by Grace Palmer
The Vineyard Sisters
A Wayfarer Inn Novel
Grace Palmer
Copyright © 2021 by Grace Palmer
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
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Also by Grace Palmer
The Vineyard Sisters
1. Leslie
2. Michelle
3. Jill
4. Michelle
5. Jill
6. Jill
7. Leslie
8. Jill
9. Michelle
10. Leslie
11. Jill
12. Leslie
13. Michelle
14. Leslie
15. Michelle
16. Jill
17. Jill
18. Leslie
19. Michelle
20. Jill
21. Leslie
22. Michelle
23. Jill
24. Leslie
25. Michelle
26. Michelle
27. Jill
28. Leslie
29. Michelle
30. Jill
Epilogue: Michelle
Sneak Preview of No Home Like Nantucket
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Also by Grace Palmer
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Also by Grace Palmer
The Wayfarer Inn
The Vineyard Sisters
The Vineyard Mothers
The Vineyard Daughters
Sweet Island Inn
No Home Like Nantucket (Book 1)
No Beach Like Nantucket (Book 2)
No Wedding Like Nantucket (Book 3)
No Love Like Nantucket (Book 4)
No Secret Like Nantucket (Book 5)
No Forever Like Nantucket (Book 6)
Willow Beach Inn
Just South of Paradise (Book 1)
Just South of Perfect (Book 2)
Just South of Sunrise (Book 3)
Just South of Christmas (Book 4)
The Vineyard Sisters
A Wayfarer Inn Novel
Three estranged sisters.
Two months to save their family's inn.
One secret that changes everything.
Warren Townsend’s death brings his three estranged daughters together on Martha's Vineyard for the first time in years.
After the funeral, the Townsend women are all desperate to return to their own individual pursuits. But just when they’re ready to leave the island for good, the last line of Warren's will binds them together forever.
They have two months to save their father's legacy, the Wayfarer Inn...
Before it gets sold to the highest bidder.
The sister who never left home, the sister who thought she had it all, and the sister they’ve never even met are brought together in this heartwarming, sweet women’s fiction novel from author Grace Palmer.
1
Leslie
EARLY SPRING EVENING AT THE WAYFARER INN—MARTHA’S VINEYARD
Leslie Townsend opened the door to her father’s office to see him slumped over his desk.
That wasn’t so unusual. He’d been falling asleep at his desk for months now. Afterward, he inevitably limped around clutching at his back and groaning about a crick in his neck. But he refused to stop working when there was still work to do, even if that meant passing out on his desk and drooling on a few receipts. So Leslie wasn’t surprised when she saw him folded forward, head resting on a yellow legal pad.
The old wooden floor squealed under her feet as she set a plate of steaming spaghetti next to him. She’d made his favorite: spaghetti with homemade marinara sauce from San Marzano tomatoes, oregano and basil from the small herb garden behind the Wayfarer Inn, and a mountain of freshly grated parmesan.
The smell had been wafting through the house for two hours, so when Leslie knocked on his office door, she’d expected a hearty welcome.
Instead, there was silence.
“Dad?” she asked gently. “Dinner is served.”
Nothing. No response.
She really wished he’d wake up. She had a lot to discuss with Warren Townsend. The bed and breakfast they ran on Martha’s Vineyard, the Wayfarer Inn, was in desperate need of a refresh.
But Warren—stubborn as ever—had been dragging his feet on the topic for years. Leslie needed a way to butter him up so he’d be more amenable to some changes—at least a paint job, for crying out loud!
Her forty-fifth birthday had come and gone three days ago and Leslie had been counting on that to soften his resolve. But when the day passed without a call or card from her sister, Michelle, Leslie wasn’t the only one who took it hard.
Dad wanted his daughters to get along. No matter how unlikely the possibility was after… well, after everything that had happened.
Thus the spaghetti. One part peace offering, ten parts bribe. They didn’t have time to waste. It was already the beginning of March. Renovations would need to be wrapped up before the summer season started. No inn owner could afford to miss a summer.
“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Leslie teased in a sing-song voice. She toed the edge of the desk with her white slip-on sneaker.
Still no answer. She leaned forward to nudge him awake. “It’s your favorite, Dad. Spaghetti with homemade marinara and—”
The words stuck in her throat. She leaned away, taking in the sight of her father again.
“Dad?” She went to shake his arm.
As soon as she touched him, she jerked her hand back, knocking the plate of spaghetti in the process. It fell to the floor, splattering sauce across the worn carpet. The ceramic plate split into three jagged parts.
