Susan and Christine laughed, while Wes blinked at all of them in confusion. Lola, of course, grimaced. Everyone knew what was on her mind. She didn’t want to be reminded that Audrey’s current journalism career was over.
“We have to go up to Boston,” Susan suddenly interjected, maybe as a means to take everyone’s mind off Lola’s anger. “Tomorrow.”
“Oh? Why?” Christine asked.
Again, Susan seemed cagey. “There’s more to go over with the case. You know how I am with all of this—a bit obsessive.”
“I would probably just leave it all alone if it weren’t for her,” Scott said, his words coming a bit too quickly.
“You really need to explain to me how all this goes,” Audrey said. “I’m fascinated with your career, Aunt Susie.”
“I’ll definitely chat with you about some of my strangest cases when I have more time,” Susan said.
“Just a hint! I can hardly take it!” Audrey said.
“Hmmm. There was the college kid who kidnapped his girlfriend and kept her in a cabin in the woods...” Susan said, her eyes sparkling.
“No! I read about that when it happened! That was your client?” Audrey cried.
“Oh, yes. Good kid. He always asked for grape soda when we met together,” Susan said.
“Good kid?” Christine asked with a laugh.
Susan shrugged. “I mean, in the context of the other people I worked with, sure. Always flossed his teeth.”
Aunt Kerry arrived a few minutes later with a large vat of her famous clam chowder. Christine hadn’t expected this, and it seemed nobody else had either, but nobody was in any mood to turn it down. They sat out on the porch and dipped their spoons into the liquid goodness and laughed throughout the rest of the afternoon. At one point, Lola grabbed a bottle of wine from the kitchen and asked Christine if she wanted a glass. She surprised herself with her answer.
“Not right now, thanks. Maybe later.”
After lunch, Wes laid down for a nap; Aunt Kerry went back to Uncle Trevor, who, she said, was in the middle of a big fight with the lawnmower and Lola headed into town for a drink with an old high school friend. Susan and Scott excused themselves for a boat ride. This left Audrey and Christine together again. As they shared casual banter and laughed, they cleared the picnic table and scrubbed up the dishes in the kitchen. Audrey paused and looked up at the framed picture of Wes and Anna from circa 1977, when Anna had been around twenty-two years old.
“It’s really eerie. It’s like looking into a mirror,” Audrey said.
“Mom’s genes must be so strong. They beat out Dad’s in every way possible,” Christine said, letting out a little laugh.
“When I met Susan’s daughter, Amanda, on the ferry a few weeks ago, I felt exactly the same way,” Audrey said. “You know, I think it’s insanely selfish of both Mom and Aunt Susan that Amanda and I were never able to hang out. It’s not like we were that far away.”
Christine sighed and dabbed a towel across her hands. “It’s complicated, I guess.”
Audrey swallowed. “Do you get the sense that Susan and Scott are lying about something?”
Christine was surprised enough to answer honestly. “Actually, I do.”
“What do you think it could be?” Audrey asked.
“I have no idea. Even since I got back to the Vineyard, Susan has felt like she’s drifted further and further away from me. I thought I would return to my sisters and that we would build our relationships even more, but I don’t know. I guess I was wrong again.” She bit her lower lip, hating that she’d already said so much. Audrey didn’t deserve to be in the middle of all that.
“Should we ask Aunt Susan about it?” Audrey tried. “Just point-blank. Surprise her into telling us what’s up. It can’t all be about Chuck.”
There was a creak on the steps. Audrey and Christine turned to find Wes, rubbing at one eye and giving them a sleepy smile.
“Oh, no! Did we wake you?” Christine asked.
“No, no. I can’t get much of a good nap in. I always wake up and think I’m wasting so much time of my life! Besides, I wanted to ask you, girls, if you wanted to head to the beach with me,” Wes said.
It was decided they would head off to the west, back toward Aquinnah Cliffs Overlook, so that Audrey could see it for the first time. As he snapped his seat belt across his waist in the passenger seat, Wes said he hadn’t been to the cliffs in ages.
