A Vineyard Vow

by Katie Winters

  After twenty-five minutes, Susan stopped short, huffed, and leaned against the nearest tree. Through the hazy darkness, she peered at Scott. She wanted to tell him how hopeless she felt.

  “I can’t believe how this day has gone,” she finally said.

  Scott shook his head and placed his hands on his hips. He gazed out through the trees. It seemed like, for miles and miles in every direction, they were alone on a rock in the middle of the ocean. It was an alienating feeling.

  “None of it is your fault, Susan,” he finally said.

  But to Susan, the words rang false.

  “I should have kept my eye on Dad. Everything ran off the rails, and I was worried about Amanda, and I was listening to Richard rattle on about how much he hated Chris in the first place, and I —”

  Scott shook his head in disagreement. “No. Susan. Listen to me.” He gripped her shoulders as tears rolled down her cheeks. Above them, the moon had begun to duck out of the top of a cloud. “None of this is your fault, okay? And we’re going to find your father. This island isn’t so big that we won’t be able to find the island-famous Wes Sheridan on it. No doubt, he’s just telling a story to someone who doesn’t want to hear it.”

  Susan laughed sadly. “And they’re nodding along as though they like it and want to hear more.”

  “No doubt,” Scott said, giving her a tender smile.

  They continued to look. Several minutes later, Amanda called. Her voice was bright but strange.

  “Jake and I haven’t had any luck yet,” she said. “What about you, guys?”

  “Nothing here,” Susan said. Her teeth clattered with a chill.

  “Okay. I just hadn’t heard from anyone and wanted to reach out,” Amanda said. “But Mom, it’s going to be okay. It has to be.”

  “Okay, honey.” Susan couldn’t help but think: I should be saying this to you, the jilted bride. But instead, she hung up.

  Throughout the search, Susan was reminded of a long-ago day, probably twenty-one years ago, when she’d lost Jake at a grocery store. She’d had Amanda strapped to her front, and she’d only gotten her to sleep after hours of gut-busting baby screams. With a panicked heart, Susan had whipped through the store, taking stock of every toddler, before then analyzing every adult. Did you take my child? Why did you take my child? What do you want with him? Don’t you know I will kill you if you hurt him?

  Of course, she had ultimately found Jake in front of the live lobster tanks, with his big, fat palms pressed up against the glass. When she had spotted him, the person behind the counter had said, “I wondered what this little guy was up to. He seemed like he could communicate with them.”

  Enraged, Susan had wanted to demand why this incompetent worker at the counter hadn’t alerted the store of a toddler who stood by himself, clearly alone. Instead, she’d burst into tears, woken up Amanda, and filled all the grocery aisles with the songs of her family’s fears and sadness.

  She felt like that now, here in the grey woods with Scott.

  She felt completely out of control.

  A few minutes later, Lola called to say there still hadn’t been word. Susan felt the hesitation and fear in her voice. She knew they were running out of time, whatever the heck that meant. An old man like Wes couldn’t be out in the cold like this, not for long. Susan’s toes ached as snow crept into the bottom of her boots and melted. She cursed herself for not having packed her hiking boots.

  Finally, about an hour after Uncle Trevor had first sounded the alarm that Wes was missing, Susan received a call from an unknown number.

  “Hello?” Her voice was frantic.

  “Susan, hey. It’s Walter, you know, from the Main Street Saloon.”

  Susan’s heart hammered wildly in her chest. This was a bar that Wes had spent a good deal of time at over the summer; he’d been a regular throughout much of his adult life on the island.

  “Is he there? Have you found him?” Susan blurted.

  “He’s here,” Walter affirmed. He sounded hesitant. “But he’s pretty messed up, Susan. He looks like he’s been outside for a long time. He...he collapsed the minute he got in here. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got here. We’ve already called the ambulance. I guess you’d better meet him up at the hospital.”

  Susan dropped her chin to her chest. Through all her confused thoughts, all she could think was: he’s still alive. He’s still here. Maybe he’ll be all right.

  “Thank you, Walter. Really. I can’t tell you how worried we’ve been.”

