A Vineyard Thanksgiving (The Vineyard Sunset Series Book 4)

by Katie Winters

  “It’s best if it’s like your pancake went swimming in syrup,” she said.

  “Great,” Charlotte said with an ironic laugh. “Can’t wait for the sugar coma.”

  Abby, Rachel, and Gail seemed secretive about something. They used a code word to refer to someone. “Code Red.”

  Finally, Charlotte couldn’t take it anymore and said, “If you’re going to use spy terms around here, you’d better tell Claire and I what you’re up to.”

  Abby grimaced. Finally, she said, “Okay. If you must know, Rachel’s in love.”

  “Come on! Don’t just tell my mom that...” Rachel said.

  Charlotte and Claire locked eyes—Charlotte could more-or-less remember a similar conversation between herself and Claire a million years ago. Probably, Charlotte had been obsessive about Jason at the time.

  “This is so exciting,” Claire said, her eyes sparkling. “You have to tell us more. Where did you meet him? What’s he like?”

  Rachel’s cheeks reddened. She glared at Abby, and then said, “He’s in my history class. But it’s not a big deal.”

  “Everything that’s not a big deal is always a huge deal,” Charlotte said with a laugh. “Have you talked to him yet?”

  “Of course, I talk to him, Mom. We’re partners,” Rachel said. She scrunched her nose up slightly.

  “You’re braver than me. It took me a million years to work up the courage to talk to your dad,” Charlotte said.

  At this, Rachel’s eyes turned back toward the table. Charlotte immediately regretted it. Bringing up Jason Hamner in just casual, everyday conversations usually soured those conversations in ways you couldn’t take back. It was a reminder that nothing had really gone the way they had planned, and they couldn’t get it all back.

  “She’s working her magic. That’s for sure,” Gail said.

  “My gosh! What is your magic, Rachel?” Claire asked.

  Rachel rolled her eyes and muttered something.

  “What did she say?” Claire asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should just let it go,” Charlotte tried.

  “No. She said her magic is giving him all the answers on the tests,” Abby said with a volatile laugh.

  “Rachel! No! Why?” Charlotte demanded.

  Rachel gave a half-shrug. “Just because he’s the cutest guy I’ve ever seen, doesn’t mean that he’s the smartest.”

  “Fair enough,” Claire said.

  “But, you shouldn’t just give out your answers...” Charlotte insisted.

  “Come on, Mom. It’s just history,” Rachel said. “Plus, I think it’s totally unfair that someone can fail a whole class, just because they can’t remember the exact dates George Washington did something that nobody cares about anymore.”

  “Hey. We care,” Charlotte said.

  At this, Charlotte, Claire and their girls burst into laughter. It was all so ridiculous, so silly.

  After they finished their pancakes, Charlotte took the plates and stacked them in the dishwasher. When she turned around, she found Claire’s eyes at the doorway.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  Claire beckoned for her to enter the hallway. When she reached her, Claire said, “What if we try again today?”

  Ah. Now Charlotte knew the real reason for the pancake day.

  “I don’t know,” Charlotte said. Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

  “Just a few shirts. A few jackets. They’re taking up so much of your closet, Charlotte. If anything, I feel like you should buy yourself a whole new wardrobe to fill the space.”

  “I don’t want to fill that space,” Charlotte protested. “Those are his things. I can’t just throw them out.”

  “No. You should keep a few key items. Nobody is asking you to throw everything out. But you must see them every single day, right? It’s like a weight. You can’t escape from it.”

  Claire turned around quickly and marched down the rest of the hallway toward the bedroom Charlotte had shared with Jason for a number of years before his death. Claire was right, of course: the place looked almost exactly the same as it had before Jason’s death. She had even kept Jason’s flannel across the desk chair—where he had left it the morning he had gone to go fishing. She remembered specifically thinking, when she’d seen it that morning, Oh no. He’s going to want that out there. It’s a bit chilly today.

  Claire ripped open the wardrobe and splayed her arm out, gesturing toward the thick coats, the jackets, the flannels, the pairs of jeans.