“Anna used to love it over there,” he said wistfully.
“We went there so many times as children,” Christine said as she cranked the engine.
“Gosh, you’re lucky. All I did as a kid was go to the Dairy Queen,” Audrey said with a laugh.
As they headed west, Christine stopped at a little market to pick up a few items for a later snack. Clouds billowed up across the blue sky, making it textured and more alive than its normal, cerulean self. By the time they reached the cliffs, a slight rain had begun to patter across the glass.
“Shoot,” Christine said, gripping the steering wheel as they sat in the parking lot. “I guess we should have checked the forecast.”
“It’s only a sprinkle,” Wes said. He pressed against the door, opened it, and immediately shot out toward the edge of the cliffs.
Audrey and Christine exchanged glances, shrugged, then followed after him. After the mugginess in the air, the light rain felt incredible, cooling. Together, they hovered over the edge of the cliffs and gazed down at the monstrous waves, which tossed against the clay rocks.
“It’s gorgeous,” Audrey murmured.
“When I was a boy, I used to stand right here in this spot and throw rock after rock down there,” Wes said, trying to take another safe peak over the cliff.
Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, Wes, Audrey, and Christine walked along the edge of the rocks, eased down toward the beach, and dipped in and out of the water as they pleased. As the sun began to sink lower toward the horizon, threatening to deliver them into the night, the three sat on spare towels they had found in the car and watched as the ocean turned from orange to pink to purple. It was pure poetry.
“I think you’re doing the right thing, Audrey,” Wes said suddenly.
The words were surprising. Audrey and Christine blinked toward him, waiting.
“I know your mom thinks you’ve messed up. But I would never think of it that way,” he said. “We in the Sheridan clan have so, so much love to give. Back when I first had my girls, I was almost overwhelmed with the amount of love I felt for them. For my Anna, my Susan, my Christine, and my Lola. Time passes quickly. And I don’t know that I can say I’ll always have the memories. But I don’t regret a single thing.”
Audrey’s eyes shimmered with tears. Christine wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her in closer.
“Thank you, Grandpa,” Audrey murmured. “It means a lot to hear you say that.”
“But that should go for you, too, Christine,” he continued.
Christine arched her brow in confusion.
“You have just as much love to give as the rest of us, and you’re just as deserving of love, too,” Wes continued.
Christine guffawed as Wes tapped the side of his nose.
“I know you better than you think I do,” he said with a sneaky smile. “I think I know what’s going on in that cranium of yours. You think the story is over because you came back. But it’s only just begun.”
Chapter Seventeen
Christine pondered her dad’s words throughout the night, staring up into the blackness. Every few seconds, her stomach stabbed and panged with the memory of Zach’s kiss. The way he had looked at her had nothing to do with their stupid high school feud and everything to do with two adults with similar interests, and a lot of love in their hearts.
Maybe all the chaos they had put themselves through back in high school had only been leading them to this moment. Maybe, like Susan, she could find happiness on the island she’d run away from so many years ago. Maybe t
his was her forever.
She awoke with a level of optimism she hardly recognized in herself. On a kind of mission, she folded the croissants and baked the cakes and stirred up frosting, her hands moving like butterflies over the batter. By the time Ronnie arrived to help at the walk-up counter, she had worked herself up into a tizzy.
“Zach’s off today,” Ronnie said, almost immediately, as he bagged croissants for eager tourists. “He takes one day off every two weeks. What do you think he does with his time off? Me and the other busboy have a bet going.”
Christine laughed. “What do you think he’s up to?”
“Well, he’s pretty obsessed with fine dining and really good at making delicious food,” Ronnie said. “So my bet is that he just surrounds himself with fast food, anything disgusting and sugary from his childhood, and just vegs out all day. If he spends his whole life committed to only good quality things, he’ll go nuts.”
