A Vineyard Christmas

by Jean Stone

  Letting go of his mother, John wheeled around and took Annie by the shoulders. “You,” he said. “With me.”

  * * *

  He edged her toward the study. Once they were inside, he closed the door and locked it. “Sit,” he said, so Annie sat on the small sofa in the corner. He took the chair at his father’s desk, removed his gloves, and raked his hands through his hair.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  Annie looked around the room at the framed photos on the walls, some in black-and-white, that captured happy times. One showed a much younger Earl standing with a large pig and a sign in the background that read: AG FAIR. 1981. She wondered if one of his many “trades” had once been raising pigs on Chappaquiddick.

  “John,” she said, “I want to explain.” She was surprised how calm she felt. Maybe it was the kind of relief some people felt once they finally shed a secret that they’d harbored for years, or had let out a grievance gnawing at their insides. Depositing her gloves into her coat pockets, she unwrapped the wool scarf around her neck, folded it, and set it in her lap. “I never meant for you to find out this way.”

  He let out a giant sigh.

  Then, starting with when she’d opened her front door and seen Bella’s basket at her feet, Annie told him the story. She told him about the note in which the mother asked her to take care of Bella only for a couple of days. She told him about Winnie’s help. She told him about how, once the “couple of days” had passed, she and his father figured out that the girl was staying next door to her cottage. She told him about the library book. Annie even told him that she’d been adopted, so she’d been the ideal choice, the perfect patsy.

  Annie told him all those things. She did not, however, mention that the bus driver remembered the girl, or that she’d asked him about the Thurmans. She had no way of knowing yet if there really was a connection, so she decided not to create more island gossip.With Claire Lyons no doubt listening at the door, she feared that could happen.

  “When I got home this afternoon,” she continued, “I found another note on my front porch. It simply read, I trusted you. I might be wrong, but it seemed ominous to me, as if Bella’s mother thought I’d done something terrible with her baby. Like that I’d turned her over to foster care. I’d planned to tell you everything at dinner. But when the waitress mentioned ‘the baby’ as if Bella’s mere existence made the story juicier, well, I couldn’t. Bella is just a baby, John. Someone needs to protect her. No matter what her mother’s done.”

  He sat quietly. He had not interrupted, not even once.

  Annie wrung her hands. “I was only trying to watch over her. To do as her mother asked. I hoped she’d come back. In the meantime, I wanted to find her and get her to change her mind before you intervened and put Bella God knows where. But now it seems clear she’s the one in the hospital . . .”

  Her words trailed off. They sat in silence, except for the ticking of the ship’s clock on the wall.

  After taking a long breath, she asked, “So, are you going to arrest me?”

  He ran his hands through his hair again. “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with you. Aside from everything else, you’ve been withholding information. If you’d told me right away, we might have prevented what happened this afternoon.”

  Guilt flooded through her. Pieces of her heart began floating away. “I know.”

  He leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees, tented his fingers together. “Look, Annie. I’m trying to be fair. Who knows what anyone would have done if they were you? Right now my mother’s angry because you’ve been lying to her.”

  She tried to smooth the wool scarf on her lap, tried to align the edges so they’d be in perfect symmetry.

  “However,” he continued, “my father thinks you’re wonderful. And it sounds as if he was in on this cover-up pretty much from the beginning. So if I arrest you, I suppose I’ll have to arrest him, too.” His eyes drifted down to his hands, which were strong and sturdy, like his dad’s. “If there’s a funny part to this, it’s that if my mother had known about this early on, she probably would have tried to help, too. She would have seen it as a heroic act of social justice.” He looked back to Annie; his eyes were clouded over. “But you’re right. This is about a baby. And, for what it’s worth, the only reason her mother is still on the island is because the doctors don’t think she’s stable enough to be airlifted to Boston. They don’t think she’d survive the trip.”

