A Vineyard Lullaby (The Vineyard Sunset Series Book 7)

by Katie Winters

  Audrey and Christine locked eyes again.

  “What do you think, Momma?” Christine asked.

  Audrey shrugged. “I think we have to make a pit-stop at the hospital. Max can’t go another hour without his legal name. Don’t you think?”

  Audrey watched her aunt’s frown turn into a huge smile. “I love it! It’s absolutely wonderful. Is Max short for Maxwell?”

  Audrey nodded with a smile. “Middle name, Wesley.”

  It was a remarkable thing, filling out that birth certificate. Audrey shivered when it was finalized. She then marched toward the glass at the NICU and spoke Max’s name to him, under her breath, as sweetly as she could.

  “Welcome to the world, Max Wesley Sheridan. There is so much in store for you once you get out of there. And we love you so much.”

  Chapter Ten

  The house was full yet again. Christine stepped into the bustling atmosphere as if she was having an out-of-body experience. Her father, Wes, told a vibrant story to her Uncle Trevor in the corner and swung his arms around; Aunt Kerry busied herself in the kitchen, hovering over a large pot of lemon chicken soup with tortellini; Lola was cozied up alongside Tommy, her eyes hazy. The trauma of this birth had done a number on all of them, but there was a real power transmitted here, in the heart of their home. Anything could happen.

  Lola jumped up and hugged Audrey close. The tender kiss she placed on Audrey’s forehead made Christine turn away. She hated to admit her occasional jealousy over Lola and Audrey’s relationship, especially given how close she now felt to Audrey.

  “We named him, Mom!” Audrey said as she stepped back.

  “What’s that?” Grandpa Wes called from the corner. “Does my grandson finally have a name?”

  Silence fell over the room. Expectation etched itself across each and every Sheridan and Montgomery face.

  “I named him Max. Maxwell Wesley Sheridan,” Audrey finally said as she snapped her hands together with pride. Her eyes found her grandfather, who had tears in his eyes.

  “You gave him my name...” Wes murmured.

  “It’s perfect for him, Grandpa,” Audrey said, giving him a tender smile. She knew he would love it.

  Joy flung through the room. Lola hugged Audrey yet again, and Susan came to hug Christine, who closed her eyes and felt herself shake with strange relief. Somehow, now that the baby had a name, the universe had shifted in their favor. They weren’t out of the woods yet, though.

  “It’s a great name,” Susan said as she fell back. She continued to grip Christine’s shoulders as she peered into her eyes. “How are you feeling?”

  Probably, the massive under-eye shadows and devastation from the baby and the situation with Zach didn’t make Christine a beauty contest candidate. Susan Sheridan could see directly through her. She’d always been able to.

  “It’s not a big deal,” she insisted. “Just some trouble sleeping.”

  “I hope you’re eating enough,” Susan said.

  “Audrey and I had a pretty big meal for lunch,” Christine said.

  “And you’ll eat more later on,” Susan insisted. “That lemon chicken soup that Aunt Kerry made is delicious, maybe even better than her chowder.” She squeezed at Christine’s upper arms as though her hands alone could sense any unhealthy weight loss. “Is Zach on his way over?”

  The words were glass shards, and they flung through Christine’s heart and tore it to slices. Christine swallowed the lump in her throat and heard herself answer, “He might be busy tonight. He said he might not make it. But I guess I’ll call him again, just to make sure. I don’t know a single man who can resist Aunt Kerry’s cooking.”

  “Call him,” Susan said softly. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to be alone in this, either.”

  Ah. How wrong you are, Susan Sheridan! Christine so longed to say this. But she cut her teeth into her bottom lip and sauntered out toward the mudroom, where she made yet another call to Zach Walters. The phone rang and rang. She pressed her ear with her finger a bit too hard as she waited in order to drown out the vibrant laughter from the other room. Where the heck was he? Why couldn’t he answer the phone?

  Just as she hung up, cousin Andy, Beth, and her son, Will, snuck through the door. Beth, ever the kind soul, said a bright, “Hello!” as she stepped toward Christine and hugged her tight. Christine hadn’t seen her since the day after the delivery when Beth had stopped by the waiting room.