But Leslie didn’t hear any of it. Didn’t see any of it. Couldn’t hear a single thing beyond the pounding of her own heart.
It felt as if the sound was coming from outside of her body. As though it was actually someone else’s heart beating around her. But that wasn’t possible, of course.
There were only two of them in the room.
And only one of their hearts was beating.
Leslie snatched up his hand and pressed her fingers to the underside of his wrist, praying for a pulse. But there was nothing. No thud against her fingers. No jolting awake, wondering why she was manhandling him.
Her father’s eyes were open, she saw now. Glassy and vacant. The skin around his lips was blue-tinged. His chest didn’t rise and fall. His fingertips didn’t curl in slightly the way they so often did when he was dreaming.
Warren Townsend was gone.
Leslie let his hand come to rest gently on the desktop again. She felt like the whole world was hurtling around her, as if she was on the Tilt-a-Whirl at the Fair.
At some point in the last two hours, while she’d been stirring tomato sauce and plotting linens upgrades, her father had been in here—dying all alone.
At some point, he’d taken his last breath. Without so much as a single soul in here to help him on his way.
She looked at him again. He was still as could be. One hand half-clenched around a pen, the other stretched out as though pointing at the framed picture on the corner of his desk. Leslie’s eyes drifted to it.
In the photograph
, the Townsend family was standing on the beach next to Aquinnah Cliffs. The cliffs glowed yellow and red in the setting sun. On the other side, the dark blue waters surged onto the beach, capped in foamy white.
Leslie stood on one side, a hand pressed to her forehead to hold her dirty blonde hair out of her face. Michelle, her sister, stood to her father’s left. Sensible as ever, her dark hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail and tucked beneath a baseball cap. The shadow covered Michelle’s eyes, but her smile was wide and straight.
She looked like their mother. Or the few photos Leslie had of their mother, anyway.
Warren stood in the middle of his two girls in a green tropical button-down shirt. He held his daughters closer than usual here—almost as if, on some level, he knew it would be the last time they’d all be together.
She needed to call Michelle. Tell her what happened.
The first time she’d talk to her sister in years would be to deliver terrible news. Just like last time. Michelle would never pick up another call from her again.
Perhaps telling the guests should come first. After calling the police or the ambulance, of course.
Before she could move or formulate any kind of plan, the phone rang. Without thinking, she reached for it. And without thinking, she said the same thing she’d said upon answering the phone for every single one of her forty-five years.
“Hello, this is the Wayfarer Inn. How may I help you?”
The cord from the phone brushed across the back of her dad’s hand. Leslie grabbed it and shifted it off the side of the desk. Not that it would bother him anymore.
“I’m sorry?” she asked whoever was on the other end of the line. “I didn’t catch that.”
“I wanted to see if you offer dinner or have a dining room,” the caller repeated. “The website only mentions breakfast.”
Leslie looked down at her feet. Her sauce was everywhere. The stain would never come out.
“No, we don’t,” she said in a hollow voice that sounded nothing like her own. “Breakfast is complimentary, but there is no lunch or dinner service. We are within walking distance of some great dining options downtown, though, and I’m always happy to make suggestions.”
“And what is your name?” the woman asked.
“Leslie Townsend, the—” Manager, she nearly said. That had been her title for almost twenty years. But she was more than that now, right? Now that her dad was gone?
Was she the owner of the Wayfarer Inn? The steward? Something different? Something else?
Before she could decide, the woman mumbled, “Thanks, Leslie.” The call ended. Leslie replaced the phone in the cradle and stepped away from the desk.
Everything here felt wrong. There was no telling when it would ever be set right again.
2
Michelle
The Evans Home In San Francisco
Michelle Evans was completely alone.
After a week-long spring break spent refreshing their wardrobes and getting manicures, her twin daughters, Kat and Beth, had loaded into Beth’s black BMW and pulled away, headed back to college at the University of Southern California.
Her husband Tony had gone into the office two hours earlier. Michelle tried to convince him to stay, to soak up all the family time they could before it was too late, but he’d insisted he had important business to take care of. Business that was apparently more important than holding his wife together when her daughters drove away from her yet again.
Even though the girls had been in school for seven months, saying goodbye at the end of each semester break or holiday vacation never got any easier. Each time they left, Michelle cried as hard as she had the first day she’d dropped them off. As if she would never see them again.
