A Vineyard Lullaby (The Vineyard Sunset Series Book 7)

by Katie Winters

  A Vineyard Lullaby

  The Vineyard Sunset Series

  Book Seven

  By

  Katie Winters

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 2021 by Katie Winters

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Katie Winters holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Other Books by Katie | The Vineyard Sunset Series

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  Chapter One

  Much like her grandmother, Anna, who’d died long before her birth, Audrey Sheridan had always kept a diary. There had always been something about the process of it: putting pen to paper and building the story of your life, page-after-page. She always found unique poetry in her mistakes and her joys and her fears, something beautiful in the passage of time. Audrey Sheridan was only six weeks or so from her twentieth birthday and her nineteenth year had been a real doozy. In the words of her Aunt Christine, “You did more living at age nineteen than most people get in before thirty.” Her diary was proof of that— something that would be around after Audrey’s own death.

  There was something about being pregnant, on the verge of giving birth to her very first child that made Audrey think a lot more about her legacy, about life cycles, about what would be remembered of her after she was gone. This was something Audrey had tried to describe to a friend at Penn State. The explanation had failed. Audrey no longer had the dialogue for a “college conversation.” A frat party seemed like something from an alien universe. Now, she knew only pregnancy, horrible aches and pains, heartburn, and deep fears that kept her awake all night long, sometimes.

  It was a grey morning at the end of February. The sun hardly bothered to lift its weary head across the Vineyard horizon, and the house was cast in a ghoulish, grey light. Audrey sat delicately at the kitchen table and gazed out over the Vineyard Sound waters. Since her arrival to Martha’s Vineyard the previous summer, she’d hardly grown accustomed to the view. And in fact, the view seemed strangely different every single day; a different boat graced the far-out waters, or a bright cardinal flocked to the tree line, or snowstorms churned flakes across the yard and across the dock. The seasons shifted around the big house, and all the while, her stomach had just grown bigger and bigger.

  Audrey finished her journal entry for the morning and then flipped back to some of the first pages in the diary. She had started the thing at the end of May the previous year, as she’d headed off for her internship in Chicago. It was funny to read these entries.

  May 28,

  I know I’m on the right path. Journalism was always what I was meant to do, ever since I forced Mom to do those mock interviews at our little crummy apartment in Boston. Our boss for the internship seems to like my stuff so far. I feel competitive with the other interns and already working my way up to write alongside some of the others in the office — people who have already graduated and begun their real careers.

  Audrey clucked her tongue at the words. She half-remembered writing them. With every notation, she’d sizzled with adrenaline for the approaching weeks. She’d had her eye on the man who would eventually get her pregnant; she’d ached for him — not just because he’d been the most attractive man at the newspaper, but because he was incredibly brilliant, had won plenty of awards in journalism, and was the kind of person she wanted to latch onto if only to learn more about the journalistic world-at-large.

  Now, she sat in the soft grey of her grandfather’s house, just a little over thirty-eight-weeks pregnant. She felt like a human bowling ball.

  Funny what life did to you.

  Suddenly, one of the bedroom doors off to her left pushed open. Amanda stood in an oversized t-shirt, her long locks wildly mussed as they curled down her shoulders. She blinked at Audrey with surprise, just as her lips stretched into a big yawn.

  Finally, she collected herself enough to ask, “Couldn’t sleep again?”

  Audrey closed her diary quickly and arched an eyebrow toward her slightly-older cousin. “You know I don’t need sleep. It’s for the elderly, not young ones like us.”

  “Right,” Amanda said with a slight roll of her eyes. She walked past the table and then eased into the kitchen area, where she poured coffee into a filter, filled up the machine, and pressed the on-button. Her motions were zombie-like. “Are you ready for the big day?”

  Audrey splayed her hands across her belly and buzzed her lips. “It’s a whole lot different than the parties I’m used to. But I guess if there’s enough cake, I’ll find a way not to complain.”

  Amanda chuckled. “I tried to see if we could get kegs filled with green juice, just so you’d feel more comfortable, but the keg hasn’t moved on from beer, I guess.”

  “Thanks, cuz. Appreciate the effort,” Audrey shot back.

  Today was Audrey’s baby shower. The date had been on the calendar for quite a while, but Audrey had always seen it so far off on the calendar. Now that it was here, it meant that the other stuff would come much too soon—labor, delivery. A real, three-dimensional, human baby. It freaked her out.

  Amanda sat across from Audrey at the kitchen table, blocking Audrey’s view of the glowing sea. She sipped her coffee and went over her traditional to-do list, which she’d written up the previous night. Audrey teased Amanda about the “list thing” quite a bit. Although the girls were thick as thieves, very best friends in many respects, they were entirely different, with Audrey a traditional Type B (or Type C, really), and Amanda firmly rooted in her Type A nature.

