A Vineyard Christmas

by Jean Stone

Neither could she. But before she spoke the words, he added, “Of course, you might not want to be too picky if you’re going to wind up being homeless.”

  Annie knew he was joking, but his remark stung. “Right,” she said. “It will be tough to finish my book if I have nowhere to charge my laptop.”

  “You can always camp out on the sofa in my father’s study. You know you’d be welcome there.”

  “I do know that. And it’s a good feeling. But your parents have a busy household now, complete with a beautiful, but sometimes fussy, baby. Which isn’t conducive to writing, either.”

  He set down his fork, reached across the table, and took her hand. His expression turned serious. “Look, Annie, whatever you decide, I’ll do what I can to help. The last thing I want is for you to have to leave the island.”

  It was the last thing Annie wanted, too. But she’d had enough ups and downs in her life to know that just because she wanted to stay on the Vineyard didn’t mean it would work out.

  Just then, John’s cell phone rang.

  Annie forked a piece of fish while he checked the call. Born and raised on the Vineyard, John was a police officer in Edgartown and did not turn his phone off. Ever. He looked back to her and mouthed, “Sorry,” then stood, walked toward the front door, and stepped out onto the porch.

  “Hi, honey,” she heard him say. She deduced it was one of his teenage daughters, who lived off island with their mother. They were only up in Plymouth, but John once said that having a wide girth of water between his ex and him had been essential after the divorce. Annie had not been surprised. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live on an island with a former spouse, having to run into him at the supermarket or the post office or even at the movies, where she often went to quiet her stress. As wonderful as life was on the Vineyard, there were simply few places to hide.

  “What does your mother say?” he said into the phone.

  She hated feeling as if she were eavesdropping. But her one-bedroom cottage was not built for privacy, and he had not shut the door behind him. She took another bite of the fish.

  “That’s not acceptable, Lucy. You know that.”

  Oh, dear, Annie thought. Lucy was the younger girl—thirteen going on thirty, according to John.

  “Put your mother on the phone.” His voice was stern but not threatening; Annie would bet he was a soft touch when it came to his girls.

  “When will she be home?” He paused; he sighed. “Never mind. I’ll call her myself.” He did not say goodbye.

  The screen door opened. He walked back to the table and sat down. He stared at his dinner plate.

  “Everything okay?” Annie asked, though, clearly, it was not.

  Picking up his fork, he poised it over his dinner. “Consider yourself lucky that you never had kids.” Then he closed his eyes and shook his head. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”

  Annie smiled. He, of course, had forgotten how close she’d been to becoming a mother, that the abortion had been one of two life choices she wished she’d handled differently. The other bad choice had been to marry her ex-husband in the first place.

  Then John’s cell rang again. He glanced at it and muttered, “Crap.” He let it ring twice, then said to Annie, “I hate to do this, but I gotta go. It’s Jenn.”

  “I understand,” she said, but her words dissolved before she knew if he’d heard them: he was too busy standing up, pulling his truck keys from his pocket, and going back out the door while asking, “What the hell’s going on?” to the woman he had once married. Then he disappeared into the night.

  Annie tried to finish her dinner, but couldn’t. She set the leftovers aside for the compost bin and reminded herself that she was on her own now. She tried to believe that she’d find somewhere to live, and that it would be fine, because she was resilient and had learned how to land on her proverbial feet.

  If only she could shake off the feeling that this time there was much more at stake. Maybe she’d feel more hopeful after a good night’s sleep.

  * * *

  Donna.

  The thought of her birth mother’s name jolted Annie from the edge of a dream.

  Of course! She bolted upright, her heart softly pounding. Families help one another out. Or, at least, her adoptive parents had helped each other. Blood relations would, too. Wouldn’t they?

  She switched on the lamp on the nightstand and smiled. She’d met Donna just a few months ago. The woman was open and ebullient and seemed truly happy to finally meet Annie. But she’d recently sold her antiques shop on the north shore of Boston, had happily retired, and was now on a long-awaited, four-month world cruise with her current gentleman friend. “We’re almost seventy,” she’d lamented with a grin. “Please don’t call him my boyfriend.”

  But Donna wasn’t due back until the middle of August; far too late for Annie to make a decision.

  She wanted to stay on the island, wanted to live and breathe and keep writing there. She also wanted, very badly, to continue her relationship with John, wherever it led. And she wanted to perfect the craft of soap-making that she’d learned from her friend Winnie Lathrop, who was part of the up island Wampanoag tribe.

  She didn’t suppose she could live in Aquinnah with Winnie and her family, because Annie’s roots were Scottish, not Native American.

  She wished she could ask Donna for advice. She also wished she could talk to her adoptive parents, the Suttons, who had known her in a way Donna never could. Which Annie still found disturbing, to think that a mother did not really know her child.

  “It will take time,” Donna had said the day she’d arrived on Chappy after Annie had finally responded to the woman’s letter that had begun with the powerful words: I am your birth mother . . .

  Donna had stayed with Annie nearly a week, camping out on an air bed on the living room floor. They’d talked and talked about important things and about nothing special. They’d walked for hours, exploring the dirt roads of the island, getting used to each other’s presence amid the sounds of the waves and the occasional cry of a gull. It had been January. When most folks had the good sense not to be there. But for Annie, the togetherness had been like a warm quilt.

  Annie looked like her, or at least she had before she’d traded her designer clothes for jeans and flannel shirts and had stopped having manicures that weren’t conducive to harvesting herbs, plucking wildflowers, and making soap. They had the same dark, almost black hair, streaked with silver, though Donna admitted to having more streaks than her stylist allowed her to show. They had the same long-legged, lean body, the same careful stride, the same happy laugh. The same hazel—not blue—eyes.

  Mother and daughter. The tree and the apple.

  Donna promised to return after the cruise; they’d agreed that the Vineyard would be a wonderful place to build their new bond. Which was one more reason it was imperative that Annie found a damn place to live.

  There was always Kevin, she supposed. But she was still getting used to the idea that her birth mother was now in her life, let alone that she had a half brother who was nine years younger than she was. She’d met Kevin only once—over lunch, in Boston—when he’d joined her birthday celebration with her birth mother. He’d recently sold his construction business, and, like Annie, was single again.

  “I spent all of an hour with him,” Annie said now with a laugh. “It might be a bit presumptuous to ask if I could move in for a while.”

  Still, she had his phone number.

  She could always send a friendly text.

  If she knew what to say.

  Or how she thought he could help.

  She punched her pillow to rearrange the fluff, then snapped off the light again. Tomorrow, she thought. I’ll think about it tomorrow.

  Or the day after.

  Then she closed her eyes again and prayed that sleep would come quickly.

  Jean Stone is the author of seventeen novels about contemporary women that have been published by Random House and Har
perCollins. Her book, Good Little Wives (written under her pen name, Abby Drake), has been optioned for a Lifetime TV movie. From Germany to Japan, over a dozen countries around the world have purchased the subrights to her novels and translated them. In addition, all of her books are available in both print and ebook versions. Jean has taught at a number of writers’ conferences and has been a guest lecturer at many colleges and conferences. A native of New England, she lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, for several years; she now resides on Martha’s Vineyard. Visit her website: www.jeanstone.com, her blog www.jeanstonemv.com, or follow her on Facebook or Twitter.