Her mother nodded. “She’s Director of Operations for Business Development on the Vineyard, isn’t she? If there’s anything she knows how to handle, it’s this.”
Jennifer knew she was right. Still, having another horrible event pop up in the midst of all the other chaos they’d been through over the previous week did not thrill her. Not in the least.
Chapter Eight
Nick and Stacy agreed to remain at his grandparents’ for the evening to ensure that Ariane was cared for. While Jennifer cleaned up the kitchen, John snuck into the fridge and grabbed yet another beer. His eyes scanned toward his wife, who was slumped forward a bit in her wheelchair. It occurred to Jennifer that Ariane and John hadn’t said so much as three words to one another throughout the night.
How strange to live in sickness and in health and have no words to show for it.
“Go easy on that, Dad,” Jennifer whispered harshly as she ducked past her father and grabbed her winter coat off the hanger.
Her father gave her a look that told her just how little he cared for her opinion.
“I have to go talk to Amelia about some stuff,” she said to him. Why did she want his approval? Did she just want him to acknowledge what efforts she’d put toward the bakery in the previous week? Over the past ten or twenty years, he’d hardly given her so much as a single compliment.
She knew better than this.
“Good luck, Mom!” Nick called from the other end of the dining room. “I’ll text you tonight.”
Jennifer hopped into her car and drove the familiar route toward Amelia’s house, where she’d lived alone since she’d purchased it three years before. Prior to that, she’d mostly lived alone as well, in various apartments and rentals. In her early twenties, she’d lived for a brief time with Camilla, which had made all the other women quite jealous. “Why didn’t we ever become a big house of roommates?” Jennifer had asked at the time. “We would have had so much fun.”
At this, Mila had insisted that they would have fallen out of love with one another. “Maybe we need the time off to miss each other? Maybe being roommates would have been too much?”
In the case of Camilla and Amelia, however, their house had been a place of magic and hilarity and good times. At the time, Nick had just been a toddler, and Mila and Olivia had had babies of their own. They had been envious of Camilla and Amelia, free from men and diapers (unless they helped out with their kids, of course). They’d only ended their stint as roommates because Camilla, herself, had gotten married to Jonathon. Amelia had taken over the house and then fully devoted herself to professionalism.
It was strange thinking of all the eras that had gone by.
Jennifer parked in the driveway of Amelia’s little cozy house and watched as the snow fluttered itself from the night sky above. She could have sat there, in dread of what was about to happen to the bakery, for a good hour after that. Luckily, Amelia appeared in her bathrobe, a shadow in the doorway. She waved a hand, and Jennifer’s shoulders collapsed with calmness.
Amelia was a portrait of coziness. Her robe was light pink and fuzzy, and her dark brown hair was disheveled in every which way around her. She had no makeup on, and her face glowed from the lotion she’d splayed across it.
“I already poured you a glass of wine,” Amelia said. “Whatever this is, we’ll get through it together.”
“Just us and a whole bottle of merlot,” Jennifer said with a dry laugh.
Amelia and Jennifer curled up on Amelia’s couch, which Jennifer had often joked was built up like a cloud in heaven. It was so soft.
“I don’t want to fall asleep, but I was at the bakery this morning at like five-thirty,” Jennifer said as she rubbed her left eye.
“Just stay with me a little bit longer, Jen,” Amelia said. “Then you can pass out on my couch, just like the old days.”
Jennifer laughed. “When Nick and I would fall asleep on you and Camilla’s couch? And Joel would have to come over, looking for us?”
Amelia nodded. “In a way, I guess we weren’t so ready to grow up. We tried our darndest not to, didn’t we?”
Amelia unfolded the letter and splayed it out across her thighs. She studied it for a long time while Jennifer sipped her wine. When Amelia’s eyes flickered up toward Jennifer’s, Jennifer prayed that she would deliver some idea of calmness.
But instead, Amelia just said, “This is pretty tricky, isn’t it?”