  “So glad you guys could make it!” Christine said as the hug broke. She felt how empty her words were. Her eyes turned toward little Will, who looked up at her with that same, serious, inquisitive nature. It was like he could see directly through her all the time. It was a little eerie.

  “I heard about your baby,” Will said finally.

  Beth’s face looked pained, but Christine was grateful that he’d spoken the truth.

  “Yes. He’s very sick,” Christine finally returned.

  “Do you think he will get better?” Will asked.

  Christine’s heart drummed in her throat. “I hope so. But I don’t really know.”

  Beth squatted down beside Will and brushed his hair over his ear gently. “We’ve kept baby Sheridan in our thoughts, haven’t we?”

  Will nodded as Christine said, “Audrey named him. She named him Max.”

  “Max!” Will said, a bit too loudly. “That is a superhero’s name.”

  Beth and Christine made eye contact. A funny smile spread between Christine’s cheeks. Somehow, he was right. It was a superhero’s name. A very particular, new kind of superhero. The kind that had to take on the world before he knew anything in it.

  Another table was brought into the living area, just a few feet from the kitchen table. Christine busied herself, setting up the plates and wine glasses, slicing the bread. She detested that this particular bread was store-bought since she hadn’t had time to bake anything recently, but nobody else seemed to notice. When they sat, and everyone took a slice on their plate except for her, Audrey teased her and said, “Is this bread not good enough for our world-famous baker, Christine?”

  Christine flashed her an ominous smile. “Don’t get me in trouble,” she teased as she lightly kicked Audrey beneath the table.

  “Oh dear me,” Aunt Kerry said. She lifted the bread to eye-level to analyze the seeds and grains within. “Is this bread really not so good? I bought the one with nineteen different kinds of grains!”

  “We’re just so spoiled with your bread, usually,” Uncle Trevor said to Christine.

  “Spoiled with it? I’ve gained like five pounds since I got back to the Vineyard in December,” Andy added.

  “Only five? I guess we’re not trying hard enough,” Susan said as she smeared some butter across her piece of bread. “And Aunt Kerry, don’t you worry about the bread. I think it’s delicious.”

  “Well, it isn’t my specialty,” Aunt Kerry said.

  “You’ve only got the best lemon chicken soup and clam chowder on the island, Mom,” Kelli interjected. “I think that, in and of itself, is a skill to be proud of.”

  It was funny, Christine thought, to fall into these easy conversations. They were words that might have been said at any given time, in any given season, but they were oddly soothing now, especially with baby Max in the hospital. Audrey ate heartily and said she planned to continue to be pregnant with a “food baby” as long as she could manage it. At this, Susan rolled her eyes and said, “You’ll be right back to normal in a snap, my dear. Nothing like that nineteen-year-old metabolism.”

  “Almost twenty years old, I’ll have you know,” Audrey said.

  “Oh! We should plan a party,” Amanda said brightly. “Twenty is huge.”

  “I remember when I turned twenty,” Lola said with a sigh. “Audrey was just a little bouncing ball of baby energy. I was barely conscious.”

  Audrey’s lips curved downward just the slightest bit. Several people at the kitchen table and the living room table turned their eyes toward the soup. Lola reach
ed over and squeezed her daughter’s hand, then said, “And I’m sure baby Max will be here for your big day, too.”

  Audrey’s eyes welled with tears, but she blinked them back and placed her spoon in the soup again. At the other table, Steven began to talk about something that had happened at his auto shop earlier in the week, which was yet another boring conversation that everyone could cling to. Normality was best. Normality was what they needed most.

  After Christine spooned herself one-half of her bowl of lemon chicken soup, she again excused herself to the backroom to call Zach. The phone rang and rang and rang. Outside, night had crept up and cast the driveway in a strange, grey light. The snow had melted, and the grass beneath was lifeless and brown. With a heavy heart, Christine collected her coat and walked to her car. Once at the wheel, she knew what she had to do.

