A Vineyard Christmas

by Jean Stone

  “Well, you know all about family discord. Thanks to your unfortunate niece.” He grinned a toothy grin; Annie wanted to swat him. “Maybe we can get in through the sunroom on the side,” he added. “But let’s stay away from the windows. In case our young friend hears us coming.”

  They stooped, they shuffled, they duckwalked to a glass door. Earl reached up and tried the handle. It was locked.

  “Damn,” he muttered. Then he signaled Annie to stay behind him, and they made their way to the other side of the house. But the door there was locked, too.

  Annie looked around. The sun porch was long, wide, and totally glassed in. It stretched across the entire back of the house. Inside, she could see an indoor swimming pool that had been covered. But unless she and Earl were willing to hurl a rock through a window, it didn’t look as if they’d get inside. She scanned the area; then she noticed an alcove near what might be a kitchen. And another door. She tapped Earl on the shoulder and pointed in that direction. He resumed their furtive walking; Annie followed.

  With a single, quick twist of the handle, the door opened.

  “Well,” he said. “That was easy.”

  Then he tried to stand up straight. “Damn!” he screeched, grasping his lower back. “Hot bloody damn!”

  “Oh, God!” Annie screamed. “Are you okay?”

  Between the screech and the scream, their “cover,” if that’s what it was, had certainly been blown.

  Earl didn’t speak for a few seconds, which Annie assumed was because he was an old-fashioned guy and wouldn’t want to look helpless. Not in front of a woman. Then he groaned, “Damn. Stand by. Let me try to stretch. Crappy old legs. Sometimes they forget they’re no longer thirty.”

  Annie held her breath. She hesitated to give him a hand; she wasn’t sure if that would make him hurt more. Or bruise his ego. While she stood by, her eyes grazed the house. Then, just as Earl stretched upright and bent from one side to the other, Annie saw the blinds flutter in an upstairs window. The movement was swift and could have been her imagination, but . . .

  “Got it,” he said. “Okay, let’s go in.”

  Taking a long breath of resolve, Annie tread lightly and followed him inside.

  * * *

  It was empty. They entered through what clearly had been a mudroom and laundry room: the lid of a boot box had been yanked off; the washer and dryer were missing; hoses and an air vent were strewn across the floor. A door that led into the kitchen was missing, its hinges sticking out at odd angles.

  “Vandals?” Annie asked.

  “Doubtful. From what I heard, the son thinks he’s entitled. He probably wanted to piss off his sisters.”

  They went into the massive kitchen: some of the countertops had been removed, as had lighting fixtures that once hung above a sizeable island; if a table had been in the room, it wasn’t there now. Nor were chairs. Surprisingly, the appliances remained. The only signs of life were vestiges of anger.

  “What a mess,” Earl said.

  “It must have been a lovely place,” Annie said, walking toward an expansive glass wall that mirrored the curve of the shoreline and looked out to the harbor and the lighthouse. There were only lower cabinets; upper ones would have obstructed the view. “Wow,” she said, moving toward a large sink with elaborate stainless steel faucets that looked surprisingly intact. “This is incredible.” Then her eyes lowered, and she suddenly froze. In the deep sink was an empty can of baby formula marked THREE TO SIX MONTHS. Just like the ones in the bag that had been left on her doorstep next to Bella. An empty plastic baggie was on top. Crumbs were scattered, mostly small ones. She touched one of the larger ones and held it to her nose: it smelled of cinnamon. Like the rolls Annie made for Earl. The crumb was still soft, which suggested it had not been there long.

  Annie felt pummeled by a gust of island wind. She leaned on the edge of the sink to regain her balance, to pull together her thoughts. But all she could think of was: The girl stole my food. Which meant she’d been inside Annie’s cottage. She’d been in her space.

  “Earl?” Annie cried out in a hush.

  He did not respond.

  She turned; he wasn’t there.

  She almost shouted for him, but quickly changed her mind. Bella’s mother had been in this house. Recently. If she were still there . . . and if Earl stumbled on her . . .

  Then Annie remembered the flutter of blinds in the upstairs window.

