“Morning, Grandpa,” she said.
Grandpa Wes yanked his head around, surprised. “You know it’s only four in the morning, don’t you?”
“I do.” Audrey stepped into the kitchen area to brew a pot of coffee. She then joined her grandfather at the table and tilted her head to see the clues for the crossword, so tiny and dull with the soft light from the hanging lamp.
“You couldn’t sleep either, then?” Audrey finally asked him.
Grandpa Wes removed his glasses and dotted a handkerchief across his forehead. “I had a bad dream. Although for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was about, now.
“Me too,” Audrey told him. She, too, couldn’t fully remember the dream, although it had had something to do with Max and her mother, two people on this earth she loved the most. “I hate it when your subconscious plays tricks on you like that.”
Audrey poured them both cups of coffee, and they sat in general silence, both of them reading the clues of the crossword over and over again. Occasionally, one of them would say, “What about ‘AL FRESCA’ for forty-two down?” or “I think fifteen across is ‘CALLIOPE.’” But otherwise, they let the sun rise around them without any other words. The puzzle was enough for them.
Christine arrived downstairs just after six-thirty. Amanda entered the kitchen area from her bedroom around seven. Audrey brewed more coffee, and there was discussion about who was up to what over the next hours. Naturally, Audrey wanted to head up to the NICU; Christine decided she would join her. They glanced toward Grandpa Wes, who they always had to “deal with” around this time of the day.
“I’ll call Kerry,” Grandpa Wes said. “Don’t you worry yourselves. She already said she wasn’t that busy today.”
Once Aunt Kerry arrived, Christine and Audrey jumped into Christine’s car and headed off to the hospital. As they drove, Audrey recognized a number of people out on the sidewalk for morning jogs or walks. “All winter long, people have been hidden away inside, and now, everyone is out to play,” she said, as she lifted a hand to greet several passers-by.
“Spring fever,” Christine agreed.
Audrey found herself again outside the glass of the NICU. Max had improved a great deal, so much so that there had been talk about him going home the following week. The idea made her feel panicked. Could she actually care for such a sick baby? Was she actually enough?
Audrey collapsed in the chair next to Christine. Christine had her phone out before her, with what looked like Zach’s name on top, as though she planned to message him. Audrey drew her eyes away. She didn’t want to be a snoop. She’d already seen too much.
Finally, Christine spoke. Her voice crackled. “I don’t know what to do about the bistro. I’ve talked to Susan about maybe hiring a new chef. I don’t necessarily want to give up my position as head pastry chef and baker, but it’s looking more and more likely that that will be the case, especially after you head back to Penn State.”
This was a discussion Audrey and Christine hadn’t broached since Zach’s departure. In fact, Audrey had thought several times it might not be possible that she return to school now. She glanced toward her aunt, whose face looked resolute and sure.
“But you love that job,” Audrey said softly.
Christine shrugged lightly. “I told you. I’m going to care for your baby when you head back to school. I’ll still work at the bakery and bistro in a way, but I will need help. Four in the morning, every day, isn’t going to cut it anymore. Not with Max around.”
After a pause, Audrey wrapped her arms around Christine’s shoulders and hugged her tight. Christine dropped her chin and squeezed her eyes shut. The sacrifices they’d made for their family were impossible to ignore. Audrey knew they would continue on forever. She’d only just learned it the previous year, but that was the Sheridan way.
After all, hadn’t her Grandpa Wes lied about what had happened out on that boat, all those years ago, in order to save his daughters’ opinions of their mother, Anna Sheridan, after her death? He’d sacrificed their love for him in order to save their love for Anna. It was a selfless act that wouldn’t be forgotten.
It was just like a Sheridan to do that.
“I have to clear my head,” Christine said softly. She rubbed her forehead and then rose up. Audrey’s hands fell down to her lap. “Do you need anything while I’m out?”
“I guess I would take a donut from the Frosted Delights,” Audrey said. “If you head that way.”
“You got it,” Christine smiled before walking away.