  When she pulled up in front of the house she’d shared with Zach all these months; she sensed an emptiness to it. Zach’s car wasn’t in the driveway; the garage seemed hollow. She forced herself up the driveway and down the walkway and then into the front door. Although she knew there would be no answer, she still said, “I’m home!” like she was some character in a sitcom.

  But this was no sitcom. This was the sad result of a life she’d wanted so badly. It was like they’d gotten the math wrong.

  Christine entered the kitchen, where she discovered a half-drunk bottle of whiskey next to a used glass. Beside it, there was a note. It was folded up. Christine half-hated him for folding it. In some respects, she could have gone the rest of her life without unfolding it. Unfolding it to know what he’d actually written felt like looking at the sun.

  Christine poured herself the slightest glass of whiskey. It was almost like he’d left the bottle right there just for her.

  Then, she unfolded.

  It read: I’m sorry. I need to think.

  And that’s all.

  Christine crumpled the note with her fist and stared at the wall for a long time. She couldn’t make sense of this. Just a week ago, they’d curled up in bed and whispered sweet nothings and spun in excitement for this baby, this baby that they planned to raise together. Now, he’d left without the decency to tell her exactly where he planned to go.

  It felt as though someone had torn through her ribcage, squeezed her heart from its place, and slowly, terribly, dragged it out into the air.

  In some ways, she wished someone would actually do that, just so the pain actually meant something.

  Christine fell to the floor after that. She remembered her past belief that Sheridan women were strong, stronger than any other women she knew. It was like her body wanted to disprove that. She blinked into nothingness for maybe ten minutes, maybe an hour. Sometime later, she heard footsteps in the foyer. And in a moment, Susan and Lola stood in front of her, both dressed in thick winter coats, with large hats on their heads. They’d come looking for her. They’d found her. But she was nothing much to look at.

  Lola dropped to a squat in front of her, gripped her hands, and said, “Christine? Chris? Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

  Christine nodded somberly. After a pause, she said, “I was just about to come back to the house.”

  Above Lola, Susan said, “We were just a little bit worried about you.”

  “You shouldn’t have worried about me. I just stepped out for a minute,” Christine lied.

  Lola turned her head up to make eye contact with Susan. It seemed like they had some kind of conversation through the air, one that Christine was too messed up to understand.

  “Let’s get you back home, huh?” Lola finally said. “Oh. And your cat! Felix! Felix?”

  The orange tabby hustled in from wherever he’d been hiding. He shivered against Christine’s shins and meowed brightly, greeting the newcomers.

  “He always shows off,” Christine said.

  “Audrey will be so happy to have the kitty back,” Lola said. “We’ll get a little more morale in the house.”

  Christine was listless as she packed a bag for herself, arranged the kitty litter in the back of Lola’s car, and scrambled into the backseat like a child. Susan and Lola discussed a new restoration project happening outside of Edgartown as they drove. One of Jennifer Conrad’s friends, Olivia Hesson — a teacher at the Edgartown High School had been given a historic building by her great-aunt and had decided to build it up into a boutique hotel.

  “I saw her at the store the other day,” Lola affirmed. “She said she feels like she’s lost her mind.”

  “Welcome to the hospitality business,” Susan said. “Right, Christine?”

  But Christine didn’t have the strength to answer. She wrapped her arms around her body and shivered with apprehension. Where had Zach gone? Had he left the island? Would he ever return?

  And if he ever came back, could she really forgive him for what he’d now done? He had abandoned her when times were rough, just like so many of her other, stupid, alcoholic chef boyfriends. Why had she thought he was any different? Was she really that gullible?

  Chapter Eleven

  It had been two days since the dinner party at the Sheridan house. Audrey stood with a mug of steaming coffee and again watched the waters beyond the dock. It seemed incredible that her baby had been born nearly a week before, as, throughout that week, the weather had shifted considerably. New types of birds had made their appearance (much to the delight of Grandpa Wes), and the general “feeling” of everyone tinged toward springtime optimism. Of course, any kind of springtime optimism Audrey showed to others was something of an act.

  Her son remained in the NICU, and there was no telling when he would come home with her. Nothing else mattered.

