A Vineyard Thanksgiving

by Katie Winters

  “Mom, I really am sorry.”

  “It’s okay. We missed you a lot. Your brother’s kids kept asking about you.”

  “I’ll be back to see them soon. To see all of you. I promise.”

  His mother held the silence for a while. They had just always been quiet people. “Maybe you could come this week?”

  Everett considered it. He didn’t have another event to photograph till Thursday, and the flight to Seattle was just a couple of hours.

  After everything he had seen between the Sheridans and the Montgomerys, all he wanted in the world was a family who loved each other, one that knew how to forgive.

  “I’ll get on the first flight tomorrow,” he told her.

  “Thank you, Everett. I’ll make another apple pie, just for you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Charlotte appeared at the Sheridan house that Monday morning with her head full of adrenaline. Somehow, knowing that that message was in her inbox, she had gotten Rachel ready for school. Somehow, she’d managed to shower herself, feed herself a yogurt, and check the news for even more information about the Ursula and Orion wedding.

  Somehow she had done all that.

  But now, she had to check this message.

  She entered through the back door without knocking. It was still pretty early, which meant that Christine was probably over at the bistro, Lola was probably still sleeping, and Susan was probably up at the Sunrise Cove Inn, operating the desk. Charlotte would take whoever was around for moral support.

  Message from Everett R.

  As if there were any other Everett R’s in the world.

  Actually, she told herself that if there was another Everett R, and he was the one to contact her on her website, she would scream into a pillow for a full hour.

  To her surprise, Lola, Christine, Audrey, and Susan all sat around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and nibbling on croissants.

  “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!” Lola called.

  Charlotte nearly burst into tears but managed to hold it back and laugh instead. Funny how similar those actions were.

  “We were just talking about you,” Susan said. She burst to her feet and walked toward the coffee pot, where she poured Charlotte a mug and passed it over the counter. “You look like you got at least a little sleep?”

  “I did, yeah. Still exhausted from the weekend,” Charlotte said.

  “I don’t think that will go away very quickly,” Christine said with a laugh.

  Audrey stood and grabbed another chair for Charlotte, placing it between herself and Lola. “How are you feeling? The entire internet exploded after what happened over the weekend.”

  “Yeah. People keep memeing it. Especially that photo of Ursula coming in all drunk and announcing the wedding was off,” Christine said.

  “What’s a meme again?” Susan said from the kitchen.

  “Don’t worry about it, Aunt Susie. The less you know about the meme world, the better,” Audrey said.

  “I guess I’ll ask Amanda, then,” Susan said sarcastically, returning to her seat.

  “Anyway. Have you heard from Ursula?” Audrey asked. “She keeps posting videos from her and Orion’s trip to the Bahamas. It’s beautiful.” She turned her phone around to show Ursula and Orion, out on a white strip of sand, drinking fruity drinks. “The woman is a menace, for sure, but she knows how to party. I can appreciate that.”

  “Ha. Yes, she wrote to me yesterday,” Charlotte said.

  “And?”

  “She just thanked me again for everything we did. I don’t know. She seems like a good person. She just lives a very different kind of life than the rest of us,” Charlotte explained.

  “That’s true. And the money came through all right?”

  Charlotte had, in fact, been paid handsomely. She had never felt more comfortable in her life. She nodded, feeling her cheeks burn.

  “Then why do you seem so sad?” Audrey asked.

  That moment, another person entered through the back door. They spun around to find Claire, ambling through, a big smile on her face.

  “I checked your house and figured you would be here,” Claire said.

  Charlotte was so grateful to see her sister. She latched her arms around her and tugged her down.

  “We were just asking Aunt Charlotte why she’s sad,” Audrey said, splaying her hand across her pregnant belly.

  “You’re sad? Why are you sad?” Claire asked, furrowing her brow. She grabbed a croissant from the table as Susan rose to pour her a cup of coffee.

  “I’m not really,” Charlotte said.

  “I see it written all over your face,” Audrey said. “You look like my roommate last year when that frat boy broke her heart.”

  “I know why. It’s because of Everett,” Lola said.

  Charlotte’s nostrils flared.

  “That’s it. It’s so obvious now,” Christine said.

  “What happened on Saturday?” Claire asked.

  “Nothing really,” Charlotte said.

  “But you two actually saw the wedding between Orion and Ursula,” Lola said.

  “Sure. We did. It was kind of a miracle. We were just out watching the snow.”

  “Just out watching the snow,” Susan said, teasing her. “Come on. Something must have happened.”

  Charlotte felt just as she had a million years ago when she had first kissed Jason and she’d felt her life change for good.

  “I don’t know. We kissed, I guess.”

  “You kissed!” Every single woman at the table howled with excitement.

  “I don’t know what to say. You kissed Everett, and then you let him just fly out west?” Claire demanded.

  “Oh my gosh, Claire. I’m a grown woman. I can kiss people and let it be over,” Charlotte said, giving her sister a nasty glare.

  I mean, I wish I was like that.