  Another piece of Annie’s heart broke off. She bit her lip and tried to hold back tears. She wondered if she really wanted him to answer her next question: “Is she going to die, John?”

  He shrugged; he averted his gaze. “Maybe.”

  Maybe, Annie thought. There was that word again.

  The clock ticked, then chimed two bells. Nine o’clock, ship’s time.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  He scratched his chin the way Earl did when he was thinking. “Unlike what my mother said, technically, you haven’t kidnapped anyone. Do you still have the note where the mother asked you to take care of the baby?”

  She nodded. She’d tucked it into the box that held the long-ago letter from Donna MacNeish. Storing it there had seemed appropriate.

  “That indicates you had permission. On the other hand, the baby’s mother knew nothing about you. And there are laws that protect children from being handed over to strangers.”

  “I know a lot about child protective laws. I used to teach third grade.” She thought she’d already told him that she’d been a teacher, but right then, it hardly mattered.

  He stood and paced the room, the way Claire had been pacing, but without anger fueling him. “My mother won’t like it, but you should take Bella home tonight. That’s where her birth mother left her, with permission. Tomorrow I’ll talk to the chief. I’m sorry, but we’ll probably have to turn the case over to the Staties—the state police. They help handle our complex cases.”

  Annie stood up and looked into his eyes. “What about Bella’s mother? Do you think I can see her?”

  “Like, now? At the hospital?”

  “Well. Yes.”

  He took her by the shoulders. “Not a chance,” he said. “Be grateful I didn’t put you in handcuffs.”

  Murphy would have loved the prospect of that; she would have made a suggestive comment that, later, they would have laughed about. Once the dust had finally settled and a happy ending was assured.

  Instead of laughing, Annie gave in to her tears and let the salty wetness drizzle down her cheeks.

  Chapter 21

  “Mommy?”

  “Mommy?”

  Francine didn’t know if the voice was hers or Bella’s. She only knew her eyes were closed and she was warm and weightless and that the crying was coming from somewhere far away.

  “Mommy, are you there?”

  * * *

  When John brought Annie and Bella home, he made sure they were safely inside, then said a perfunctory “Good night.” She had not expected a kiss, even on the cheek, and she didn’t get one.

  She put Bella to bed, grateful that Claire had fed her, given her a bath, changed her, and dressed her in soft jammies that must have been another hand-me-down from one of John’s daughters. Annie didn’t know whether or not Claire had done that before Earl had revealed to her what was really going on. But Annie didn’t, couldn’t, blame him. His wife might sometimes be “difficult,” but like she’d said, she wasn’t stupid.

  From now on, Annie would keep Earl out of this. He shouldn’t have to suffer any more because of her.

  As for John, if he learned the rest, there was no telling what he’d do. If he did not arrest her, he could still make her life so miserable she’d have to retreat back to Boston under a dark cloud of publicity that would no doubt affect book sales in the wrong direction. It was a frightening thought, but Bella was more important. And, right or wrong, Annie was even more committed now to doing whatever it would take to stop
the baby’s life from being torn apart.

  Starting with finding the Thurmans, whoever they were.

  She moved to the table, put on her glasses, and picked up the Island Book. It took only seconds to find the name. There were three listings:

  Thurman Clark 7 Deep Forest Rd Ed

  Thurman Laureen 181 7th St VH

  Thurman Stephen & Bonnie 12 Scallop Cove Rd Ed

  She ruled out the one in Vineyard Haven, because the young mother had specified the Thurmans in Edgartown. She booted up her laptop and Googled the first location. She tap-tapped her fingers on the edge of the keyboard while praying for that elusive thing called patience. The indicator went around and around. She tried to remember it was just the unpredictable island connection and not a conspiracy between the Internet and a malicious force—like Claire Lyons or Taylor what’s-her-name—working against her.

  Finally, the home screen appeared.

