The Vineyard Sisters: A Wayfarer Inn Novel

by Grace Palmer

  Especially since her legs felt suddenly wobbly. She was afraid she’d fall down the stairs if she tried to flee.

  The woman didn’t say anything to Jill as she stumbled over and plopped into the pew. They both just sat quietly, hands folded in their laps. When the eulogies were over and music began to play over the speakers, the old woman tapped her shoe on the floor and swayed side to side. Jill mostly kept her eyes closed and tried to breathe.

  After two songs, a pastor stood up. “The service for Mr. Townsend is over, but I ask that you remain seated and allow everyone to clear out row by row. Per Mr. Townsend’s requests, there will be no reception.”

  The pastor turned off his microphone and then escorted a small group of people from the front row towards a side door. They were too far away for Jill to get a good view.

  Then the second row stood and followed suit. Row by row, the church cleared out as recorded organ music played through the speakers. The previously silent crowd grew ever louder with conversation.

  Some people went out of their way to mount the stairs and walk past the now-opened casket on their way to the door. Jill had no intention of doing that. She didn’t want the first time she saw her father to be when he was lying in a coffin, embalmed. She’d made it this long not knowing what he looked like. If that was her only option, she could go the rest of her life without knowing, too.

  As it got closer and closer to her turn to leave, Jill got antsy. She had never felt so out of place. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the woman who’d invited her to sit reached out to touch her leg with shaking fingers.

  “Sorry to bother you, dear,” the woman said. “But could you help me to the door when it’s time? I left my walker in the car.”

  “Oh. Um, yes, of course.” She’d hoped to sneak out the same way she’d come in. But if she had to walk all the way through the church to escape, she’d rather have someone on her arm to help her blend in.

  When it was their turn, Jill slid out of the pew and offered her arm to the elderly woman. Slowly, they worked their way down the aisle.

  “Did you want to pay your respects?” the woman asked, tipping her head towards the stage.

  “No!” Jill blurted. Then she cleared her throat. “I mean… no. No, thank you. But if you’d like to, then—”

  “I’ve seen enough dead bodies for one lifetime,” the woman said, pursing her lips. “I’m fine.”

  Morbid, thought Jill. But thank God for small favors.

  John Schmidt had mentioned the reading of the will would happen late morning, but Jill didn’t know if she could handle that anymore. Maybe he could just email her the details after the fact. Or they could discuss it over the phone.

  The cab driver, harsh as he’d been, had been onto something—Jill put way too much time and effort into coming all this way. She didn’t want to spend another second thinking about Warren Townsend.

  As they got closer to the door, Jill could finally see why the line was moving so slowly. People ahead of her were offering hugs and handshakes to two women. They stood just on the other side of an archway, partially hidden in shadows. One of the women had dark hair and the other dirty blonde.

  “Who are they?” Jill asked aloud, more to herself than anyone else.

  The old woman’s head snapped up from watching her feet to scan the crowd. When she saw where Jill was looking, she nodded in understanding. “Oh, the family? That’s Michelle and Leslie. Wonderful girls.”

  They looked close to Jill’s age, so they were hardly “girls.” But compared to the woman gripping Jill’s elbow, they did look quiet young.

  And they were Warren Townsend’s family. What did that mean—cousins? Nieces? Much younger sisters?

  Before Jill could ask the woman any other questions, they were standing only a few feet from the family. The elderly woman released Jill’s elbow to grab onto the blonde woman’s hand instead.

  “Leslie, dear, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know how close the two of you were.”

  Jill thought the other woman—Michelle, if the elderly woman’s memory could be trusted—may have rolled her eyes, but it was still a bit too shady in this nook to be sure.

  “Thank you, Sandra,” Leslie said. “I’d be happy to have you for breakfast anytime. It’s been too long.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Sandra said with a wink. Then she moved on to hug Michelle. It was not nearly as warm or familiar, but they smiled at one another and nodded.