“Shoot. I wanted you to say that you knew just how to fix the problem,” Jennifer said as she bit her lower lip.
Amelia scrunched her nose. After a long sigh, she grabbed her laptop off the coffee table, yanked it open, and began to furiously type.
“What are you doing?” Jennifer asked.
“I want to check the records,” Amelia said. “To see if what this guy says is right. I don’t really remember there being a sale of that property over there, but...”
After a long pause, one that very nearly broke Jennifer’s heart, Amelia clicked her tongue and said, “That son of a...”
“Really? So the land was actually bought? And this letter—” Jennifer began.
Amelia nodded. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe this news wasn’t translated to your mother?”
“She never said anything about it. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have an inkling. But I’m sure that if the previous owner of the property knew that there was a possibility that the bakery would be torn down, Mom wouldn’t have signed.” Jennifer’s nostrils flared with rage. “That bakery means everything to her. It means everything to us.”
“I know. I know.” Amelia sighed again. “I feel like maybe, just maybe, there was a tiny bit of deceit being played out here.”
“Well, how do we get out of it, then?” Jennifer asked.
Amelia stood and began to pace the floor. Jennifer remembered that this was something Amelia had often done as a much younger girl when the six of them had piled together after school for a project. Somehow, she always came up with ideas when she paced. Somehow, she was able to articulate things better.
But this time, Amelia seemed at a loss. “This guy,” she said as she shook out the letter before her. “I’ve read his name in a few different places.”
“What is it?”
“Derek. Derek Thatcher. He just moved to the Vineyard from New York City, and he has all this big-city money and all these ideas of what he wants to do with it,” Amelia continued. “I’ve only had a handful of meetings with him. He’s a likable guy, sure—and certainly not hard to look at...”
“Focus, Amelia,” Jennifer said with a slight smile.
“But yeah. He has no history on the Vineyard. He doesn’t seem to have many friends. I don’t know why he came here...”
“Because it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world?” Jennifer offered.
Amelia shrugged. “Yes. Of course, it is. But people don’t get it the way we islanders do. You know that.”
“Of course I know that,” Jennifer whispered.
“The amount of money he has is difficult to deal with,” Amelia continued. “Because it’s clear that he won’t be shoved around. We can’t control him the way we could other people.”
“Are you suggesting that you normally control people through monetary means, Amelia?”
Amelia rolled her eyes and said, “The things you girls would never understand about business...”
Jennifer laughed at the joke. It felt strange to laugh, especially faced with this horrible brick wall, but she found her shoulders loosening and her smile widening.
“Come on, Amelia. Think. Use that big head of yours,” Jennifer said. “I know you know what to do.”
Amelia collapsed again on the sofa, gripped the wine bottle, and poured herself another a fair share in her glass. “I guess we could try to find a way to prove that there was some kind of deception. There’s a possibility that there are records that show our Derek Thatcher wasn’t entirely as truthful and forthright as we’re accusto
med to on the Vineyard.”
“Okay.” Jennifer felt the doubt behind her words. “But there’s nothing sure about that, is there?”
“No,” Amelia said sadly. She sipped her wine slowly and closed her eyes. “Unfortunately, these things happen all the time, all over the world. Some of the best businesses on the planet have had to close just because some business developer wanted to have his way with a place. I would love to give this man a piece of my mind. I would love to explain to him how much love we all have for Frosted Delights Bakery. A piece of my heart will live in that bakery forever. And plus—”
Her eyes began to gloss over. “I remember that last day so well. The last day, when the five of us were there with Michelle.”
Jennifer’s shoulders rolled forward slightly. The images of that final day were burned into her mind. Michelle, lifting a slice of watermelon into the light and then allowing it to drop against her tongue.
“Delicious, Mommy,” she’d said.
“We have to keep that bakery in the family, Amelia. My heart will break if it’s torn down. I know my mother’s will, as well,” Jennifer breathed.