  Oh, God, she thought. He doesn’t know. And he’s gone off exploring.

  She rushed from the kitchen into a great room. A massive stone fireplace climbed to the top of the two-story ceiling; the only furniture was an old sofa positioned haphazardly facing the front window. “Earl,” she called softly, “Where are you?” If Bella’s mother were still there, by now she must know that they were, too. Annie prayed she wasn’t upset. Or scared enough to act out in anger. One good conk on Earl’s head with a lamp or a vase would send him to his knees in hideous pain.

  Moving from the big room, Annie stepped cautiously into a grand foyer where a butterfly staircase cascaded from the upper floor down to where she stood. Just as she was considering alerting John to come rescue his father, Earl rounded an upstairs corner and ambled down the staircase, one hand pressed against his lower back.

  “Damn,” he said. “Nothing. No one. A couple of bedrooms still have beds with blankets and pillows. I guess the son didn’t need them.”

  Annie waited until he reached the bottom step. “No,” she said quietly. “She’s here. Or she was here.” She led him back into the great room, keeping her tone low. “There are things in the sink, including . . . crumbs. She was in my cottage, Earl. There were traces of a cinnamon roll.” She turned and, from that angle, she spotted something on the sofa. It looked like a book.

  In that instant, even from several feet away, Annie knew what it was. She recognized the lavender cover, the thick spine that held the pages of a long and painful story. She stopped; her legs went weak. “Oh, God,” she said. “Oh. God.”

  “What?” Earl asked. Then his gaze followed hers. “A book?” He walked into the room and plucked it from the sofa. He read the title: “You Let Me Go.” He fell silent for a second, then he said, “Jesus, Annie. This is one of yours.”

  She was too shocked to nod. “That’s the connection,” she said, breathlessly. “It all makes sense.”

  “What?”

  “It’s why she picked me. I got into a conversation with some of my readers at the fair. Someone asked if I was living on the Vineyard now. I said I was on Chappy. For God’s sake, I might have even said I was on North Neck. I do remember that someone asked if I was writing an autobiography. I said the closest I’d ever come to that was in my first book.And then someone else asked if that was the one where my character was adopted. God, Earl, the girl was standing right there. She knew where I lived and that I was adopted. She must have thought I’d be sympathetic to taking Bella in.”

  He opened the front cover. “This is a library copy.”

  Annie blinked. She walked over and took the book from him. She scanned the volume, then handed it back. Knowing that the girl could still be in the house, that she could still be listening, Annie simply said, “Well, good for her. She’s a reader. Come on, Earl, let’s leave well enough alone. The poor girl has been through enough.”

  He scowled until she gestured toward the door. Then she motioned for him to bring the book with him: she dropped the bag of cookies onto the sofa where it had been.

  “What the hell was that about?” Earl asked once they were outside again and out of hearing range.

  “We need to go to Edgartown,” she said. “To the library. Maybe they know who checked out that book. Maybe when she got a library card she had to give her name . . . and her address. I don’t know if they’ll tell us, but it’s worth a try.”

  He tap-tapped the lavender cover. “A brilliant deduction, Sherlock. But right now my judgment might be clouded because I am so pissed. The girl st
ole one of your cinnamon rolls. That’s one less for me.”

  * * *

  Virginia was behind the counter; Annie knew her from the Wednesday night film programs she put together, and from the fabulous desserts she always served. When Annie had first arrived on the Vineyard, she’d introduced herself there, and Virginia had kindly made sure they had a good stock of her books.

  Now, Annie stood impatiently next to Earl while the woman scrolled through the computer, searching for information about when Annie’s first book had been most recently checked out. When Virginia said it was library protocol not to release the name of a patron, Annie had said that just knowing the date would help. If Virginia found that, Annie would tell her the whole story. If she thought it would help her learn more.

  “Hmm,” Virginia said. “Hmm.” Above her eyeglasses, her brow was set in a visible frown.

  Annie leaned on one foot, then the other.

  Earl drummed his fingers on the countertop.

  “No,” Virginia said. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Annie asked. “It can’t be. The label on the cover is clearly marked EDGARTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY.”