There had been years in the past—mostly when the girls were temperamental toddlers or even more temperamental teens—when Michelle longed for a break. To have no one to take care of but herself. She wanted time to drink a hot cup of coffee in its entirety, to watch a movie from start to finish, to work on the screenplay that had been sitting unwritten in her head for over a decade.
But now that she actually had that break, Michelle longed for something to do. Someone to take care of. It was all she knew.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mom,” Kat had said that afternoon before they’d left, the car idling behind her. She patted her mom’s shaking shoulders and glanced nervously up and down the street to see if they were being witnessed.
Beth joined in, looping an arm around Michelle’s waist in a half-hug. “We’ll be back in a couple months for the summer.”
On some level, Michelle knew the girls were right. But on another, she knew anything could happen. In Michelle’s experience, all it took was one accident, one fight, and bam—sisters became estranged. Families could shatter.
But that wouldn’t happen with her girls. Not with her family. Michelle wouldn’t let it.
Whatever the girls needed, Michelle took care of. Even now, the next care package to be sent to their dorm worm was sitting at the ready in the back of her closet. Bentonite clay masks she’d picked up at the salon, French sparkling water Tony had bought during his last business trip to Europe, and expensive Belgian chocolates Michelle ordered online.
Tony thought she spoiled them, but that’s what a mom was for, right? Or what Michelle assumed they were for, anyway. Her own mom died when she was four, so she didn’t exactly have a wealth of experience in that department.
Michelle pushed off Kat’s old bed and paced to the window. The street in front of their house curved north and disappeared behind the Parisian-style chateau at the top of the hill. There was no sign of Tony’s car.
She wanted to call the girls, but they’d be annoyed with her. They’d tease her for being a worrywart.
So instead, she called Tony.
It would be nice to know what time he’d be home so she could have dinner ready. If he had any special requests, she’d have time to run to the store or place an order at one of their favorite restaurants.
Maybe they could even go out to eat. It had been ages since they’d done that—had a good old-fashioned date night. Sushi could be fun. Maybe even dancing, if Tony was feeling fresh. Which he very rarely was. Still, Michelle could mention it on the off chance. Sometimes, he was spontaneous.
Like the first night after Kat and Beth left for school their freshman year. Tony had greased a few palms and gotten them into Waterbar without a reservation. They sat on the patio overlooking the bay, eating oysters and drinking wine and trying to find the bright side to being empty-nesters.
“We can travel the world without thinking about school schedules,” he’d said. “And you can come with me on business trips. I’m going to Japan next month.”
“You want me to go with you?”
Tony traveled for work a lot. Michelle almost always stayed behind with their daughters, running carpool and ferrying them to gymnastics practice. Since moving from Martha’s Vineyard to San Francisco, Michelle hadn’t been much of anywhere.
Tony had nodded. “I always stay in a nice hotel with a spa. You can take a private car around the city during the days. I can pay for a tour guide if you want. And in the evenings, we’ll meet up for dinner and sightseeing.”
“That sounds wonderful,” she’d said, feeling better already. Maybe being an empty-nester would have more pros than cons.
A month later, Tony left for Japan by himself.
“This project is more of a mess than I thought,” he’d explained. “I’ll be working crazy hours. We wouldn’t have any time to spend together. You’d be bored.”
So Michelle had stayed home after all. She’d ordered delivery every night, finished off two bottles of top-shelf Cabernet Sauvignon, and watched the Turner Classic Movies channel twenty-four-seven.
Michelle hardly understood what Tony did. When people asked, she’d wave her hand and convince them it was boring tech stuff, but she really had no idea. Tony rarely explained. His work had always been l
ike that. Something big. Something important. Something vague.
His phone rang five times before his outgoing message played. “You’ve reached Tony Evans. Please leave a—”
Michelle didn’t bother leaving a message.
She spun away from the window and took in the girls’ room again. The closet door was open—mostly because there was no way to close it against the tsunami of clothes spilling out. Blouses and dresses and the flared chiffon skirts that Beth used to love. Almost all of it still had the designer tags dangling from the waistbands.
Sighing, she made her way downstairs and went fishing for leftovers in the fridge. Carbonara from last night beckoned. But just as quickly as she reached for it, the thought of warming it up and eating it without Tony ruined Michelle’s appetite.
She turned away and jumped up onto the counter. Pulling her phone back out, she hit the number for Tony’s secretary. Maybe Lori would know where Tony was.
“You’ve reached the office of Tony Evans. How may I help you?”
“Hey, Lori. It’s Michelle.” There was a long pause, and Michelle checked the phone to be sure she was still connected. “Hello?”