  “The way you looked at him was different,” Claire said. “You looked at him like he meant something to you. I don’t think that comes around every day.”

  Charlotte shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, does it? It’s a good story. A great one, even. But he lives on the west coast, and I live here.” She swallowed, anticipating the world collapsing when she said the next bit of information. “The thing is, I think he wrote to me through my website last night. And I’m freaking out.”

  Yep. Every single woman at the table burst into yelps and exclamations. It was like sitting at the lunch table in middle school.

  “Chill out, you guys!” Charlotte cried out. She was starting to get annoyed with each of them.

  “Read the message. Right. Now,” Claire demanded.

  “You heard your sister,” Lola said. “I always listen to my sister when she tells me what to do.”

  “That’s obviously a lie,” Susan said with a laugh. “But I hope you’ll read it to us, anyway.”

  Charlotte did. She read the entire note aloud, and then she read it privately while the girls yelled and screamed about it.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Claire cried.

  “I realize I liked meeting you more than I liked meeting other people,” Lola quoted. “Phew. That is a lot to think about.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Charlotte breathed.

  “But you can’t just let this die,” Christine ordered. “Seriously. He’s after you. He wants to see you again. And right now—I don’t know if you know this or not—you have a little bit of extra cash floating around.”

  Charlotte’s heart jumped. “I can’t. What about Rachel?”

  “Anyone of us can watch Rachel while you’re gone,” Christine said. “The bistro is slow as ever right now since it’s winter. Zach and I could stay at your house while you’re away as practice to becoming parents. Besides. When was the last time you had a vacation?”

  Everyone agreed that it was insane that Charlotte hadn’t had a single break.

  Tied up in all this, Charlotte could hear what they really meant. Even if this doesn’t
work out, you deserve a break after everything you went through. Your husband died, and you just kept going.

  You almost didn’t make it, but you did.

  Charlotte bit hard on her lower lip.

  “Okay. Okay, okay. I’ll ask him.” She grinned broadly, realizing how crazy and spontaneous this was—and loving the feeling of it. “And if he rejects me?”

  “He lives on the other side of the continent. Who cares?” Lola said.

  This was the perfect response.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Charlotte drummed up the courage to write Everett back that afternoon.

  She sat at the Sunrise Cove Bistro with a glass of wine and wrote and rewrote the message until she drank through a whole glass of wine and needed to order a second. Outside, snow fluttered down, uninterested in letting up. Although she loved it, she couldn’t help but imagine Everett’s sunny life out in LA.

  He had seen her life. He had met her father and her mother, her cousins, her sisters, her daughter and one of her brothers.

  In actuality, she knew so very little about him.

  “You look frustrated.” Zach walked over from the kitchen area as he dried his hands on a towel.

  Charlotte sighed. “Is it that obvious?”

  Zach laughed. “Anything I can help you with? You got me one of the best gigs of my career. I would love to pay you back somehow.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “Maybe just another glass of wine. I need liquid courage to send this out.”

  “I’m on it,” Zach said. He disappeared for a second and then returned with a bottle of wine. “It’s really coming down out there. I can’t help but think of Ursula and Orion, all the way in the Bahamas. Do you think they’ll stay together?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know,” Charlotte said truthfully. “I guess nobody ever knows what will happen next.”

  “Nobody knows that more than me right now. Every day that Audrey’s delivery date creeps closer, I get a little more nervous. Christine and I have talked about adopting other children of our own afterward and—” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “I guess you can never go backward, so it’s always better to go forwards.”

  Charlotte loved the sentiment.

  She only hoped she had the strength to follow her gut.

  Finally, she settled on a half-decent message back.

  Everett,

  I’ve gotten about two hundred inquiries this past day on my website.

  Glad I pieced through them and found yours.

  I wanted to say that I am glad I met you, too.

  And also...

  What are you doing this weekend?

  I’ve heard California is sunny this time of year.

  Or is it sunny year-round?

  This girl hasn’t traveled much.

  Charlotte

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Everett’s mother’s house was the same house Everett had grown up in.

  Just as he remembered it, it brimmed with the glorious smell of cinnamon-baked apples.

  He found his mother seated in her favorite reading chair, with a book stretched out on her lap and her head tilted up toward the sun. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were parted just slightly, proof that she had drowsed off.

  Everett wasn’t the kind of guy to wake up his mother.

  He would wait and let her sleep.

  He sat on the sofa across from her and reached for his phone to check his email. Again, his editor celebrated the photographs he had sent. He also assigned him a number of events and weddings in the future, which Everett would accept when he got his head around them. Just then, he had a number of things to take care of.

  He had to repair his relationship with his family.

  As he tapped through his email, he noticed that the SPAM folder held a familiar name.

  Charlotte Hamner.

  His heart jumped into his throat. He glanced up toward his mother, then back at his phone.

  She had answered him.

  He read the message.

  Then, he read it again.

  Then, he stood from the couch and paced back and forth in his mother’s living room, until the oven timer blared, waking his mother from her sleep and him from his reckless imagination.

  She wants to visit me in California.