Audrey sat alone for about twenty minutes after that. She felt a strange moment of pain, but it soon subsided. If there was anything she’d learned from the horrendous, many, many hours of labor, it was that bodies worked in mysterious ways. She’d always been able to trust hers to pull her through until it had betrayed her with Max’s birth.
A figure appeared down the long hallway. It approached, but Audrey didn’t bother to turn her head that way. Then, there was the clunk-clunk of quarters, entering the vending machine. Audrey’s eyes twitched just left to find the guy who’d procured her Reese’s Pieces the previous week. His smile was mischievous as he slipped his hand through the bottom of the machine and drew out an orange package of her favorite snack.
“What are you doing? Did Reese’s Pieces hire you to market their product to me?” Audrey joked. “Tell them they’ve wasted their money. I’m already a forever customer.”
The guy chuckled as he stepped toward her. “Can I sit here?”
Audrey shrugged. “It’s a free country, isn’t it?”
Was she flirting with him? Was that what this was? She wasn’t sure. But she liked how she felt when she spoke to him. She felt like pre-pregnancy Audrey.
The guy ripped open the package of candy and gestured the bag toward her. She splayed out her palm and accepted not just a few but a whole handful of yellow and orange and brown candies.
“You’re too generous,” she said with a laugh.
“Am I?” He shrugged and then tossed some candies into his mouth. “My mother raised me right, I guess.”
Audrey chuckled at the joke, even as his eyes became shadowed. Obviously, the fact that they both remained here, in front of the glass at the NICU, meant that their lives weren’t going exactly as planned.
“Is she okay? Your mom?” Audrey asked softly.
The guy shrugged. “She’s okay. She’s up here a lot, but I made her stay home to get some rest. She hates when Matilda is up here by herself, so here I am.”
“Of course,” Audrey said.
“What about your mom?” he asked. “Is she okay?”
Audrey nodded. Her cheeks brightened red with the lie. “Just tired. But we have a lot of family to help out with everything. It was hard for her to eat for a while. I think she was just so upset. But she’s getting her strength back.”
The guy chewed contemplatively. Audrey almost liked that she didn’t know his name. She could imagine a few different ones — all names she’d heard at college, stand-ins for the hottest guys on campus. Garret. Rhett. Quintin. But she didn’t dare ask him. Somehow, it would break the illusion.
And besides, they couldn’t get “real.” If they did, she would have to tell him she was the mother, that that baby was her baby. That she was a nineteen-year-old mother and this had all been her big, fat mistake.
“I just don’t know how to help her, you know?” the guy said softly.
For the first time, Audrey realized that he was on the verge of crying. He placed the package of candy off to the side and spread his hands out on his thighs. His shoulders shook.
“It’s just been mom and me all this time. And when she told me about the baby, I was a bit apprehensive? But it made her so happy, so happy. And now, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so sad. She needs therapy, but she doesn’t want to do anything outside of being here or resting. And I know she blames herself. I keep telling her that she shouldn’t, but it’s no use.”
&n
bsp; Audrey placed her hand on the young man’s shoulder and then positioned it across his hand. She gripped his palm gently and continued to stare straight ahead. There was so much between them, so much they understood about the other that they didn’t even need to say.
Audrey’s tears rolled slowly down her cheek. She didn’t bother to brush them away. She noticed, after a while, that the guy cried, too. He didn’t bother to clean himself up, either. Neither of them spoke for a good twenty minutes. Then, they reached thirty. Audrey wondered if they would remain like that, eyes forward, toward his sister and her son in the NICU, until time itself stopped.
Christine appeared beside them at some point. Audrey blinked up at her, confused but still with her hand over the stranger’s. Christine splayed her hands out on either side of her. It was clear she’d been crying, as her eyes were tinged with red. When she spoke, her voice was all gurgled.
“I forgot the donuts,” she said. She looked on the verge of breaking down completely.
Audrey stood, released his hand, and hugged Christine. The guy probably thought that Christine was the mother of Max, that Christine was her mother. Audrey didn’t bother to correct him.
