”

  “That’s okay,” Amanda replied. “I love the radio.”

  “And you know the way?” Susan asked suddenly, then whipped her hand over her mouth and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, as Amanda chuckled. “I don’t know why I’m nervous. I guess it’s because I’ve seen you every day the past few weeks, and now you’re headed off. I’m going to miss you.”

  “Just one night, Mom,” Amanda said as she tried out a smile. “It’ll fly by.”

  “Good luck up there,” Susan told her. “Call me if you need anything. And remember, I can still jump in this truck right now and come up to help.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’ve already told you and Aunt Lola and Audrey and Aunt Christine and even Charlotte and Claire,” Amanda said with a laugh. “I have to do this by myself. But I appreciate the offer. I really do.”

  Amanda had never taken a car across the ferry. Of course, as she eased it up over the ramp, the guy working waved and hollered, “Hey, Scott!” then immediately changed his face, rapped on the window, and asked her to roll it down. “You are decidedly not Scott Frampton,” he said with a smile.

  “My mom is Susan Sheridan,” Amanda explained. “Scott lent me the truck for the night. I have to move my stuff back from Newark.”

  “Oh!” Although Amanda had never seen this man
before, a story played out across his face — one that told her he knew exactly who she was. The jilted bride. Well, whatever. It didn’t matter. “Well, carry on, then. Scott has a year-round pass to take the truck back and forth, so lucky you.”

  The drive back to Newark was a strange one. Amanda gripped the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles began to ache, and she switched back and forth on so many radio stations that she nearly did her head in with the variety of genres. Rock to country to soft rock to old-school rock — she couldn’t make up her mind. Rock had never been particularly “her thing,” but there was something about the loud music that allowed her to forget what she was about to do and just get lost in the moment.

  Here I go. I’m about to meet my ex-fiancé for the first time since he left me at the altar.

  It was both a nightmare and a rom-com. Audrey had said, multiple times, that although she probably couldn’t have lifted much of Amanda’s stuff, she “really wanted to be there to see what was said. “I hope you throw a brick at his head,” she’d added. “He deserves it.”

  Amanda parked the truck outside of the familiar Newark apartment just as the sun ducked beneath the horizon. When she cut the engine, she felt a profound sense of loss. After all, hadn’t she parked in this very spot, arrived “home” to this apartment, so many times, all without a second thought? This was the final time. It was difficult to know how to feel.

  When Amanda reached the apartment door, she didn’t have time to knock or ring the bell before Chris opened it. It shocked Amanda to see him, mostly because it didn’t shock her at all. Here he was: not a monster, but the same-old, same-old Chris, who wore a V-neck black t-shirt she had bought for him at Target and a pair of jeans. As he pulled the door open further, she noticed that his feet were bare, and for whatever reason, this nearly made her cry. There was something so intimate about someone’s bare feet.

  Maybe this would be the last time she would ever see them.