  “Sorry,” she said, still perusing the screen. “But let’s check the shelves. See if our copy’s there.”

  Fiction was upstairs.

  Earl said his back was still dicey and that he’d take the elevator and meet them up there.

  Annie followed Virginia up the wide, open staircase; all the way up, Virginia said she couldn’t imagine how the girl had obtained their copy, that none of the other branches in the CLAMS network had borrowed it, that they no doubt had their own. “You’re a popular author on the Cape and Islands,” she said with a pleasant smile.

  The compliment was nice, but not what Annie needed right then.

  By the time they reached the top, Earl was there. It took a minute to find the authors whose names started with an S. Annie, of course, would be at the end; usually, only a few S authors followed Sutton. The three of them huddled together, reading the titles from one shelf to another. Two of Annie’s last four books were there; two had been checked out. But her first book was missing.

  “Maybe it’s in the wrong place,” Earl said.

  Virginia nodded. “Our volunteers are very good. But once in a while, things do get misfiled.”

  They hunted the shelves, side to side, top to bottom. You Let Me Go was nowhere to be found.

  “Wow,” Annie said, “I’m so confused!”

  “Well,” Virginia said once it was apparent their mission had failed, “there’s only one answer.”

  “Somebody stole it?” Earl asked with a sarcastic laugh.

  “Exactly,” the librarian replied. “It’s rare, but it happens. Maybe she was in a hurry and didn’t want to bother to get a card. Or maybe she has a backlog of fines. Whatever the reason, if a book can’t be traced, it’s usually because someone has merely helped themselves.”

  “Especially,” Annie added, “if the thief did not want it traced back to her.”

  The three of them stood, speechless.

  Then a gentleman in a wool vest, white hair, and glasses emerged from the stacks. “Are you looking for one of Annie Sutton’s books?”

  Virginia introduced them to Nils, the library’s research director. Annie hadn’t met him before.

  “Oh, hello, Annie. Nice to meet you,” he said. “You might want to know that I spoke with a young woman . . . I think it was just before the blizzard. She came in looking for your books.”

  “She was around seventeen or eighteen? Big, dark eyes?”

  “That’s her. She had a baby with her in some sort of basket. She said she was a relative of yours. She knew you’d moved to Chappy and that you were out on North Neck Road. But she wasn’t from the Vineyard, and she didn’t know which house you were in. She wondered if we might be able to tell her.”

  Annie’s mouth went dry. She looked at Earl, then back to Nils.

  “I told her we don’t give out that kind of information,” he continued. “She said never mind, that she’d check the town hall. Or ask at the ferry. She said someone on the island would tell her. I remember she said, ‘Celebrities aren’t entitled to privacy, you know.’” He harrumphed, as if he did not agree.

  “And that was it?” Annie asked. “She left?”

  Nils nodded. “Yes. She and her baby left.”

  * * *

  It didn’t matter how Bella’s mother had learned that Annie was renting the Flanagans’ guest cottage. As she’d informed Nils, someone at the town hall could have told her what house she was in; someone at the On Time who, like Earl, probably knew where everyone lived; or, Annie supposed, even someone from the pizza shop. Annie had had a few deliveries in the fall; she’d paid extra for them to cross the channel and drive out to the cottage, because she’d been immersed in making soap and hadn’t wanted to leave.

  Then, as Annie and Earl walked out of the library and climbed back into the truck, she had another thought.

  She buckled her seat belt and dropped her forehead onto her hands. “God, Earl. She told Nils that I was a ‘celebrity,’ so she must think I’m rich.” Annie laughed. “Clearly, she does not know my ex-husband.” She was glad Earl didn’t ask her to elaborate, because Annie was tired. Bone tired. Her adrenaline had been in overdrive the past few days. “She must have thought that she’d struck gold. She must have seen me as the perfect patsy to take her baby: a rich woman with a good reason to be an old softie about a motherless child who needed to be adopted. Who knows what she’d planned to do before I literally fell into her lap?” She sighed. “Can you bring me back to get Bella now? Then take us home? If her mother pokes around my place again, all the better. I’m ready to confront her. But first, I might be older than Bella, but I really need a nap.”

