The Vineyard Sisters: A Wayfarer Inn Novel

by Grace Palmer

  It felt like she’d handed over a tiny sliver of her heart.

  27

  Jill

  DAY OF THE FUNDRAISER AT THE WAYFARER INN

  The day of the raffle was finally here.

  After a week of finalizing donations, advertising on every conceivable corner of the island, and helping Leslie bake enough chocolate chip cookies to feed several armies, there was nothing more they could do to prepare.

  The Wayfarer Inn’s porch and front lobby were decorated to the nines with bouquets donated by Brookman Brothers Flowers. The coffee bar was stocked with fresh coffee and chocolate caramel biscotti. And the breakfast counter was overflowing with mouthwatering desserts and hors d'oeuvres.

  “Well, are we ready for this?” Michelle asked as they finalized their setup.

  “As ready as we’ll ever be, I think.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Leslie chirped, carrying yet another batch of chocolate chip cookies out from the kitchen. She set the silver tray on the front desk. “I thought today was a good day to pull out Mom’s old silver.”

  “Feels right,” Michelle agreed.

  Suddenly, the front door burst open. Jill’s nieces, Kat and Beth, stomped into the lobby. Kat grabbed a cookie off the top of the pile and took a bite, crumbs falling out of her mouth as she complained, “Who gave it permission to be this hot?”

  “It’s in the mid-sixties,” Beth retorted. “Maybe the issue is you’re wearing a long-sleeved cashmere sweater dress.”

  Kat looked down at her outfit and pouted out her lower lip. “It’s the nicest thing I packed and I wanted to look good for the big day.”

  “It was a nice thought, but it’s hard to look good when you’ve got armpit stains.”

  Kat opened her mouth to respond, but Michelle stepped between them. “You both look great and we appreciate all of your help setting up outside. Why don’t you go get some lemonade and cool down?”

  Usually, de-escalation was Jill’s specialty, but she had to give props where props were due. Michelle knew her daughters well.

  The two girls wandered off to find plastic cups. On the way, Beth stopped to ask Amelia, who was on the sofa in the sitting room, if she wanted anything.

  “Champagne would be lovely, thank you,” Amelia said. She turned back to the window with a smile. She really loved the ocean view.

  Beth glanced at Jill, her face scrunched into a wordless question. Jill cupped a hand to her mouth and whispered, “Sparkling white grape juice is in the fridge.”

  What her mom didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. After all, it wasn’t even noon yet.

  The final fifteen minutes before the party started were filled with a mad dash of final touches and fixes. Jill grabbed the name tags they’d had professionally made from the front desk and handed them out. Leslie made sure each item on the silent auction table had a sign-up sheet and pen next to it. And Michelle arranged and re-arranged the enormous wicker basket they’d bought to hold all of the items donated to the raffle.

  Then, in the blink of an eye, the first guests began to arrive.

  “Jeff!” Leslie said, hurrying over to the door and pulling a man in a flannel shirt in for a hug. “So good to see you. Come on in.”

  Jill recognized him as the same man she’d seen give a speech at Warren’s funeral. He had apparently donated a fifty-dollar gift card to the raffle.

  Jeff looked around and shook his head. “Wow, Leslie. You gals really made this place shine. It hasn’t look like this in… well, never, frankly. I’m afraid interior decorating wasn’t your dad’s specialty.”

  Neighbors and family friends trickled in soon after, hugging Leslie and Michelle tightly while offering nervous smiles to Jill. The interview Michelle had done with The Vineyard Gazette had mentioned Jill was another of Warren’s daughters. “A half-sister kept secret for forty-plus years,” as Isaac Hubbard had put it.

  Jill just grinned and welcomed everyone with open arms. She belonged here. Just like Michelle and Leslie.

  “The raffle tickets are fifteen dollars for one, twenty-five for two, and forty-five for four,” she rattled off as each new person arrived. “And there’s a silent auction with even more prizes in the hallway. If you’re interested in manicures, pet grooming, or mini-golf, be sure to check it out.”