  Deep Forest Road was out by the transfer station, affectionately called the dump, though Edgartown’s trash was no longer just dumped but hauled off island. The street would be easy to find. Annie then went to Zillow and learned there were only nine houses on Deep Forest Road: a two-bedroom ranch was for sale, the asking price three hundred twenty-five thousand—a pittance for Martha’s Vineyard. She wrote down Clark Thurman’s address, as if there was a chance she’d forget it.

  Then she searched for Scallop Cove Road. No houses on that street were listed for sale. The last transaction, for number twelve, had been in 2009, when it was purchased for five hundred twenty-five thousand dollars. It was now worth eight hundred seventy-five.

  Two different Edgartown addresses in two different socioeconomic locations: Annie wondered which Thurman, if either, was connected to Bella’s mother.

  “Tomorrow will be here soon enough,” she told herself as she banked the fire in the woodstove for the night and got ready for bed.

  * * *

  She couldn’t sleep. Thoughts of Earl and Claire collided with anxiety about what John would do and how soon it would be before he—or the “Staties”—took Bella from her. Just because she had the note from Bella’s mother didn’t mean Annie was entitled to keep her forever.

  She supposed she should have told John that Bella had been named after her grandmother. Unlike Annie had been free to do, the police must be able to access information at the town hall. A couple of data entries and two or three clicks would probably reveal all island women who were, or ever had been, christened “Bella,” and every derivative of the name.

  It was doubtful they would wait for the girl to get better—or die—before they started their full-fledged investigation. More than likely, they’d go next door to the Littlefield house first thing in the morning. They’d look for fingerprints, traces of DNA, whatever they could find to help identify the girl. They’d also search for things she’d left behind: personal items, a cell phone, an ID.

  In the darkness, Annie blinked.

  An ID.

  Of course!

  She bolted upright, her pillow careening to the floor. The house! If the girl had no ID when she’d jumped from the ferry, she must have left it there.

  If only Annie dared to go over there now. When she and Earl had gone inside, Annie had known the girl was hiding, had known she’d had to be the one who’d peered out the upstairs window. The empty can of formula in the kitchen sink and the piece of cinnamon roll certainly had proved it. But when the girl had not come forward, and then Earl had found the book, Annie’s first thought had been not to scare her off. So she’d insisted that they leave. She’d never thought to look for an ID. A purse. A phone. Something.

  Snapping on the lamp atop her nightstand, Annie tried to quiet her racing thoughts. Could she—should she—go back to the house and look around before the cops arrived, before they took everything, including Bella?

  With her heart doing its dance again, Annie looked up at the ceiling and shook her fist. “Help! You’re the one who got me into this mess! You’re the one who made me move here! So, help! Please!”

  She was being ridiculous again, but Annie didn’t care. Murphy had often been adventurous, sometimes even daring. She might have told her to take a shot now, to go next door and see what she could learn. But Murphy had her husband and her boys . . . she had a support system. Unlike Annie, who had no family who loved her so much they would be there for her, even if she’d done something wrong.

  And yet . . .

  Annie looked over at Bella, who had woken up without a stir and was staring back at her.

  “The hell with it,” Annie said, then hauled herself from under the covers.

  In less than ten minutes she had winterized them both and, armed with the LED lantern she’d bought for the nor’easter, she ventured outside into the night.

  * * *

  After having lived there for four months, Annie had finally grown accustomed to the stillness of the Vineyard and the darkness of the nights. It often made her think about the early settlers who’d come from other lands, who hadn’t known about the beauty and serenity that awaited them. Sometimes she thought about the Wampanoags, the people “of the first light,” who had been there for countless generations, for thousands of years, and who’d depended on the earth and sea to sustain them—from the deer and rabbits to the fish and fowl and all the berries, herbs, and edible plants that they gathered.

  Sometimes, Annie thought about those things. But not that night.

  As she traipsed through the scrub oaks, lugging Bella on her hip to avoid having to lug the basket, too, Annie thought instead about the bond between a mother and her child, the special glue created by nature that surmounted caution, trepidation, and, occasionally, logic. Apparently one didn’t need to have given birth to feel that tight connection.