Christine was disappointed that Zach had made an appearance, but she wasn’t deterred. She headed into Zach’s office, with an excuse to leave him a note, and found on a spare envelope the address of Zach’s actual house in Edgartown.
Sensing that eight in the morning wasn’t a good time to head to Edgartown—especially not on his only day to sleep in, she spent the morning and early afternoon on the Joseph Sylvia State beach, attempting to read but continually falling into daydreams, all of which revolved around some kind of cushy future she and Zach could create together.
“No, I can’t have children,” she heard herself telling a future Zach, “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy. There are so many options for us. And besides. Isn’t the bistro kind of like our baby?”
When it came time to go to Edgartown, her thoughts had reached an intense and loud pitch. As she drove toward his place, she whispered to herself, her eyes feeling on the verge of burning holes in the road.
“Calm down, Christine,” she muttered to herself. “You’re just going to talk to him. You don’t have to do anything brash. You don’t have to hold a boom box over your head and tell him you think you’re soul mates.”
She had never done anything like this before. With other guys, she had gotten together with them after drunken nights, drunken accidents—stuff they had decided to try just because of their dark and sometimes silly decisions.
Zach’s house was located near the waterline. It was a stony cottage with a low roof and a little porch that looked out toward the eastern-island waves. Christine parked the car along the road and peered up, her heart bumping in her throat. This was the craziest thing she had ever done, maybe—or the most genuine. Maybe both. She wasn’t sure.
Christine clutched the bag of fresh croissants she had packed, a gift, and used her other hand to rap on the door. Two voices vibrated on the other side before Zach appeared, wearing a pair of jeans and a black v-neck. His smile was plastic-like and difficult to read.
“Christine. Hey. What’s up?”
He had never spoken to her like this, so stoically as though they were strangers. It was obvious that she had done the wrong thing, coming over like this, unannounced. She felt it like a rock in her stomach. Seconds later, a woman appeared a few feet behind Zach. There was a strange pause.
“Remy, this is Christine. She’s the new pastry chef at the bistro,” Zach said. His voice was strained.
Christine lifted her hand warily. Remy did the same as she stepped forward. Up close, Christine recognized that she had recently been crying; her eyes were lined with red.
“Remy is someone I met at culinary school in Boston,” he said.
“Oh,” Christine said.
She felt as though she was at the top of the water, peering down below the surface, unable to see more than a foot or two deep.
Why had she come here again? To tell him she was falling in love with him?
Right. How stupid.
It had all been a mistake.
“Well, I just came to drop these off,” Christine said. “Like we talked about before—a new recipe.” Christine shoved the bag of croissants toward Zach, forcing him to take them. “I’m still pretty new at the bistro and I just want to make sure I’m, you know, making all the right choices,” she tried to explain, her eyes on Remy.
Remy was really, particularly beautiful. She was a red-headed thin and short little thing, maybe one hundred and ten pounds and in her late-thirties. Maybe she had come to the Vineyard to retry what they’d had before. Maybe she’d come to the Vineyard to do exactly what Christine had planned to do now.
Thank goodness, she wouldn’t have the opportunity to tell him. She could lock that side of her heart away for good and, of course, throw away the key. The kiss had obviously meant nothing to him. It was just as well.
“Well, I’m off, then,” Christine said. “Thanks again, Zach, and I guess I’ll talk to you at the bistro. Yep. Okay, see you.”
With that, she spun around and shuffled down off the porch and back toward her car. She hardly allowed herself a single thought, a single frantic fear, until she yanked up in front of the Edgartown Bar again, unclear, totally, how she had even gotten there.
Why on earth had she returned to the Vineyard? Had she really assumed that she would be able to rebuild whatever happiness she’d had as a kid? Heck, whatever that happiness had been, it was all an illusion, anyway. She’d always been the one with so much angst. She’d always had a heart of black.
And when she’d actually thought Zach Walters was into her in high school, he had made himself very clear and ripped her heart in two.