  That said, ever since Chris had left her at the altar, and Amanda’s life had gone off the rails, Amanda had loosened up quite a bit. It had been a strange thing to watch, as Amanda’s roommate and cousin and dear friend. Sometimes, Audrey felt that she hadn’t given enough moral support to Amanda since her permanent arrival in mid-January. But in other ways, she and Amanda had both learned that sometimes, just sitting in silence was all that was needed. Neither of them wanted to feel alone.

  “Okay. It looks like everyone will arrive at around one,” Amanda said. “Your mom should be here soon to help me decorate this place and set up the games.”

  “Games?” Audrey scoffed.

  “Yes, Aud. Games.”

  “Like pin the diaper on the baby.”

  Amanda’s cheeks brightened to crimson. “I mean if you really don’t want to play that ...”

  “No, no.” Audrey’s laughter made the baby thump a foot against the inside of her stomach. “We can play pin the diaper on the baby if you want. I
mean, I know that’s your favorite game.”

  “You don’t have to be snarky one hundred percent of the day, Aud,” Amanda returned.

  “But then, how would I teach my daughter how to banter?” Audrey replied quickly, wearing the slightest smile on her lips.

  “Your daughter is picking up on every little thing you say,” Amanda said.

  “Good. She’ll come into the world a bossy little thing. Nobody will ever push her around.”

  AT TWELVE-THIRTY, AUDREY sat in the living room while her mother, Lola, Aunt Christine, Aunt Susan, and Amanda finalized the last elements of the baby shower decor. The speaker system played a song by Cher, which Audrey’s mother hummed a bit too loudly as she carried a platter of baby-themed cookies — tiny shoes in pink and white — from the kitchen to the large table they had set up, closer to Audrey’s chair. Audrey could see it in her mother’s posture: Lola Sheridan was nervous. Not about the baby shower, exactly, but about all the chaos that would come afterward. She was going to be a grandmother. But stranger than that, her sister, Christine, planned to raise the baby for the first few years so that Audrey could return to college and get that journalism degree she so craved.

  Audrey’s mother hadn’t taken so kindly to the idea the previous summer when Audrey and Christine had concocted it. Unfortunately for Lola, it wasn’t her decision. It was Audrey’s. Audrey, who’d had to grow up in a flash.

  There was a rap on the door. Susan leaped toward the mudroom to open it. Bright voices swirled back through the hallway.

  “Jennifer! It is so kind of you to drop this off yourself,” Susan said.

  “Don’t worry about it. I was on my way to meet my son for a hike, anyway.”

  “A hike? In this weather? You’re crazy,” Susan said as she led Jennifer Conrad of the Frosted Delights Bakery in from the chill and toward the baby shower table.

  Jennifer carried a glowing white box. When she stationed it on the table, she slowly eased the top off to reveal a five-tiered cake, covered with beautiful pink roses and little golden jewels. It was a cake fit for a princess. Audrey had her eye on eating an entire tier to herself.

  “Ta-da!” Jennifer said. She beamed down at Audrey. “What do you think? I know it’s nothing compared to what your world-famous pastry-chef Aunt Christine can do, but it’s some of my best work if I do say so myself. My mother helped me through a lot of the more complicated steps. And my boyfriend tried to eat a lot of the frosting before I had a chance to put it on the cake, but I managed to fight him off.”

  Audrey grinned up at the beautiful red-haired woman, whom she’d met briefly and heard so much about. Her mother had only just had a horrible stroke. She and her high school sweetheart had gotten divorced after many years of marriage — yet she seemed just as bright and chipper as ever. How did women in their forties do it? Audrey felt overwrought with emotion, sometimes and struggled to see her way out of it.

  There was something about women on the Vineyard. They pressed forward, no matter what the circumstances were.

  “It’s really beautiful,” Audrey finally stated. “I just love it.”

  “Seriously. It’s wonderful,” Lola affirmed. “I’m so glad you said you’d take over. Christine has said all this time she could manage it, but we all knew the truth.”

  Christine flashed a big wave of dark hair over her shoulder. “Zach and I have been up to our ears in arranging a nursery for the baby and a room for Audrey to have whenever she wants it. It’s a lot more work than we thought.”

  “It always is,” Jennifer said. “The nesting phase in a pregnancy is always the most enjoyable time. But then again, so is the baby shower. Actually, it’s all wonderful. And scary. And amazing.”

  Christine and Audrey locked eyes. They seemed to reflect the same thing. And in truth, all their conversations over the previous few weeks had revolved around the same topics of fear, excitement and ultimately, logistics. How would they make this work, exactly? Audrey was the mother and would always be. But Christine was a stand-in, prepared to take on the role as “mother” until Audrey was ready to do it full-time. This was to be her first shot at motherhood, a kind of practice round until Christine and Zach set about adopting a baby for their own family. She’d had to have an ovary removed many years ago and this was her only real option.