  Susan and Scott hustled back to the mansion. Throughout the whip-fast walk, Susan dialed the others to inform them of what had happened. “I’m headed to the hospital right now,” Susan told Christine, then Lola, then Richard, then Amanda.

  Amanda, notably, breathed the biggest sigh of relief. “Mom, I am so sorry about today.”

  Susan stopped short, just before she leaped into Scott’s truck. She peered at her reflection in Scott’s window, suddenly fully aware of the devastation of the day—a day that Amanda had looked forward to since she’d been a little girl.

  “Baby, this is not your fault,” Susan said, trying to assure her. “Sometimes, everything falls apart. It’s something I’ve had to learn over the past twenty-some years of my life.”

  And now, it seems like it’s time for you to learn it, too.

  “I’ll see you at the hospital, Mom,” Amanda said, her voice breaking. “I love you.”

  Susan squeezed her eyes closed as she slipped into the front seat and slammed the door closed. “I love you, too,” she breathed before she realized Amanda had already hung up the phone. Tears slipped down her cheeks as Scott reached out and gripped her hand.

  “I never wanted her to know all the pain I went through,” Susan whispered as Scott drove out of the mansion lot and out toward the road that would take them back to the hospital in Oak Bluffs — the very one where she’d reconnected with her father more than six months before.

  “All you can do is try and guide her through, the best you know how,” Scott told her as his hand slowly warmed her frigid skin. “You can’t change it. You can just tell her that one day, she won’t feel it quite the same way anymore. It will be a distant memory, nothing more.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was now Wednesday. Amanda blinked at the date on the calendar, as though it had betrayed her. But no: time moved on, whether you liked it or not, and here she was, living out the first week she had been meant to be Chris’s wife. And still, days after the wedding, she hadn’t spoken a single word to her no longer groom-to-be.

  Amanda stood alone at the Sheridan house. She wore the same ratty t-shirt she’d donned that Saturday night after she had returned from the hospital; her sweatpants had a wine stain along with a little melted cheese and even some chocolate across the right knee. Her normally gorgeous hair, which she kept up impeccably, had been tied in a messy bun and she no longer knew the blissfulness of a shower.

  Is this how I’ll live out the rest of my life? A complete and utter mess? Sweatpant-chic? Jilted bride couture?

  Amanda sprayed cleaning solution across the counter and began to wipe a washcloth across it. Admittedly, she had already cleaned this counter twice that morning, but she just needed to do something, anything with her hands. After this, she would rearrange the fridge for the fourth time and maybe go through the front closet to see what could be thrown out. But then what? Clean every window in the entire house? That would probably take days. It was perfect. Maybe she could milk it for a full week.

  When the doctor had announced that Wes just needed several days of bed rest at the hospital, followed by several weeks of rest back at the Sheridan house, the Sheridan and Montgomery families had breathed a collective sigh of relief and returned to their homes. According to reports from Brittany and Piper, Amanda and Chris’s wedding reception had raged on into the night. “It was one of the best parties I’ve been to in years,” is what Brittany had said. Sometimes, Brittany could be tone-deaf;
this was one of those cases.

  Still, Amanda was glad that some people had enjoyed her wedding.

  Apparently, the groomsmen had dug into the glorious wedding cake that Christine had baked for her, smashing one another in the face with it.

  Truthfully, Amanda had never really liked Chris’s friends.

  Maybe this was proof that she and Chris hadn’t really been meant to...

  No. She wasn’t ready to say that yet.

  After she hadn’t heard anything from Chris on Saturday evening and then into Sunday morning, Amanda had turned off her cell phone and hadn’t bothered to turn it back on. This annoyed her mother to no end, but it was her twenty-first-century version of “hiding from the world.” This way, she couldn’t ogle the Instagram photos people had posted from her “wedding.” She couldn’t know what Chris was up to. And best of all: nobody could contact her. Not Chris, not her friends, and not anybody who had “words of pity.” She didn’t have time for it.