  Suddenly, it was Jill’s turn. Leslie was looking at her, watching her with blue eyes that reminded Jill vaguely of Grayson’s. Her thin lips pulled up into a polite smile. “Thanks for coming.”

  “It was a beautiful ceremony,” Jill said, repeating what she thought she was supposed to say—although truthfully, it had been a nightmare. Then, because she couldn’t help herself, she asked, “May I ask how you are related to Mr., uh… to Warren?”

  Both women was staring at Jill now. Leslie’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “I’m his daughter.”

  A beat later, Michelle leaned forward. “We are his daughters.”

  The blue eyes that, moments earlier, had looked vaguely similar to Grayson’s? Suddenly, they looked exactly like Grayson’s. The chin that looked just like her own suddenly looked exactly like her own. The dirty blonde hair wasn’t just similar to Jill’s—it was hers.

  Daughters, Leslie had said.

  Daughters, Michelle had said.

  Warren Townsend had other daughters. Children he talked with. Children he was close with. Children he loved.

  “Are you okay?” Leslie asked.

  Jill looked up at her, and as she did, another shock wave moved through her. Another totally obvious revelation tilted the axis of her world and nearly brought her to her knees.

  These two women weren’t just her father’s daughters.

  They were Jill’s sisters.

  That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Without another word, Jill turned away from the women, walked past Sandra waiting on the stairs, and outside into the light.

  Her wobbly legs took her to the base of the steps and down to a concrete path that wrapped around the church, where purple hydrangea bushes burst away from the foundation.

  But they couldn’t take her any farther.

  As much as Jill wanted to run—wanted to get back in a cab, hop on the next ferry, and forget any of this had happened—she couldn’t make herself take another step.

  She came to Martha’s Vineyard for answers to questions she’d had her whole life.

  She’d gotten far more than she bargained for.

  7

  Leslie

  LATER THAT MORNING AT THE READING OF THE WILL

  Leslie Townsend had a secret sister.

  It had been an hour since she’d met Jill Ruthers—her sister; saying it again and again still hadn’t made it feel any less strange—but Leslie couldn’t stop staring at her.

  The woman had her father’s pointed chin. Or rather, their father’s pointed chin. And the same dishwater blonde hair as Leslie. Not quite blonde, not quite brunette.

  From the moment she’d stepped through the side door of St. Elizabeth’s to see Jill frozen in the middle of the sidewalk, hands shoved in her coat pockets, and heard the woman’s explanation for her strange behavior, Leslie had been waiting for it all to be revealed as a joke.

  The last few days had been exhausting on a level Leslie had never known before. Maybe she’d simply hallucinated a long-lost sister.

  But according to her father’s lawyer, Jill Ruthers was entirely real and above-board.

  Prior to the reading of the will, Leslie had pulled him aside. “Her name was listed in the will. Written there by your father,” Mr. Schmidt had said. “He had her contact information. As well as her brother’s. You can contest it, but—”

  Leslie had shaken her head. “No, no, I’m not contesting anything. I’m sure my dad knew what he was doing.”

  Sitting in the lawyer’s tidy offi
ce, however, Leslie wasn’t so sure. Older people fell for twisted scams all the time. She’d just read an article about something very similar in The Vineyard Gazette a few months earlier. She thought she had nothing to worry about with her own father. He wasn’t elderly. His mind wasn’t slipping.

  But maybe it had been and she just missed the signs. Maybe this woman—Jill—had tricked him somehow.

  Jill shifted in her seat, her knee knocking into Leslie’s. She turned to Leslie and smiled nervously. “Sorry.”

  Leslie had to work to stay upright and not collapse down into her chair. Her smile. His smile. They were one and the same.

  How many times had Leslie seen her father give her the same tight-lipped, straight-lined grin? That smile was his signature. And Jill was wearing it like she stole it from him.

  John patted a stack of papers together on his desk. “I’m sorry again for your loss, ladies. I know this is a difficult time for you.”