  The side door was still open. With the light from the lantern casting a not-so-subtle path, they went inside. Annie wondered if Bella might remember having stayed there—if she would remember the sights, the smells, the sounds.

  Once in the living room, she swung the light toward the sofa: the candy cane cookies that she’d left were gone.

  “Hope you enjoyed them,” she whispered into the room.

  Turning the corner, she headed to the staircase that looked as if it belonged in a grand plantation home, a place bustling with voices, footsteps, laughter—not in a house that was unoccupied from September until June, as if it, too, had been abandoned. Annie didn’t miss the irony of that.

  She climbed the stairs, then went into the bedroom that was closest to the landing, which would be where she’d have gone if she’d been in Bella’s mother’s shoes. She moved the light around: nothing seemed out of place. There was no comb or brush, no makeup or purse on either of two bureaus; there was no backpack on the floor. No phone. But a puffy, white comforter was spread across the mattress of a high brass bed: it looked somewhat rumpled, as if it had been put there in haste, not straightened by a housekeeper.

  It was the kind of detail that a man—Earl—might not have noticed.

  Two other doors were in the room: one led to a large walk-in closet, complete with remnants of shelving that had been removed, but nothing else. Annie tiptoed toward the other door: a bathroom. As in the bedroom and the closet, there were no personal items. So far, other than her book and the trash in the kitchen sink, the place lacked any indication of recent human interaction. The cookies, after all, could have been carried off by a four-legged critter.

  But as Annie turned back toward the hall, something snapped under her foot.

  She stopped. She beamed the lantern to the floor. A small disk of what looked like clear plastic rested there. She might never have seen it if she hadn’t stepped on it. Bending down, she picked it up, glad that she was wearing gloves. She held it up, close to the light.

  “I’ll be damned,” she said.

  If she hadn’t had the experience of the last week or so, she never would have recognized the plastic in her hand as the ring on a baby’s paci
fier.

  Pulling Bella higher on her hip, Annie squatted. Then she slowly peeled back a corner of the comforter to try and see if the rest of the pacifier was under the bed.

  It was. So was a large vinyl purse.

  If anyone had asked Annie what she remembered about Bella’s mother from the ten seconds that they’d interacted at the fair, the last thing she would have said was that the girl had been carrying a vinyl handbag, let alone a big one. But now, as Annie slid it from under the bed frame, she recognized it immediately: it had been hanging over the girl’s shoulder on the opposite side from where she’d carried the baby’s basket.

  Annie sat down on the floor; Bella began to fuss, as if being in the room was upsetting her. Perhaps she sensed her mother.

  Gently rocking the baby, Annie murmured low, shushing tones. But as she sat in the shadows cast by the flashlight, comforting the tiny baby who’d been born to a mother so frightened or depressed that she’d try to kill herself, Annie knew she couldn’t do what she’d intended: she couldn’t dig into the handbag and search through the girl’s personal things until she found a cell phone, an ID, whatever might be there that would reveal her name and might tell the story of why she’d come and who she’d planned to see.

  No. Annie couldn’t do it.

  She could not invade the young woman’s belongings; she couldn’t scrutinize her life. It would feel too much as if she were being a busybody, like Taylor. And maybe a bit like Claire.

  Trying to find the Thurmans would be something Annie could do for Bella’s mother. But snooping through her things seemed like a violation of her privacy. I trusted you, her last note read. No matter what she’d meant, Annie didn’t want to break that trust. She didn’t want to forget that, beneath the layers of the whys and wherefores, Bella’s mother was just a girl who’d gotten into trouble, as the old saying went, as it had gone for years and years and no doubt had been whispered about Annie’s birth mother, too.

  Besides, Annie reasoned, if she prowled through the bag, she would, without a doubt, be tampering with evidence, so she’d have John to answer to. Again.