  She wants to see this through.

  “Everett?” his mother said, her voice creaking. “Is that really you?”

  She stood slowly, peering at him with eyes that seemed still half-asleep.

  “It’s me, Mom,” Everett said. He gripped her hands, which seemed more like paper than they had been even a year ago. “I made it.”

  His mother flung herself at him and wrapped her arms around his thick chest. The oven timer continued to scream, but she didn’t seem to care at all. Her body shook with tears.

  I’ll never make her feel like this again.

  I will be a better son.

  I’ll visit her more often.

  I’ll be what she needs.

  Finally, she dropped back and gave her cheeks a few light smacks. “Oh, darling, the oven! The pie!” She raced toward the oven and flung it open to reveal a beautiful pie. Delicately, she placed it on top of the stove and beamed down at it.

  “Look at that,” Everett said with a big smile.

  “It’s your favorite,” she said, smiling.

  “You are the best, Mom. Thank you.”

  EVERETT EXPLAINED THE situation with Charlotte to his mother as they dug into their warm slices of apple pie. Vanilla ice cream melted over the top as he spoke of her, of her daughter, and of the husband she had lost.

  “I can’t explain it, Mom. She just seems different than the other women I’ve met.”

  “Marriage material,” his mother said softly.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s way too soon to know.” Everett sighed. “But I’ve never thought that I ever wanted to marry. And now, I have this feeling that, if I found the right person...”

  “You would find the space in your heart,” his mother finished the sentence for him.

  “Exactly.” He said, pointing his fork at her.

  His mother reached across the table and gripped his hand. They studied one another for a long time.

  “I hope you find a way to love her—or whoever you end up with—as much as your father loved me,” she said. “If so, she will have the greatest happiness.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Charlotte was full-on freaking out.

  Everett had formally invited her to California that Saturday, a whole week after the wedding.

  She stood over her empty suitcase on Thursday evening, her hands on her hips, while Claire, Rachel, Abby, and Gail hovered behind her. They planned to help her pack and to help her decide what to wear in this city of sunshine. Slowly, Claire helped her pick through her summer dresses, choosing the ones that Charlotte didn’t have any overly intense memories in and splaying them on the bed.

  “Oh yeah. You look hot in that one, Mom,” Rachel said, pointing to the bright red one Claire held in her arms.

  “Hot? At forty-one?” Charlotte said, eyeing her daughter.

  Rachel, Abby, and Gail nodded, bug-eyed.

  “Are you kidding?” Gail demanded. “All the Sheridan and Montgomery girls are hotter after forty, it seems like.”

  “We’re blessed with good genes,” Abby affirmed.

  Claire folded the dresses, skirts, and shirts they had chosen, while Charlotte was assigned to go through her underwear collection to pick out something appropriate. Her cheeks burned.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’re just going to be friends?” she said sheepishly.

  “Right. And I’m the next Queen of England,” Claire declared.

  Charlotte pressed her lips together anxiously. “Then I think we’re going to have to go shopping. Everything in this drawer is the kind of thing I wore as a married woman.”

  Claire marched over to investigate. After she clucked her tongue, she said, “Yep. Th
is is basically what my drawer looks like, too. Lots and lots of holes and granny panties. Maybe I’ll come with you? Spruce up my lingerie?”

  “It’ll be a bonding experience,” Charlotte joked.

  CHARLOTTE HAD NEVER been off the island without her husband, one of her friends, cousins, or siblings, or one of her parents. Now, at age forty-one, she hugged her daughter goodbye and walked onto the ferry with her chin held high. She had always believed that you had to pretend you were confident; the rest came later.

  All of life was a little bit like an act, anyway.

  At the airport, she bought a cup of coffee and sat watching the planes as they ducked down then eased back into the bright blue sky. It was early December, and the airport was decorated with cheery tinsel, Christmas trees, Santa Clauses, and ornaments hanging from the ceilings.

  The plane to LA took three hours.

  During the last hour, she had to convince herself to keep breathing.

  The woman seated beside her asked if she needed any water or a snack since she looked pale.

  Charlotte didn’t want to look anything but her best when she met Everett.

  A little panicked, she rushed to the bathroom, smeared extra lipstick across both her lips and her upper cheeks, and pleaded with herself to act normal.

  You went across the entire continent to meet a man you hardly know.

  What makes you think this is the right thing to do?

  Still, she needed it. Right?

  She deserved it.

  She had been through so much.

  And Jason would have wanted her to move on.

  When the plane landed, she closed her eyes and cupped her elbows and tried her best to talk to Jason, wherever he was.

  I love you. You know I’ll always love you. You know that every decision I make is for our daughter, Rachel.

  I hope you know that no matter what new experiences I build with someone new, you’ll still be a part of me.

  I will never let you go. Not completely.

  Charlotte waited for her luggage at the carousel and headed toward the pick-up zone. Outside the door, early December Los Angeles heat was a welcome feeling, like cozying into a nice sweater. She inhaled the strange air and then turned her head to find Everett, standing next to a little red car with his arm extended.