  You have no idea, Leslie thought. She’d spent the last day and a half orbiting around her estranged sister, arranging her father’s funeral, and trying to help guests find other accommodations. As it turned out, none of them were too keen to eat breakfast ten feet from where a man had died only the day before. Leslie couldn’t blame them, and really, it was a blessing in disguise. Between that and the constant stream of people coming to offer condolences in the form of flowers and casseroles, the Wayfarer Inn was a mad house. Difficult time, indeed.

  “I know you all are busy, so I’m going to cut straight to the chase,” the lawyer continued. “Your father wrote all of his children into his will, including Grayson Ruthers, who I understand couldn’t be with us today.”

  “He sends his condolences,” Jill mumbled.

  “Regardless, he will be made aware of the contents of the will,” John said. “Your father left a handwritten will, though it was signed by two witnesses, making it valid in the state of Massachusetts. It reads as follows:

  “I, Warren Townsend, want to give the only possession I own that means anything to me to my four children: Leslie Townsend, Michelle Townsend, Jill Ruthers, and Grayson Ruthers. That possession is the Wayfarer Inn. I want it divided equally between them, to do with what they will.”

  “An inn?” Jill said. “Like a bed and breakfast?”

  “Basically. Dad opened it just before we were born,” Michelle interjected. “And after you were born, I guess.”

  Jill sunk back in her seat, brow furrowed. She looked floored.

  The feeling was mutual. If Dad hadn’t bothered to tell Leslie or Michelle that Jill and her brother existed, then why should they have a share in the Wayfarer? Leslie had devoted her life to the inn, and now she had to share it with a stranger? No, two strangers! Darn near three strangers, actually, considering what her relationship with Michelle was like these days.

  Warren knew Leslie and Michelle weren’t talking. If this was some kind of from-beyond-the-grave meddling to force them to work things out, it was cruel and pointless. Tony had more money than God. Michelle didn’t need twenty-five percent more of anything.

  Jill held up her hands in a kind of surrender and sunk back in her chair. “I didn’t come here to claim anything. I just came here to…” Her voice trailed off. Not ready to finish that sentence, apparently.

  “I’ll buy you and your brother out,” Michelle said decisively. “The Wayfarer Inn is a family business, anyway.”

  Leslie couldn’t stop herself from turning towards Michelle. “It felt like it was mostly mine and Dad’s. Considering we were the only two who worked there.”

  “If memory serves, Dad hiring you was a favor,” Michelle bit out.

  “If memory serves, this family business wouldn’t still exist without me.”

  Downplaying her role at the inn was Leslie’s default position, but now wasn’t the time to beat around the bush. Sure, she’d crawled back to her father and the Wayfarer only a year after moving out. She’d had a head-on collision with cold, hard reality, and her dad had taken pity on her. He’d let her reclaim her old room and given her a job.

  But twenty-five years later, Leslie had more than proven her worth. She’d earned her share. Could Michelle say the same?

  Michelle’s cheeks flushed pink, but she didn’t turn and meet Leslie’s gaze.

  John Schmidt cleared his throat. “All I can speak to is the legal component here. Legally, the Wayfarer Inn has been split between Warren Townsend’s four biological children. What you do with your shares from this point on is your own business, but you each have an equal portion.”

  “Of course,” Michelle said. “I’m sure you deal with disgruntled family members enough as it is. If that’s everything, then we can get out of your hair.”

  Because none of this has anything to do with me, and I’ve got a plane to catch, Leslie mock-finished in her head, trying not to sneer. With every passing second, the tension in the room thickened.

  Maybe it would be best to cut this meeting short. Leslie needed a moment. Or fifty.

  “Actually, there are still a few more things to go over,” John said, shifting another piece of paper to the top of his stack. When he turned it around for a moment, Leslie could see it wasn’t handwritten as the will had been. Rather, it looked like some kind of bill or receipt. “There is an addendum added only six months ago.”

  Leslie sat up. Maybe he’d changed his mind. Maybe her father had come to his senses and amended his previous will, giving Leslie full control of the Wayfarer Inn and letting Michelle continue to pretend that the past had never happened.