  All she had time to do, right here and now, was clean every single square inch of the Sheridan house. Maybe this was her destiny for the time being.

  The previous evening, when Lola had caught her cleaning the upstairs bathroom yet again, she’d said, “I’ve never seen anyone more productive than you, Amanda.”

  At this, Amanda had joked, “Leave it to me to be the lamest depressed person on the planet. Most other people eat ice cream and watch their favorite movies.”

  “Ah, well. If you get to that stage, call me. I love ice cream and movies,” Aunt Lola had teased. “But first, maybe I should have you over to mine and Tommy’s cottage. I love Tommy, but if I stay over here too long, that place looks like a tornado ripped through it.”

  After Amanda wiped down the counter for the millionth time, her stomach fought with her and demanded at least the tiniest bit of food. It had been a struggle to keep things down, and normally, she felt much too upset to think of anything she might like to eat. Somberly, she placed a slice of cheese on her tongue and forced herself to chew. With every motion of her jaw, her brain played tricks on her.

  Chris left you because you’re too boring.

  Chris left you because you’re not pretty enough.

  Chris left you because you’re too anal about cleaning.

  Chris left you because you make too many stupid lists.

  Chris left you because —

  Even this was another list, Amanda told herself. She chewed the rest of her cheese, swallowed it, and then fell back onto the kitchen floor, where she wrapped herself in a ball.

  You don’t deserve happiness.

  You don’t deserve marriage or children or law school or anything you’ve planned for.

  You just deserve this.

  Just then, there was the creak of the tires across the driveway. Amanda leaped up, touched her messy bun, and scrunched her nose. All morning, her mother had worked at the Sunrise Cove; after that, she’d planned to bring Wes home. They’d set up one of the downstairs bedrooms for him so that he didn’t have to climb the stairs all the time. Audrey had opted to move upstairs.

  Amanda opened the door to allow Scott to wheel her grandfather through the back door. Her grandfather grinned up at her, bright-eyed, with a few slice-like cuts across his forehead, maybe from twigs, although it was difficult to say. They assumed that he’d wandered through the woods before he’d stumbled into the saloon, but there was really no telling what had happened. Wes had no memories associated with it.

  And in fact, he seemed foggier than ever.

  “Hey there,” Amanda said, grateful her voice didn’t break as her mother, Scott, and Wes positioned themselves around the kitchen table.

  Susan lifted a bag of Christine’s croissants and wagged her eyebrows. “Christine is on her way, but she sent these along with me this morning so we could have a little welcome-home snack. Dad, what do you think about that?”

  Wes still blinked at Amanda, seemingly perplexed. Amanda knew that she looked a great deal like her grandmother, Anna, back when she’d been in her twenties; she and Audrey both did. She dropped her eyes to the ground, praying that her grandfather wouldn’t call her Anna. It was something she couldn’t emotionally handle.

  Finally, he said, “Amanda. There you are.” His shaky hands drew out a croissant and began to strip off bits of the flaky goodness.

  “Hi, Grandpa!” Amanda smiled. “I’m so glad to have you home.”

  Wes nodded as he looked at her. Slowly, he took a bite from the croissant. He didn’t have much strength; even his muscles looked depleted. Amanda swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. It was sad to see everything changed, even this.

  “Amanda, I really am looking forward to your wedding,” her grandfather said. A secretive smile snuck across his face. “How privileged I am to be able to watch one of my granddaughters get married, only a few months before another of my granddaughters gives me a great-grandchild. It’s a remarkable gift.”

  Susan’s eyes widened in shock while Scott placed his croissant back on his plate and looked at Amanda, panicked.

  But there was nothing Amanda could do but laugh.

  “That’s sweet, Grandpa,” she replied. “I will love having you there.”

  Inwardly, it felt like every single organ, from her heart to her lungs to her brain, was on fire. There was no way she could possibly live through this. Right?