  Well, almost nothing. On the night of the party, Aunt Susan and her mother had brought home a severely depressed, half-drunken Christine, who finally reported, after a lot of coaxing, that Zach had left her. This definitely put a hiccup in their plan moving forward. One: Audrey was heartbroken over Christine’s depression. The woman had been through enough over the years; she certainly didn’t need this. Two: Audrey had planned to have Christine and Zach team up to raise her baby. Obviously, Zach couldn’t handle it and Christine’s eyes were so hollow with pain that she wasn’t sure she could manage it, either.

  Of course, all these thoughts were getting ahead of everything else. The added stress was taking its toll on everyone. Max had to heal first. He had to grow stronger.

  Amanda stepped out of her bedroom and stretched her arms high above her head. Already, she’d dressed in her work outfit for the day, styled her hair, and done her makeup. It was just past six in the morning, but she’d grown accustomed to Audrey’s set-upon routine. She wanted to be at the hospital early. She didn’t want to miss a thing.

  On the drive to the NICU, they spoke softly about Aunt Christine, as though she could hear them.

  “I hope she’s comfortable in that old bed,” Amanda whispered. “It’s got that awful dip in the middle. And she didn’t come down for dinner last night. Not that you ate hardly anything, either.” She gave Audrey a scolding glance.

  Audrey shivered, despite the thickness of her coat. “I tried to talk to her a bit after dinner, but she just mentioned something about it not being Zach’s fault.”

  “Bull. It’s obviously Zach’s fault,” Amanda snapped back. She gripped the steering wheel hard so that her knuckles turned bright white. “Who else is to blame? Whose fault could it be?”

  “I mean, it’s so complicated, right? Because he lost his toddler.” Audrey’s throat tightened at the thought. She couldn’t bear the thought of actually losing her baby. Right now, she was in limbo. They knew nothing for sure. But Zach’s toddler had left the world for good.

  “I know, but this is an entirely new situation, and he has to be here for you and Christine,” Amanda tried to reason with her. “He promised he would be.”

  Audrey sighed. “I know. He did. But I don’t think everything is as black and white as you do. I think this entire situation has r
ipped open his old wound.”

  Amanda’s nostrils flared. This was typical Type-A behavior, Audrey knew. Amanda expected everyone to uphold the rules above all things. She expected people to keep their word. This was admirable, but it wasn’t always possible. People were messy. Amanda had learned this first-hand when her fiancé had left her at the altar, quit his job, and ran off on a round-the-world adventure. Audrey knew better than to bring up Chris right then, though. There was already enough pain to go around.

  Amanda and Audrey sat outside the NICU for a good hour without speaking. Amanda went over some of her notes for both her online law school classes and her appointments at the law firm she’d started with her mother. Audrey had her hands folded over her lap, and her eyes focused on the glass. Again, her heart banged against the very front of her ribcage, as though it could jump out and crawl over to her son.

  Sam from the Sunrise Cove, of all people, arrived a little after seven-thirty. He met them just outside the NICU with two coffees and two donuts. He hugged Amanda close, a bit too close, in fact, then said, “Audrey. It’s so good to see you again.”

  Audrey took the bag of donuts and smiled at him, this handsome man her cousin crushed on. “Thank you for the donuts. Are they Frosted Delights?”

  “The best on the island,” Sam affirmed. “And when I said they were for the Sheridan girls, Jennifer gave them to me for free. I’m not from the Vineyard, but I already get to use the Sheridan family as currency around here. It’s an awesome perk.”

  “Yes. We’re definitely well known,” Audrey replied with a slight smile.

  Audrey left Amanda and Sam to speak alone and returned to the glass outside the NICU. She nibbled on the edge of a donut, even as her stomach gurgled with hunger. Maybe a different version of herself would have stuffed the whole thing into her mouth.

  Amanda returned a bit later. Her cheeks brightened to a shade of pink as she collected her donut.

  “Sam came to the hospital to see you!” Audrey stated incredulously. She said it because she knew Amanda really didn’t want her to point it out.