  “And I,” Earl said as he backed out of the lot and drove toward the On Time, “really need ibuprofen.”

  Chapter 18

  By the time Annie and Bella arrived back at the cottage, dense clouds had thickened the sky, and the temperature had fallen below freezing. She added more logs to the fire in the woodstove just as sleet began to pelt the roof.

  Bella seemed to have had a terrific time with Claire. She’d been smiling and content; she’d had a bath and smelled snuggly sweet. Claire had wrapped her in a pink, quilted romper that she said she’d put away after John’s younger girl had outgrown it. She’d also brushed Bella’s hair into an adorable topknot and added a pink bow, the same color as the ribbon Annie used to tie her beach roses and cream soaps.

  And now, as Bella slept contentedly in her basket, Annie sat in the rocker. She knew she should take advantage of the quiet time and get back to work on her book. At least she should reply to an e-mail or two, maybe let Trish know she was making progress on the manuscript. Or perhaps she should send a HAPPY NEW YEAR post to her patient fans. But instead of opening her laptop, Annie picked up a pad of paper. Sometimes she simply could think better with a pencil in her hand instead of something electronic. Now that she knew Bella’s mother had specifically chosen her; now that she knew the girl was—or had been—living right next door; now that the girl had twice said—once to Taylor, once to Nils—that she did not live on the Vineyard (a fact that seemed reinforced by Nancy Clieg’s comment that the poorly made basket had come from the Cape), Annie wondered if she had any options left before she called the police.

  She clicked her pen and began to write:

  Option 1: Return to the Littlefield house and go through it room by room, hoping to come face-to-face with the girl. She chewed the tip of the pen for a few seconds, then added: Bring Bella. Maybe if the baby—not Earl—were with her, the girl would come out of hiding. Then Annie wrote: Offer to help her find a way to keep her baby. At the moment, however, Annie had no idea how to do that. Or if the girl would even want to.

  She looked down at Bella, so pretty, so peaceful, and tried not to think about what her life would be like if Annie didn’t succeed. If only she knew s
omething about Bella’s mother . . . something like her name, where she was from, something, anything, that might help her figure out how to connect with her. Chances were that she’d come to the island recently, on the Grey Lady with the throng of Christmas in Edgartown shoppers, or on the big boat that went from Woods Hole to Vineyard Haven, which was near the upper tip of the triangle that formed the island’s curious shape, and was a twenty-minute drive from Edgartown. As far as Annie knew, the only other passenger boat that came to the island in winter was the Patriot, a small, rough-and-tumble thing that was best known for bringing the newspapers in the wee hours every morning and for shuttling a handful of passengers back and forth from Falmouth to Oak Bluffs year-round.

  No matter how the girl had found her way there, she might have been scared.

  Then Annie had another idea.

  Option 2: she wrote. Call the Grey Lady office in Hyannis. See if there’s a way to find out who the passengers were that weekend. Then call the Patriot. But as soon as Annie wrote it down, she knew it was a long shot. If the people at the library wouldn’t disclose private information, chances were that security in mass transportation would be even more rigid. Unless . . .

  She clicked her pen again.

  Option 3: Go to Vineyard Haven tomorrow; ask Winnie to check the ferry manifest. Because they’d inadvertently learned from Taylor that the girl did not have a vehicle, Annie didn’t know whether or not she would have had to show an ID when she’d bought her ticket—no matter what boat she’d taken. Even if she hadn’t, maybe she’d paid with a debit or credit card: maybe there was a record of her name. Annie had no idea if Winnie could get the information, but she sensed it was her best option. At least if she knew the girl’s name, she could call out to her if she sneaked, uninvited, into the cottage again.

  Last, but maybe not least, was the grandmother. Bella. There might be a chance the woman lived on the island, and for whatever reason, the girl hadn’t looked her up. Maybe she’d been ashamed to have a baby—and to be alone. But Annie had no clue where to start looking for the grandmother, so that really was not an option.