  After Jennifer left, other guests began to file into the Sheridan house. Grandpa Wes, who’d headed back into his room for an afternoon nap, soon drew open his door to greet his family members and dear friends from across the island. He, too, locked eyes with Audrey across the growing crowd, but Audrey saw nothing but love and excitement reflected back. In some ways, Grandpa Wes was one of her dearest friends, even if he was her grandfather. She’d certainly spent more time with him over the previous eight months than she had with nearly anyone else. They were both always home together and their bond had grown into something that Audrey couldn’t even explain if she tried. She loved her grandfather more than life.

  Sometimes, but only sometimes, Audrey had questioned this. What kind of nineteen-year-old girl’s best friend was her grandfather with dementia?

  Oh, but the friendship was something she wouldn’t have traded for the world.

  More people came, all with beautifully-wrapped packages and bright smiles and plenty of baked goods. There was Aunt Claire and Aunt Charlotte, along with Gail and Abby and Rachel, who stuck together, teenage best friends. Audrey chuckled inwardly that these girls, at fourteen and fifteen, were much closer in age to her than basically anyone else there. But she was the pregnant one, and therefore, she was deemed an “adult.”

  At least maybe, Audrey could act as an “always have safe sex!” lesson for the three of them.

  Then, there was Aunt Kerry and Uncle Andy’s new girlfriend, who Audrey had really taken a liking to — Beth, who also brought her beautiful son, Will, who was on the spectrum. There was Aunt Kelli, along with Uncle Steven’s wife, Laura. Even Natalie from the Sunrise Cove Inn came since Susan had recently hired that new young man to take on many of the responsibilities. Sam. He was so incredibly handsome and it was clear to most that he was into Amanda.

  In the wake of his employment at the inn, of course, Audrey had poked and prodded Amanda for details on their budding friendship. So far, Amanda had said they were “just friends,” and “they were only there for each other.” Audrey had bets they were well on their way toward a summer-time romance.

  The cake was starting to get eaten; conversation bubbled throughout the room; every single woman came up to both Audrey and Christine and spoke about how “brave” they were and how “lovely” it was that they could build this “unique” relationship between themselves and the daughter growing in Audrey’s stomach. Audrey’s cheeks grew tired after multiple, “That’s so sweet of you!” and “Wow, you shouldn’t have! exclamations.” And the smile-fatigue grew even worse as she opened her presents and thanked even more of her guests. She had grown accustomed to mid-day naps (just like Grandpa Wes) and couldn’t wait for everyone to duck out and leave her in peace.

  Still, it was nice that she was loved by so many people.

  Several of the guests had brought gender-neutral gifts for the baby, which Audrey scoffed at. In truth, she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that her baby would be a girl. She simply didn’t have it in her to deliver a boy. It was something Zach had teased her about over the past eight months or so — but she would hear nothing of it. The Sheridan girls would welcome as many girls into the fold as they could. Her mother and Aunt Susan had insisted she was carrying high, which meant a girl, so in their minds, the deal was sealed. It was just a silly myth, but people truly believed in it. Either way, Audrey would be happy as long as she could count out ten toes and ten figures.

  Toward the end of the baby shower, she opened a final gift from Aunt Kerry. In it, she found a bright pink, crocheted blanket, which she lifted to her cheek and rubbed the soft cotton against her skin.

  “It’s so beautiful, Aunt Kerry,” she
told the older woman in a soft murmur. “I know she’ll love it so much.”

  Aunt Kerry reached her elderly hand across the space between them and patted Audrey on the thigh. Her eyes glowed as though they clung to tears.

  “I hope you know we’re so proud of you, Audrey,” Aunt Kerry remarked with a soft smile.

  Sometimes, Audrey took issue with this idea, that they were “proud” of her. After all, hadn’t she just gotten herself knocked up in a faraway city by a stranger?

  But she just nodded and smiled and tried to keep her own tears at bay. “Thank you, I love it so much, Aunt Kerry. And pink! It’s already her favorite color.”

  “I figured,” Aunt Kerry replied with a mischievous wink.

  Chapter Two

  Christine stood off toward the far end of the baby shower with her arms crossed anxiously over her chest. She knew Audrey well enough to sense how tired the poor girl was. She had yet another present propped up on her lap, and she stitched her eyebrows together as she nodded at something Kelli said, something about a favorite brand of spit-up towels when she’d been a young mother.

  “That’s good to know,” Audrey said. “Thank you.” There was just the tiniest strain to her voice, proof that she wanted a nap far more than any brand of spit-up towel.

  But the Sheridan and Montgomery clan, along with other women from Oak Bluffs and beyond, were chatty and hungry and eager. The party wouldn’t close out anytime soon. There was too much food to eat and wine to drink, too much gossip to fling around, to the grateful gasps of all visitors.

  The door slammed from the driveway-side of the house. Zach’s voice hollered out as he entered, and Christine’s heart jumped into her throat with excitement. Zach had closed the bistro the previous night and opened it that morning and had said he would pop by the baby shower as soon as he could. Here he came, still dressed in his chef whites and a smile filled with confidence. He beamed at all the Sheridan and Montgomery women and then stepped over to kiss Christine directly on the lips. Love was etched across both of their faces and Audrey could only dream of being in love like that one day.