  “The man already had too much stuff,” Claire said. She then gestured toward the other side, where Charlotte’s trim dresses, tiny pairs of jeans, tank tops and sweaters, took up much less space than Jason’s. “I’m just asking you to try to get rid of, say, a quarter of it today. No more. No less.”

  Charlotte scrunched her nose. “I know you’re trying to help,” she said. Her voice broke.

  Claire’s eyes shimmered with tears. “It’s not like I would have ever wished this on you, you know.”

  “Maybe we could try to do this next week? Or the one after? I don’t know. It’s almost the holidays, Claire. I can’t just... forget about him over the holidays.”

  “Nobody said anything about forgetting,” Claire insisted. “But don’t you remember what Susan said about going through their mother’s things, getting rid of a lot of it, cleaning up the house? She said it was necessary for them to move on and build something new.”

  “Anna’s been dead since 1993,” Charlotte stated. “Almost thirty years!”

  “Are you suggesting that thirty years from now—when you’re seventy-one years old—you’ll be ready to get rid of some of this stuff?” Claire demanded hands-on-hips.

  “Maybe. I think we’d better push it to seventy-five, though,” Charlotte said.

  “You’re being willfully difficult. And I don’t know why I’m surprised. This is just what you do,” Claire said, trying to joke.

  Charlotte perched on the edge of her bed and stared at her shoes. Silence filled the room. Finally, she exhaled and said, “I’ll get rid of ten shirts today. Ten. That’s it.”

  Claire snapped her fingers and beamed at her sister. “I’ll take it. It’s a start.”

  It was a difficult task, choosing the ten shirts. Claire insisted she didn’t have a memory attached to all of them—how could she have? But Charlotte said she did. She could feel all the days she had spent with Jason behind each and every one. She could feel the warmth within the hugs he had given her. By the time she had ten shirts stacked up on the bed, her cheeks were blotchy with tears. When she glanced back at the closet, she winced and said, “It doesn’t even look like we did anything.”

  Claire shrugged. “What’s that expression about climbing a mountain? One step at a time?”

  “Something like that,” Charlotte said.

  Claire collected the shirts in her arms and directed herself toward the hallway. “You know, this single guy I know has asked about you a few times.”

  “What?” Charlotte’s stomach curdled at the thought.

  “Don’t worry about it if you’re not ready,” Claire said. “I was just thinking; maybe it could be interesting? To go out on a date? Just to see what it felt like to meet someone new?”

  Charlotte shook her head violently. She couldn’t even articulate how much she didn’t want that. Claire heaved a sigh and said, “Very well. I just figured I would at least try. I’ll take these to my place and drop them off at a second-hand place in Falmouth when I head off the island next week. Okay?”

  She nodded in return. “Okay.”

  Charlotte was grateful Claire didn’t plan to drop off the shirts at a second-hand place here in Oak Bluffs. It would have destroyed her to see one of Jason’s friends around town, wearing his shirts. It would have felt akin to looking at a ghost.

  Chapter Two

  Rachel, Abby, and Gail decided to head to the center of Oak Bluffs to meet a few of their classmates, run around in the rain, and, probab
ly, wind up at one person’s house or the other for snacks and movies. As Rachel donned her winter coat and hat, she glanced toward her mother and paused. Her face grew stoic, more like an adult’s than a teenager’s.

  “Are you going to be okay here by yourself today, Mom?” she asked.

  “Of course.” Charlotte feigned her brightest smile, although she could still hear the faintest quiver in her voice. She was still shaken up about the loss of just ten shirts.

  Rachel tilted her head as she looked suspiciously at her mother. “Are you sure? No work to do or anything?”

  “You know how it is these days,” Charlotte replied. “No weddings till spring. We should appreciate the rest.”

  “Right. Well. Let me know if you need anything,” Rachel said. After another pause, she rushed toward her mother and wrapped her arms around her. She held her for a long moment; her eyes clenched tightly closed.

  When Abby and Gail appeared in the foyer, Rachel let Charlotte go. Charlotte’s arms ached with the memory of the hug. It took a moment to recover.