Amelia nodded. “I know. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure we keep that place alive. You have my word.”
“I know,” Jennifer whispered. “I know I always have you.”
Chapter Nine
Derek stepped off the ferry at Falmouth, ran his fingers through his long black tresses, and considered the possibility of the next few hours. The drive up to NYC was a good five hours, all things considered, and then there was the issue of heading into the old apartment, a place that very much felt like a kind of tomb, then meeting up with his daughter, Emma, as soon as possible. He wanted to get in, get out of the old high-rise near Central Park, and then hug Emma as tightly as he could, then return to Martha’s Vineyard by the following day. NYC was his past now. He had pledged to push forward. The memories couldn’t have any bearing on reality. Not now.
Through the drive, Derek listened to a number of podcasts and old albums he had once loved. It had been a long time since he’d discovered anything new in the music world, which Emma normally teased him for incessantly. “Get as old as I am, and you’ll realize how much all that doesn’t really matter,” he’d said to her once, a few years ago. He had regretted it almost immediately. After all, it wasn’t like he really wanted his daughter to become old and out of date like he was.
Of course, the real amount of sadness hadn’t begun till the year before this one.
Before he knew it, the skyline appeared before him. He half-expected to feel something— something beautiful, like a flower unfurling in his stomach. But instead, he just felt darkness, a shadow over everything. His body no longer wanted him to exist within the boundaries of NYC.
Maybe he would be an official islander, the way he’d always wanted to be. That was his plan, anyway.
Back in the old days, he’d vacationed with his wife on Martha’s Vineyard. They’d gone probably four or five times before Emma’s birth, and each time, they’d felt it: the magic that hummed through the air, which seemed to fill them with this sense that everything between them would always be all right.
He hadn’t believed that Martha’s Vineyard had retained whatever it was he and his wife had felt back then. But the moment he’d stepped off the ferry to begin his new life, he’d felt an impossible level of calm. It was as though the island whispered, You’re safe here. Everything that’s gone wrong is over now.
He and his wife, Angela and Emma, had lived near Central Park since Emma had been two years old. He appeared before the gorgeous building and greeted the doorman, whose smile was both curious and glad.
“Mr. Thatcher, it’s wonderful to see you again,” he greeted. “I hope your travels from the Vineyard went smoothly.”
“They did, thank you,” Derek replied. He stepped into the lobby, and his eyes glazed over everything: the antique clock toward the far corner with its delicate gold detail; the taxidermy fox family in the corner; the antique couches that seemed never to hold a single human.
Just the one time, immediately after Derek had learned of his wife’s death, Derek himself sat on one of the couches. He’d collapsed, his knees knocking together. He hadn’t even known that he’d begun to cry until long after when he’d felt his shoulders shaking.
Upstairs, Derek entered the apartment and stood in the foyer with his keys hanging loosely in his hand. How many million times had he entered this very apartment? He could almost see every single day, flashed out before him: his wife in just a pair of shorts, her ponytail high as she raced past him to go run in Central Park. His wife, there on the couch investigating the back heel of her foot, which had bled from a new pair of shoes. His wife, running in from the kitchen with a cooking spoon in-hand as she cried, “Just in time, my love! I’m so glad you’re back. I hope you’re hungry.”
Had he fully appreciated every moment?
“Angela. I miss you so much,” he breathed while in the foyer of the apartment he’d decided to leave. “I couldn’t live here without you.”
There was no answer back. Derek marveled at the weight of the silence. It felt like being punched in the stomach, over and over again. But against all odds, he managed to step forward. One stride led to the next until he found himself in the office that, admittedly, he had probably spent too much time in over the years. Go out and laugh and chat with your wife and daughter, you idiot. You don’t know how much time you have left. It’s much less than you expect.