Audrey walked with Christine outside. They stood out near the docks and watched the sailboats as they shifted lightly in the springtime breeze.
“Who is that young man?” Christine finally asked.
“I don’t really know,” Audrey returned. She then licked her chapped lips and said, “It’s just good to not be alone.”
Chapter Fourteen
March 14. How was it possible? Time just ticked away as little Max got stronger; even still, with every passing day, Christine felt more and more proof that she’d lost total grip on her normal life. She still hadn’t heard from Zach; she’d hardly been able to head over to the house they’d shared together. Most recently, she’d asked Susan to go with her and then had waited outside while she had filled another suitcase with Christine’s clothes.
Christine hovered at the kitchen sink and blinked down at the pile-up of bowls and spoons, of plates and forks. This was an unnatural sight in a kitchen that was normally run like a tight ship by Amanda, but Amanda had left the island the previous afternoon to take care of something at Rutgers, where she continued to take online law school classes.
Christine lifted her phone and texted her niece.
CHRISTINE: It’s funny how this place falls apart without you here.
Amanda texted back just a few seconds later.
AMANDA: I don’t know what to do with you guys.
CHRISTINE: Don’t worry. I’ll keep everything at bay until you get back.
AMANDA: I’ll buy extra sponges on my way home.
Christine smiled to herself, heaved a sigh, pulled up her sleeves, and began to scrub the plates and bowls. The hot water was relaxing on her skin, and for a few minutes, she managed to keep the focus on nothing but the milk streaming out of the cereal bowls and the gunk, coming off the now-shining plates. Maybe this was why Amanda liked to clean so much. It was an ultimate before-and-after. It was a relief from the messiness of real life.
It wasn’t enough to convert Christine to a clean-freak, though.
There was the sound of the screen door near the driveway. In a moment, Audrey appeared, leading her grandfather toward the kitchen table. In her arms, she held two paper bags filled with groceries. She stopped short and looked at Christine with wide eyes. “Did you do those dishes?”
Christine laughed. “Yep.”
“I got some groceries,” Audrey said. “I realized we were out of almost everything. How does Amanda manage to do all this without us noticing?”
“Good question,” Christine said.
“The woman has talent. I’ll give her that,” Audrey said. She slid the two paper bags onto the counter and then turned toward her grandfather. “I don’t think we should hide the donuts from Christine. She’ll sense them.”
Slowly, Wes brought a bag of Frosted Delights donuts out from around his back and placed it alongside the groceries. Christine laughed again, a true, genuine laugh, and said, “I can’t believe you guys wanted to hold out on me.”
“You know how Grandpa is. He wants them all for himself.” Audrey winked at him.
It was a funny thing, hope. It was true what all the poets said: It gave you wings.
Together, the three of them sat at the kitchen table and gossiped about people Grandpa Wes and Audrey had seen in town, about how Jennifer Conrad’s mother, Ariane, had been at the Frosted Delights Bakery and seemed to be doing better in the wake of her stroke.
“We even spotted Jennifer’s new boyfriend,” Wes said.
“That’s right! He’s a hunk,” Audrey said decidedly.
That afternoon, Christine, Audrey, and Lola gathered at the doctor’s office once more to hear about Baby Max’s progress. Lola wore a bohemian dress that whirled around her ankles, with little dark red, sharp-toed boots. Christine thought this was a funny sight, too. Since Max’s birth, none of them had bothered much with fashion.
Maybe it was finally time to return to some kind of normality. Maybe it was time to acknowledge beautiful things again.
The doctor explained Max’s progress with bright, optimistic eyes. “I think another two or three days of monitoring, and then he’ll be ready to go on home.”
Audrey slapped her hand across Christine’s knee with joy, which made her jump in her chair. Audrey looked like she wanted to jump over the desk and wrap her arms around the doctor. She looked like she could fly to the moon.