  “You girls have fun today,” Charlotte said, her hand on her hip. “Be safe, and call me if anything goes wrong.”

  “Right. Like anything ever goes wrong on the Vineyard,” Gail said.

  You’d be surprised, Charlotte thought.

  With Claire gone and the girls off, Charlotte collapsed in a heap near the piano bench and allowed herself to cry for a good five minutes. It was this kind of cleansing cry she started almost every day with, something she had joked with Claire about, since she said it kind of also worked as an ab exercise, as well.

  When she returned to the kitchen, she scrubbed the sticky table and checked her email again. Her Facebook revealed that Lola had tagged a photo of her from way back in 1996 when she and Lola had palled around together frequently, sometimes with Christine and Claire and sometimes not. In the photo, the girls wore bikinis, and Lola drank one of those bright blue ice drinks. Lola stuck her tongue out to reveal just how blue it was. Charlotte looked sheepish beside her, still in her clothes, and her cheeks bright red from the sun.

  Charlotte remembered the summer so well. The summer she had finally kissed Jason—the summer she had officially fallen in love.

  Instead of writing anything too dramatic or emotional, however, Charlotte commented on the photo with: You were obsessed with those blue drinks.

  Lola commented back seconds later: Now, a much different drink does the job for me. Meet up later? PJ’s Wine Bar?

  Charlotte considered this. Her schedule for the afternoon had involved a lot of crying, remembering, thinking, and crying again, on repeat.

  Maybe drinks with the girls weren’t such a bad idea.

  That moment, her phone buzzed to reveal a number she didn’t recognize. This wasn’t such a strange thing, especially given the business she worked in. People referred her all the time to their friends and associates. Well, not all the time, but enough to allow her a decent living.

  “Hello, this is Charlotte Hamner.”

  “Charlotte. Hello! It’s so wonderful to hear your voice.”

  Charlotte had zero idea who the man on the other end of the line was.

  “Who may I ask is speaking?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Terribly sorry. I suppose you don’t know me. I tend to do that sometimes after I’ve researched someone so specifically. I feel like I know all about you; but you, you don’t know the first thing about me. Not that you ever have to. My name is Tobias, and I’m the personal assistant for the acclaimed film actress, Ursula Pennington. I suppose you must have heard of her.”

  Charlotte furrowed her brow. Ursula Pennington was one of the more famous twenty-something actresses working in cinema at the moment. No matter how much she wanted to move there, she didn’t live in a cave.

  “Of course,” Charlotte replied brightly. “Lovely to hear from you, Tobias. How can I help you today?”

  “Well, the news is about to hit the stands and the blogs and the tabloids. My Ursula just got engaged to the world-famous basketball player, Orion Thompson.”

  This was a name Charlotte hadn’t heard, but she decided to pretend she had.

  “Wow. I didn’t even know they were dating,” she breathed.

  “Nobody did! That’s what makes it so exciting. It’s kind of a last-minute thing, you know, but my Ursula is quite the drama queen. When she gets something in her head, she has to make it happen, you know? That said, when she called me this morning and said she wants to get married on a snow-capped Martha’s Vineyard over Thanksgiving weekend, I was like... I don’t know how to make that happen! But Ursula said it’s this or nothing. So, it has to be this.”

  Charlotte’s jaw dropped. “Thanksgiving is in like, three weeks?”

  “It’s true. It is. I am staring at a calendar right now as we speak,” he continued.

  “I’ve never planned a wedding so quickly,” Charlotte confessed.

  “Of course. Who would? It’s absolutely crazy,” he said.

  “I just. I mean.” Charlotte’s thoughts ran in circles. “There’s no way to say if it will even snow on Thanksgiving weekend. Sometimes it doesn’t. No matter what I do in terms of planning, it’s not like I can change the weather.”

  Tobias seemed at a loss with her.