  Somehow, in some way, Amanda found herself able to sit with Scott and her mother and her grandfather and have some kind of normal conversation. Her mother eyed her curiously, as though she was a ticking time bomb, about to go off. But Amanda found ways to joke and laugh and carry on a conversation until Wes announced he was pretty tired and wanted to lie down for the afternoon. Scott wheeled him into the bedroom, helped him into the bed, and then pulled the door closed behind him. He nodded toward Susan and said, “He looks comfy in there for now. I think he’s just glad to be home.”

  Susan pressed her hand on her chest. “I’m so glad he’s here. Oh, but Amanda. I’m so sorry about —”

  Amanda waved her hand in the air between them. Hurriedly, she picked up the plates and the trash from the table and began to frantically clean again. Over the scrubbing and the sound of the faucet, she heard Scott tell her mother he wanted to get a few things done at the Sunrise Cove that afternoon. He bent to kiss her goodbye. A few minutes later, he disappeared into the grey light of yet another January day.

  The Wednesday after Amanda’s wedding.

  “Amanda?”

  Her mother’s voice rang out over the sound of the faucet. Amanda pretended not to hear for a moment.

  “Amanda? Can you sit with me for a moment, please?”

  She sucked in a breath. Amanda felt like a teenager again, ordered to the dining room table to discuss some problem with her parents. Slowly, she turned the faucet off and dried her hands with a dishcloth. When she turned, she found her mother’s face blotchy.

  “Just for a sec, Mandy,” Susan said as she patted the tablespace across from her. “Then you can get back to whatever you want to do.”

  Whatever the heck you want to clean next, was the subtext.

  Amanda sat. She crossed and uncrossed her arms over her breasts and prayed to high heaven that she didn’t actually reek to high heaven, even though she hadn’t bothered with much hygiene. She felt like an exposed nerve, there in front of her mother. Before she knew what hit her, tears began to course down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Amanda cried.

  Susan furrowed her brow. “Amanda, no. No, no. You have nothing to be sorry about.” She reached across the table, found Amanda’s hands, and dragged them out to the center of the beautiful wood. Her thumb traced tenderly over Amanda’s palm. “You didn’t do anything wrong, okay?”

  Amanda closed her eyes and tried to breathe. Finally, she said, “I know you’re upset that I’ve already missed a few days of classes.”

  Susan chuckled, not unkindly. “No. Of course, I’m not upset. Why would
I be?”

  Amanda shrugged. “I don’t know. Because I did so well last semester. And I have all this potential. And—”

  “Those sound more like things you’re telling yourself,” Susan said. “And they sound reasonable. But you just went through one of the hardest things you will ever have to go through in your life. I think you’re doing what you have to do to survive it. No pressure on my side, okay? Besides. You’re Amanda Harris. I know you know what you need to do. It’s your thing.”

  Amanda bit hard on her lower lip. Slowly, she forced herself to open her eyes. “I just don’t know how I can go back to Newark like this. I don’t know how I can face my friends, or go back to law school, or even enter that apartment.”

  Susan’s eyes shimmered. She looked vaguely surprised, although she looked like she didn’t want to show it.

  “I see.”

  “I already looked it up,” Amanda explained hurriedly. “Several of my classes have the option of being online-only if I go to the end-of-semester final in-person. A few others, I can push off to other semesters, maybe. I just...” She again bit hard on her lower lip, feeling like a child. “I really think I want to stay here—in this house. I don’t trust the rest of the world right now. I need to stay on the Vineyard. I need—”

  Just then, the back door screeched open, and Aunt Lola’s voice rang out. “Hello! It smells like cleaning supplies in here. Has our little house elf been hard at work again?”

  Susan’s eyes didn’t leave Amanda’s for a long moment. Within them, Amanda saw fear and sadness and maybe the tiniest glimmer of disappointment.

  After all, Amanda had just told her mother something she’d never told anyone before.

  She wanted to give up.

  She wanted to hide.

  And she didn’t know what was next.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Susan peeked her head into the room beside Wes’s, where Amanda remained in the days after being stood up for her own wedding. It was just past seven-thirty in the morning. A normal Amanda, an Amanda of another era, would have been wide awake by now — draped over her computer and typing away, already scribing a list for the morning ahead.