Audrey had only been allowed to hold baby Max a few times. The doctor said that today seemed like an appropriate day. Audrey got all dressed up in scrubs, wore a mask, and then followed the doctor into the NICU. Christine and Lola huddled outside the glass for support.
“Look at her,” Christine breathed. “She’s a total natural, isn’t she? The love she has for that boy is rolling off her in waves.”
A tear rolled down Lola’s cheek. “I don’t know what to say. I’m just so relieved and overjoyed.”
Audrey sat with her beautiful baby, and their eyes locked. Christine could already feel the conversations that would flow between mother and son over the years as they grew together in love. It was so strange and so wonderful that Christine would be a part of that. She would know this baby as he grew older. In the beginning, she would be privy to so many, many firsts—his first smile, his first roll-over, his first step, and his first word.
When Lola, Audrey, and Christine stepped out into the bright light of the afternoon, Susan pulled up in her car, rolled down the window, and said, “Fancy seeing you three beauties here.”
Christine laughed as they stepped closer. Behind Susan’s car, an angry driver blared his horn and then whipped around her. Susan just rolled her eyes and said, “Loosen up. We’re on island time, aren’t we?”
Audrey told Susan the news of the baby, and Susan lifted her hands to her eyes and exhaled deeply. “That is the best news I’ve ever heard,” she murmured with relief. After a pause, she said, “That’s it. We have to have a big, old-fashioned Sheridan dinner. Don’t you think?”
The menu was decided in a flurry of words at the grocery store. Christine felt like a little kid again, as she and Lola and Audrey and Susan flung various items into the grocery cart, cracked jokes, and giggled to their hearts’ content there in the grocery aisles. One of the grocery store employees gave them the stink eye, which made them laugh even more.
Christine hadn’t felt this light, this alive, since Christmas, maybe. Sure, Zach had left; maybe she’d never see him again. But she had her girls, and she had Max. Beyond that, there was nothing a few pints of ice cream couldn’t solve. And because the Sheridan girls appreciated the finer things in life, they did, in fact, put a few tubs of Ben and Jerry’s in the bottom of the cart.
They invited everyone they could think of. Scott came over and started the grill out on the front porch and came in frequently to sip his beer and warm-up an
d dot little kisses on Susan’s cheeks. Tommy arrived at around five-thirty with a twelve-pack of beer, wind-swept hair from a wild trek out on the ocean, and several bags of chips, which they’d apparently forgotten to buy at the grocery store. He clapped Audrey on the shoulder and beamed at her.
“Sounds like you’re about to bring your boy home,” he said.
Audrey and Christine stood off to the side while various guests arrived. Audrey was strangely quiet, although she beamed at everyone as they entered. Christine, who’d always been more of the surly, depressive one at parties like this, understood her need to be quiet. Obviously, her thoughts were like a tornado.
Scott cooked burgers, sausages, steaks. One of the tables was filled to the brim with potato salad, sliced fruits, cheese platters and various types of other finger foods. Aunt Kerry came in with a big pot of soup and placed it toward the right-hand side of the table. As a result, the table very nearly tipped over. Tommy whipped across the room and grabbed the corner of the table just in time.
“Wow. Impressive,” Lola remarked. She jumped to action as well and placed the soup in the center of the table, as Tommy set the base back in a better position. She lifted her chin to kiss him as Aunt Kerry clapped her hands. In the kitchen area, Susan prepared yet another salad, as Scott’s arms wrapped around her waist from behind and held her close against him, his chin resting on her shoulder. Toward the window, Wes and Trevor stood and ate chips and discussed a recent basketball game. It was March Madness, and apparently, there was a lot to say. This had been completely off of Christine’s radar. The passage of time was such a strange thing.
Everywhere Christine looked, there was tremendous love. She ate her burger slowly, then placed it, half-eaten, on her plate. Audrey began to discuss something with Lola about a recent article Lola had to write for the Tribune, and Christine was impressed that Audrey could even draw up thoughts that didn’t have anything to do with Max.
A Vineyard Lullaby (The Vineyard Sunset Series Book 7) Page 9