  The inn was soon filled with the hum of voices and laughter and a crowd of unfamiliar faces. Unfamiliar, that is, until a certain red braid strutted through the front door wearing a pair of white high-rise pants with a paisley-printed shirt tucked in. The long sleeves ended in flared bells around her wrists that twirled around dramatically when Fiona wrapped Jill in a hug.

  “The place looks amazing!” Fiona crooned. “I can’t believe this is my first time here.”

  “Well, you live on the island year-round, so there’s really no need for you to stay at an inn,” Jill chuckled.

  Fiona waved her away. “Everyone needs a staycation. When fall comes, I’m booking myself a room. We’ll hang out all weekend.”

  If this place is still here by then, Jill thought. She brushed the morbid thought away. Now was not the time.

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said instead.

  Fiona patted her shoulder. “Well, I have to go talk a bunch of rich people into spending hundreds of dollars on raffle tickets. Toodle-oo!”

  Jill bid her goodbye and surveyed the scene. It was even busier than she’d hoped. All of the tables in the lawn and the porch were full and Beth had already refilled the lemonade dispenser twice.

  And yet she couldn’t help raining on her own parade. She reminded herself again and again that there was a real chance they wouldn’t make enough money. A real chance they’d have to hand the Wayfarer over to the bank and watch it be stripped and sold for parts like a junked car.

  Leslie and Michelle were still manning the door, so with Fiona volunteering to push raffle ticket sales, Jill took the opportunity to find her mom in the sitting room. She dropped down onto the sofa seat next to her.

  “How’s it going, Mom?”

  Amelia wrinkled her nose and held up her glass. “This is grape juice. I wish it was champagne.”

  “I’ll get you some later. To celebrate,” Jill promised.

  “Celebrate what?” Amelia looked away from the window and seemed to only then notice all of the people in the lobby and the dining room. “What’s going on?”

  “A party,” Jill said for the fourth or fifth time that day. “We’re trying to raise money to keep the Wayfarer Inn open.”

  Amelia’s gray brows knit together. “You’re taking donations?”

  “It’s kind of a last resort.”

  Her mom huffed in displeasure. “You girls should have had a rainy day fund set up. What did I always tell you? A woman should—”

  “Always be prepared,” Jill finished. “I know.”

  She couldn’t even be annoyed by her mom’s lecturing, even though she’d heard the rainy day lecture a million times over. The fact she’d referred to Leslie and Michelle and Jill as “you girls” warmed her heart. It meant, on some level, she remembered.

  “I better mingle,” Jill said. “Are you okay? Do you need anything? A snack or—”

  “Champagne,” she said firmly, pointing to her glass.

  Jill gave her a thumbs up and blended back into the crowd. Her mom had never been much for alcohol before her diagnosis. It was yet another new facet of her personality that the disease had brought on.

  At some point, the new facets would outnumber the old ones.

  At some point, her mom would be gone without really being gone.

  But Jill shoved that thought aside along with all the others and pasted on a smile. She had a fundraiser to run.

  A Few Hours Later

  “We almost ran out of tickets,” Michelle said, holding up the cardboard tube with the last few dozen ticket stubs. “That has to be a good sign.”

  “Maybe,” Leslie said. “But I found those tickets in the back closet. They’d been ther
e for years. I have no idea how many were on the roll, so I can’t even do the math and—”

  Shane patted Leslie’s hand. “But you can count the money in the cash box. Then you’ll know.”

  “Exactly,” Jill agreed. “No time like the present. Let’s see how we did.”

  They’d counted up the silent auction winnings first. It was obvious that was never going to be their golden ticket to paying off the debt, so it felt low stakes to add it up.

  “All in all, just over three thousand dollars,” Leslie announced.

  “Not bad!” Jill said.

  Michelle, ever the pessimist, mumbled, “Only forty seven thousand left to go…”

  “Just remember,” Isaac broke in, “no matter what happens here today, I’m going to write another article. There’s still a chance to make some more money.”