Derek grabbed the paperwork from the bottom drawer of the antique desk. He leafed through it, ensured that all was accounted for, and then forced himself back toward the door. He’d told himself: no more than five minutes in the apartment. Five minutes was all his heart could handle. Even as he strode toward the door, his ears began to ring with such ferocity that he felt as though someone screamed in them.
Only a half-hour later, Derek found himself at the trendy, uptown coffee shop, The Sunny Bean. He felt awkward and strangely sweaty as he stood in line behind a number of very hip individuals, all dressed in peacoats and ordering fancy, six-dollar lattes. Derek laughed to himself. Now that he had spent so much time on Martha’s Vineyard, these New York elitist types seemed a bit different to him. It wasn’t that Martha’s Vineyard didn’t have its fair share of wealth. In fact, it was known for it. But for whatever reason, the New York snootiness took on even greater heights than Martha’s Vineyard, which, Derek had noticed, held an incredible community of “islanders,” all of whom remained on the island through the rain, sleet, and tremendous amount of snow in the winter.
Derek ordered himself a black coffee. He only usually bothered with plain coffee – none of the sweet stuff. That caramel latte at the Martha’s Vineyard bakery had given him new life, but it wasn’t an everyday thing. The barista scoffed at the concept of black coffee as she took his name. Just as Derek grabbed his credit card to pay, he heard the bright voice of his daughter as she sprung in from the street.
“Dad!”
Derek whipped around to spot his beautiful daughter. She was twenty-two years old, around five-foot-three, with dirty blonde long hair that spilled down her back. To Derek, her peacoat did not look warm enough—not even a little bit and her cheeks were blotchy and pink due to the cold and dampness of the weather. She fell into a hug, and he held her close for a long time. There was so much about Emma that reminded him of Angela, a long, long time ago. It was a lot like having his heart run over by a massive truck.
“I’m so glad you found the place,” Emma said with a laugh as she fell back.
“It may surprise you, Emma, but I do have a smartphone, just like you,” Derek teased.
Emma chuckled as she yanked off her hat and tried to fluff up her mass of locks. “What did you get?”
“You know me.”
“Come on, Dad. It’s Christmas. Not even like, a peppermint latte or something?”
Derek was incredibly conscious of his he
alth. He’d always been a bit this way, but his wife’s surprise aneurysm had added extra fuel to that flame. He shrugged and said, “You know me. I love black coffee. It’s good for the soul.”
Emma ordered a matcha latte for herself, which Derek was able to add to his credit card purchase. She beamed at him as they waited for their steaming drinks toward the far end of the counter.
“I can’t believe it. When was the last time you were even in New York?”
Derek shrugged. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Did you miss it? All the frantic traffic, the noise and the people and the smells?”
Derek laughed. He was grateful for his daughter’s whimsical sense of humor. “To tell you the truth, Martha’s Vineyard has given me some semblance of peace for the first time in years. I can breathe again.”
“How boring,” Emma said.
Derek chuckled as he took both drinks from the counter and led them toward the corner. They adjusted themselves opposite of one another and then made the kind of eye contact that forced both of them to stop talking. There was a heaviness between them that Derek supposed they would never really be able to break. They’d been through Angela’s death together. They’d seen hell and returned to the land of the living.
“So, tell me about your classes,” he said finally.
Emma’s eyebrows popped up. “Oh! Right. Um. Let’s see. I have all my finals in the next week, or so, so I’m kind of panicking. American History, European History... Then there’s my linguistics class and my French class and...” She shrugged as she counted the courses out on her fingers. “I guess I’m missing one. I don’t know. There’s all these dates I have to learn for the history classes, and I can’t get my head around most of them. Whenever Napoleon did whatever he did, I can’t seem to care about it right now.”
“I bet it’s hard to focus on anything besides the wedding,” Derek offered.
“It’s true. I find myself hyper-focused but on all the wrong things. Like, I’m looking up different wedding dress styles, or Googling caterers, or thinking about venues...”
2142 Green Hollow RD Page 7