This was no different.
He had just wanted to get back at her, maybe or prove just how much better he was, even though she had worked her way up through the culinary world. No matter how far you got in this life, there was always someone there, ready to tug you back down.
SHE SNAPPED OUT OF her reverie while standing at the bar counter. Rita blinked at her and said, “I’m going to ask you again. What do you want to drink?”
“Right. I’m sorry,” Christine whispered. “I want a vodka tonic. Please.”
It was not time for a vodka tonic. It was barely four-thirty in the afternoon. But in minutes, Christine found herself staring straight ahead, both hands gripping her chilled vodka tonic, listening to Rita’s game shows blare on and on. When her eyes cleared again, she realized she stared directly at one of the photographs of Stan Ellis.
Stan Ellis. The man who had started it all—who had decimated her family.
Suddenly, Christine marched back up to Rita. Rita gave her a confused smile, one that seemed to say, Please, stop interrupting my TV show.
“What can I do for you now, honey?” she asked.
“I wondered if you could tell me where Stan Ellis lives?” Christine said.
Rita arched one of her overly plucked brows. “What is this about?”
“It’s really important,” Christine said. “I’m leaving the Vineyard for good tomorrow, and I need to talk to him before I go back to New York. You must know that he was a good friend of my mother’s.”
This was the only card Christine could play. While Lola dealt with her Audrey debacle, and Scott and Susan brewed in their own secrets, Christine wanted one thing and one thing only: to face the man who had killed her mother, tell him just what she thought of him, and then return to New York.
It had never been right to come back here. It had been little more than a vacation. That was all. When she thought of it in a year or two, when she was surely back on her feet as a pastry chef in another restaurant in Manhattan, it would be just a blip in her memories.
Rita studied her for a long time. Finally, she said, “You promise he’ll be all right if I give you his address?”
“More than all right. I think it’s about time the two of us have some kind of conversation is all,” Christine said, holding her stare.
Rita scribbled an address on the back of an old envelope and passed it her way. “It’s at the very far end of this road,” she said. “Whe
n you think you’ve gone too far, you’ve still got about a half-mile to go. He’s along the water. You’ll see his boat tied to the dock below. I’m sure you’ve seen his boat before.”
“Anywhere you go on this island, you see Stan Ellis out fishing,” Christine returned.
“That’s what I thought,” Rita said.
Christine took the envelope, paid her bill, and raced back to the car. Her heart had moved fully into her throat and banged away in there. After accosting Zach, it was time to accost Stan. Then, she would get off the island as quickly as she could, taking Felix, who would probably miss the warm embrace of her father along with her, and start a new life. Maybe in Queens—she’d never tried Queens.
Rita had been right about the route to Stan’s. Christine snuck the car onto a gravel road and bumped along, moving just about five miles an hour, glancing left and right at each of the little shacks that led down toward the Sound. Just when she had thought she had gone too far, she pushed herself forward, until a crooked shack that reminded her of Scott’s little house, popped up next to a little cliffside. She stopped the car and blinked at it.
So this was it. This was the life her mother had wanted to abandon them for.
Christine held her breath as she stepped up the rickety staircase. The windows were dark, shadowed, but Stan’s boat clacked against the dock down below the house. This meant there was a good chance he was around.
Christine lifted her hand and rapped it delicately against the door. The sound echoed through what looked like three rooms: a kitchen, which held a little table and a single chair, a living area with an old TV, and a bedroom with a sloped mattress. It felt strange to see these things through the window, but the place wasn’t big enough not to notice. Nobody lurked in the rooms. No shadows shifted.
Stan wasn’t home.
Christine’s knees clacked together. She pressed her palms against the door and whispered, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do,” over and over again. It all seemed so meaningless: her mother’s affair with Stan, Stan leaving the boat lights off, and then her mother’s death, Audrey’s pregnancy, and now, Christine’s stupid lust for Zach. None of it seemed to lead to anything else.
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