  He and Michelle had been stuck together like glue since the moment he’d arrived at the party. The fact he hadn’t left yet still felt strange. This didn’t feel like a moment to be had in front of the press.

  But it wasn’t Jill’s place to kick him out. Maybe it was all for this follow-up article he had planned. And when Michelle smiled at him, Jill could swear she saw the man wink back. It didn’t seem like he was such an outsider after all.

  “Okay.” Leslie took a deep breath and then opened the metal money box. “Let’s do this.”

  Immediately, it became clear this was going to be a process. Some people had paid in cash, others with checks, and some people had slipped in pieces of paper explaining they’d dropped money into the inn’s PayPal account.

  “First things first, let’s separate out the payment methods,” Jill said, starting a stack for each form of payment. “Then we’ll each take one, count it, and add them up at the end.”

  Conversation died as they sorted. The atmosphere in the room was not exactly jovial. Kat and Beth opted to leave rather than endure the tension and Jill couldn’t really blame them. Part of her wished she’d followed them outside.

  For weeks, they’d been able to discuss plans and possibilities. But now, this was it. All roads led here, and there was nothing to be done but find out if this would end up in success or heartbreak.

  Michelle was the first to finish counting. She held up a stack of personal checks. “Sixteen thousand and three hundred dollars.”

  Jill’s eyes popped. “You’re kidding!”

  “I’m not.” Michelle smiled, albeit a bit nervously. She tipped her head to Leslie. “What about the cash?”

  Leslie twisted her lips to one side. “Not as good. Only seventy five hundred.”

  “That’s great,” Shane encouraged. “No one carries cash anymore. Checks and online deposits are gonna make up the bulk of it, I’m sure.”

  With that, all eyes turned to Jill. Their hopeful expressions felt heavy. Ominous.

  Especially since Jill had already done the math in her head.

  The cash and silent auction earnings had put them at just under eleven thousand dollars. With the checks, that put them over twenty seven thousand. Which meant, to reach their goal, mobile deposits would have to make up almost half of their haul at twenty three thousand dollars.

  They hadn’t even come close.

  “Twelve thousand,” Jill said quietly. “That puts the total at thirty nine grand.”

  Jill watched her sisters as the numbers sunk in.

  As reality sunk in.

  As their dreams fell to pieces, one by one by one.

  “We’re eleven thousand short,” Leslie mumbled.

  Michelle mouthed the number silently. Eleven thousand. Jill even saw her glance down at the small ring on her pinky finger. Like she was trying to guess how much it might be worth.

  It wouldn’t be enough. Jill didn’t need to be a jeweler to know that. The ring wouldn’t be enough. The auction hadn’t been enough. The raffle hadn’t been enough.

  Everything they’d done over the last couple months? It hadn’t been enough.

  It was over. The Wayfarer Inn was dead.

  “It’s not over,” Isaac said again, breaking the heavy silence. “I’ll write another article. It will draw in some more donations, and then…”

  “Thanks, Isaac,” Michelle said, giving him a tight smile. “We appreciate it.”

  Shane nodded along. “He’s right. There’s still time. The debt doesn’t have to be paid off until the end of the year, right?”

  The sisters all looked up, meeting each other’s eyes. They hadn’t told anyone aside from Fiona about the buyer willing to take over The Wayfarer Inn. No one else knew they only had four weeks left to decide what to do.

  Four weeks left to make eleven thousand dollars. Not to mention the money needed to buy out Grayson’s share of the inn, if he put up a fight.

  Leslie’s arm shifted. Jill didn’t need to look under the table to know she’d reached over and grabbed Shane’s hand.

  Michelle walked across the room and dropped down into a chair at Isaac’s table, pressing her forehead against the cool surface of the table.

  “There’s still time,” Isaac said quietly. “Plenty of time.”

  The conversation dwindled back down to nothingness. Everyone stared aimlessly into the middle distance, lost for words.

  Jill had taken her mom up for a nap before they’d started counting the money. When Amelia woke up, Jill would finally pour her some champagne.