  “The addendum is a document outlining a fifty-thousand-dollar debt your father secured against the property. The debt will follow the property, passing to the next owners. Which, in this case, is the four of you.”

  Leslie blinked. “A debt?”

  “You didn’t know?” Michelle asked. “I thought you and Dad ran the business together.”

  Leslie was too blindsided to be offended. She shook her head. “He handled the money stuff. The purchases and the overhead. I focused on day-to-day operations.”

  “And you didn’t notice the inn was failing to turn a profit?”

  “He said everything was fine,” Leslie said between clenched teeth. “And everything seemed fine, so I had no reason to doubt him.”

  Maybe check-ins had slowed a bit, but not enough to make her worry. Should she have been worried? Should she have pushed her dad to tell her more?

  He was always in his office in his final months. Staying up late. Poring over the books. Leslie should have noticed. She should have picked up on how bad things were.

  “I’m sorry,” Jill cut in, “but you said the debt follows the property? That means it’ll be passed on to us?”

  Us. As if Jill and her brother could really be lumped in with Leslie and Michelle. As if they hadn’t just met sixty minutes earlier.

  “No one is going to come after you for money,” Leslie snapped.

  “Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it,” Michelle added. “He should have come to me in the first place if he was having money problems. My dad wouldn’t want anyone outside the family handling his business.”

  “Whether you’d consider me family or not, the legal document does. My name is written there, too,” Jill said.

  “Indeed it is, Ms. Ruthers,” John said. “However, the debt stays with the Wayfarer Inn. The loan has a deadline of December 31st of this year. If it is not paid off by then, the business and property will be repossessed by the bank and sold at auction.”

  “What does that mean?” Leslie croaked.

  “It means you don’t have to pay a dime if you don’t want.” John steepled his fingers. “But if you don’t pay the loan, the bank will take the inn and sell it at auction, keeping any and all of the profits.”

  Gone. Just like that.

  Poof—up in smoke would go the decades Leslie had invested in the Inn. The late nights and early mornings, the hands dried out from washing dishes, the knees chafed f
rom scrubbing floors… gone like they never existed.

  Repossessed. Sold to someone else.

  She didn’t know why she was surprised. This was how life worked. Dreams rarely offered a transitional period. They were yanked away all at once and you were left behind to pick up the pieces.

  Leslie Townsend knew that better than anyone.

  “I know this is a lot to take in,” John said. “But there is one more thing your father wanted me to do.” He reached into an envelope and slid out a piece of paper from her father’s favorite yellow legal pad. “He wanted me to read you all a letter.”

  Jill stiffened and grabbed the armrests of her chair. “This can’t be for me. Maybe I should—”

  “It’s for Warren Townsend’s children,” the lawyer explained. “That includes you.”

  Jill sunk back down into her chair, but Leslie couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t peel her eyes away from the yellow piece of paper John was unfolding. Couldn’t focus on anything—because she was about to hear her father’s last words.

  His real last words. Not the offhand bit she’d heard from him the afternoon he died. Leslie had been in the kitchen, partitioning out ingredients for dinner, and her dad had walked through the room and down the hallway without a word. Then, just as he’d pulled open the door, the old hinge letting out a moan, he’d turned and hollered down the hallway, “I’ll be here if you need me.”

  Leslie hadn’t responded. There was no need. Dad was always there when she needed him.

  Not anymore, though. Not ever again.

  She wished she’d replied with something profound. Wished she’d told him she loved him or asked him to sit in the kitchen with her while she cooked.

  Maybe, somehow, if she’d done something different, the outcome would have been different. But how could she have known that was her last chance to speak to him? How could he have known?

  This letter, though, was different. Her father had planned this moment. He’d known that one day, Leslie would be sitting in a room with the sister she never knew she had. He’d known that the inn she’d poured her entire adult life into would be cut up and parceled out like a birthday cake. He’d been aware of every revelation that had bowled Leslie over in the last fifteen minutes.