  “I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” he said. “All I know is this. If you’re hired, you’ll be working for one of the biggest and most celebrated actresses of her generation. You’ll be recorded as the wedding planner for the illustrious Ursula Pennington and her basketball husband, Orion. I don’t know what you’re not getting in this—but you’ll be paid handsomely. No. Handsomely isn’t the right word. Essentially, the sky’s the limit, both on your payment and the cost of the expenses. Imagine a wedding of your wildest dreams, and then double that imagination. Let’s create a wedding for Ursula that the world will never forget.”

  Charlotte was shocked, to say the least. His words felt like bullets to her psyche. She chewed on her bottom lip as she tried to mull over things in her brain.

  Maybe, if I wasn’t so depressed right now, I would go for it.

  Tobias, I’m sorry to say—my husband just died in a fishing accident, and I’m not over it enough to handle something as big as this.

  Tobias, I actually have decided to put my life on hold for the next thirty years, at which time I’ll...

  No.

  Claire was right.

  She couldn’t limp around, waiting any longer. She needed to get out of this funk she was in and this would be the perfect solution to distract her.

  “This will change your life forever, Charlotte Hamner, if you’re brave enough to accept the challenge,” he said, trying to tempt her.

  Charlotte blinked out the kitchen window at the dark clouds that brewed on the horizon. Were they snow clouds?

  “I’ll go over the numbers,” Charlotte said. “I’ll assess the possibilities. And I’ll have an answer to you—one way or the other—by the end of the day.” Then, she cleared her throat and said, “But Tobias. Why me? Why did you contact me for this?”

  She had done a number of well-received weddings over the years, including some for celebrities but nothing of this caliber. Ursula was essentially a goddess among men.

  Tobias considered this. “Do you remember those shoes you made for Tiffany Bugman?”

  Charlotte furrowed her brow. Tiffany Bugman had been a client the previous summer, several months before Jason’s death. When Tiffany had hated the shoes she had purchased for her wedding, Charlotte and Rachel had bought these gorgeous flats and then bejeweled them for Tiffany, adding a bit of flair and pep to a day that Tiffany had said she wanted to be “fun, no matter what.”

  “Of course,” Charlotte replied. “Tiffany was such a great client.”

  “She’s a childhood friend of Ursula’s,” Tobias said. “Ursula couldn’t attend the wedding, as she was filming on location in South Africa, but she did read a long blogpost Tiffany wrote about the event, wh
ich spoke at length about the ‘specificity and care’ undertaken by a particular wedding planner.”

  Charlotte marveled at this. She hadn’t expected that story to return to her like this.

  “Goodness.”

  “Yes, well. Your kindness seems to want to return back to you, tenfold—in the form of many, many dollar signs. I’ll let Ursula know that we’re expecting your call.” After a pause, he added, “I look forward to meeting you.”

  With that, the call ended.

  Charlotte hovered in the dark shadows of her kitchen as the first snowfall erupted from the dark clouds above. The memory of bejeweling those shoes sizzled through her. She and Rachel had sat at this very kitchen table—hard at work for hours at a time. Jason had ducked in and out, dotting kisses on their foreheads, hustling back out to fish and returning with snacks for them to eat as they worked. Charlotte and Rachel had complained and grumbled about it, both taking unique pleasure in the shoes’ artistry. And when Tiffany Bugman had first seen the shoes, she had burst into tears.

  “It’s because you care so much about them,” Jason had said. “They can see it in your eyes. I get so jealous, you know? I thought you would only care about me for the rest of your life.”

  Charlotte had giggled at the joke and kissed him. “You’re so selfish. You want all my love for yourself.”

  Chapter Three

  Charlotte headed to PJ’s Wine Bar later that afternoon, simmering with so much excitement and fear, she thought she might vomit. When she entered the wine bar, Christine and Lola waved their arms manically, then slowly dropped them. Lola’s jaw dropped, which left Christine time to say, “You look like you’re about to faint.”

  Charlotte dropped into the spare chair across from them as Christine poured her a hearty glass of merlot. She rubbed her cheeks and then spread her hands to either side.

  “Are you going to tell us what’s up?” Lola demanded. “Or are we going to have to guess?”

  “I’ll start,” Christine said. “You’ve fallen in love with a vampire.”