  Jill herself had no plans to partake, though.

  She had nothing at all to celebrate.

  28

  Leslie

  Later That Night At The Wayfarer Inn

  Shane and Isaac cleared out not long after they tabulated the final numbers. Kat and Beth slipped away, too.

  Leslie didn’t mind. She’d spent so many hours spent greeting people and assuring them with a hopeful gleam in her eye that everything would work out in the end. She’d been wrong. So wrong. And now her ability to put on a happy face was nonexistent.

  She didn’t want to pretend. She didn’t want to remain hopeful. Right now, all Leslie wanted was to mourn. Because they’d given the raffle and the remodel their all and it still hadn’t been enough.

  “Tony always called this ‘the party hangover,’” Michelle said quietly. “After parties at our house, he was usually suffering from an actual hangover, but I’d just feel really low. Drained.”

  “Maybe that’s what it is,” Jill said, though it was obvious she didn’t believe it.

  None of them did. They knew what this was.

  It wasn’t a “party hangover.” It was a broken dream.

  “I could make something,” Leslie offered, though she didn’t budge from her slouched-over position in her chair. “Dinner, or…”

  “Not hungry,” Michelle said.

  Jill agreed. “I ate so many of those little mozzarella basil bruschetta. I’m stuffed.”

  That was good. Leslie didn’t feel like cooking. She didn’t feel like doing much of anything, really. Although sitting slouched over in the dining room and drowning in the thick silence wasn’t helpful, either.

  She heaved a sigh. “I think maybe I’ll—”

  “—I’m going to go—” Michelle said at the same time.

  They looked at one another, smiling awkwardly and painfully.

  “I’m going to go lie down,” she finished.

  “And I should check on my mom.” Jill scooped all of the money back into the cash box and locked it tightly. She lifted it and gave it a shake. “I’ll lock this in the safe in your dad’s office.”

  He was Jill’s dad, too, but Leslie could understand why she might not refer to him that way. It felt like the ship had sailed on so many things tonight. Maybe the idea of the Townsend girls as a functional family was one of them.

  Michelle and Jill wandered off in different directions. Leslie cast around for something to do. Anything to take her mind off how bad her chest was aching, how heavy her limbs were dragging.

  A quick glance around the room offered something: cle
an up.

  She shuffled up and got to work. Leftover snacks and desserts got put away. Lemonade-drenched and chocolate-stained table linens got tossed in the wash. After three trips to the kitchen for more storage bags and two trips to the laundry room, arms loaded with dirty tablecloths, Leslie stopped at the maintenance closet and grabbed a broom. She’d only just started sweeping when there was a knock at the door.

  Leslie stopped and stared. She wasn’t expecting anyone. There were no guests returning until Sunday.

  But she had a bad feeling in her gut nonetheless.

  She sat her broom aside and brushed lint and crumbs from her navy-blue cigarette pants. She’d never gone to her room to change out of her party clothes.

  Leslie paused with her hand on the knob and took a deep breath. She mustered up a friendly face she could manage under the circumstances, but as soon as she opened the door, her expression stiffened.

  Shane stood on the porch. Unlike Leslie, he’d gone home and changed into a worn pair of jeans and a white Boston Red Sox t-shirt. Held against his stomach with both hands was a white pastry box with a cellophane window in the top. Leslie could see row after row of specialty chocolates sitting inside.

  “Hi.” He lifted the box without explanation. Chocolate never needed explanation.

  When Leslie had failed her driver’s test the first time, Shane had shown up with a very similar box of chocolate.

  When she broke her ankle trying to ride his skateboard—chocolate.

  Even a month after the accident, when she wondered if her dreams were forever out of reach, she’d opened the door one morning to find a box of artisanal chocolates on her front stoop.

  Tears pricked at her eyes, but Leslie tried to blink them away. Tried to swallow through it. No matter how she tried, though, the tears refused to be ignored.

  Shane’s brow pinched together in concern. “I thought maybe you could use a little pick-me-up, so I brought—”