A Vineyard White Christmas
The Vineyard Sunset Series
Book Five
By
Katie Winters
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2020 by Katie Winters
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Katie Winters holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
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Chapter One
2003
It wasn’t enough to be the black sheep of the family. Andrew Montgomery, the broad-shouldered and sinfully handsome son of one Trevor Montgomery, was also the wildest. If life was a game of Texas Holdem, he was all in. No question.
Eighteen years old and in the prime of everything, he flung his thumb out in the blisteringly chilly rain outside of Falmouth and waited for a car to pass by. Beside him, his best friend on the planet, Kurt Leopold, yelped and called for the cars to stop.
“Come on, man! You got spare room!”
“If we don’t get a ride soon, we’re going to be late to the gig,” Andy said under his breath. He lifted his thumb just the tiniest bit higher, arched it just-so, and suddenly, a little beat-up red car tore to the side of the road. The driver opened the window to reveal himself: a mid-forties guy with grizzled hair. Probably, he’d done a fair bit of hitchhiking back in his day.
“Where you boys off to?” he asked.
Before they knew it, Kurt and Andrew were stationed in the older guy’s Toyota: Andrew in the passenger and Kurt in the back. They had never snuck off the island like this. They’d stolen Andrew’s father’s boat, hustled across the Sound, and parked up on one of the free docks, barren now that it wasn’t the summer season.
“We’re going to a gig in Boston,” Kurt said.
“That right? Which gig?”
“Blink-182,” Andrew said.
“Ah...” The older man adjusted in the driver’s seat. His eyes were hazy with nostalgia. “Nobody likes you when you’re twenty-three. That song?”
“Yep. They do that one, and loads of others,” Kurt said.
“They’re one of our all-time favorite bands,” Andy added.
“If only the other Kurt hadn’t left this world,” Kurt added. “Nirvana would have been my number one show.”
“Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” the older man said with a smack across his heart. “Kurt Cobain was my life round-about ten years ago. And it’s just your luck, you know? I’m headed to Boston myself. But you boys better not hitchhike like this again. Not that you’d listen to an old guy like me. Where is it you live? Here in Falmouth?”
Kurt and Andy made heavy eye contact in the darkening air. Finally, Kurt said, “We live on the Vineyard.”
“No way!” the man said. “I love the Vineyard. Of course, I haven’t made it over there since I was a janitor for a while at one of the bed and breakfasts. Those summers over there were magical, some of the best times of my life. In the eighties, every single summer was the summer of love.”
Andy and Kurt laughed appreciatively, both grateful they hadn’t stumbled into a serial killer’s car.
“Do your parents know you’re headed to Boston tonight?” the man asked, taking a quick look at Andrew. “I can’t imagine you guys are anywhere past twenty. Ah, but it isn’t my business, is it? When I was a teenager, all I wanted in the world was to get away from where I was from. The minute I was allowed, I burst out the door without looking back. Tell you the truth, I kind of regret it. I don’t think I knew what I had.”
They sat in silence for the rest of the ride. Andrew and Kurt had planned this escapade over the last two months. In teenager-time, two months was a lifetime. They hadn’t thought this night would ever come fast enough. After their driver released them onto the frantic streets of Boston, they stood with their eyes wide and their hearts pumping with adrenaline. Twenty-somethings ambled around them in states of drunkenness, their arms flung around one another. It was the end of January, and the air hovered right between freezing and not: hence the rain.
Andrew produced their tickets at the door, where they showed the fake IDs they had purchased from a kid at school who knew a guy. The door guy hardly grunted at the IDs before he tilted his head toward the door. By the time five minutes had passed, both Andrew and Kurt had cheap beers in their hands. They were headed toward the front of the crowd.
Andrew had never seen a world like this one. In fact, he had hardly been off the Vineyard his entire life. His father, Trevor Montgomery, and his mother, Kerry Montgomery, were the top-billed real estate brokers on Martha’s Vineyard, which meant they wanted nothing that the Vineyard couldn’t give them. Frequently, Andrew stumbled into his father finalizing property deals to famous celebrities in their fancy dining room, the one they never used. Only a few weeks ago, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston had laughed with Trevor Montgomery over three cans of Fresca, like they’d known one another for years.
The concert hall was filled with classic punks. Green mohawks, nose rings, bad tattoos, the kinds of people Andrew’s father would have said were “trashy or losers,” and the kinds of things Andrew probably would have gone for if he didn’t think his mother would have had a stroke.
“Look at how hot that girl is,” Kurt muttered into Andrew’s ear.
Andrew said, “Yeah, wow,” even though he really didn’t know which girl Kurt referred to. Every girl in there looked the same to him.
The concert began with an opener that nobody paid attention to, except Andrew and Kurt, that is. They had traveled all that way for the first real gig of their lives, and they wanted to focus on every single second of it, even if it hurt their eyes to do it. When Blink strummed their guitars for the first time, Andrew’s heart shattered into a million pieces. Whatever emotion these guys gave him, he wanted to follow that emotion around for his entire life.
It had nothing at all to do with the stuffy life on Martha’s Vineyard that he had begun to hate. It had nothing to do with the boxed-in life his father wanted him to live.
JUST AFTER ONE IN THE morning, Andrew and Kurt scrambled back on Andrew’s father’s boat and revved the engine. Andrew zipped his coat all the way to his chin as he clutched the steering wheel with a gloved hand. The air that rippled over the Sound felt like needles.
“That show changed my life, man,” Kurt howled over the sound of the motor. “I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”
“Me neither!” Andrew called.
When they reached the center darkness of the Sound, Andrew cut the engine. He hadn’t expected himself to do it. There was just something about the way you couldn�
��t see where the night sky changed to the water beneath them, as though they existed inside of a black globe, with the stars twinkling above.
“Do you think you’ll leave the Vineyard?” Andrew asked Kurt then.
Kurt collapsed to the side of the boat, grabbed a beer they had stocked, and cracked it open. “What do you mean? Like, after graduation?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Man, I don’t know,” he replied. “Nobody in my family ever has. And you heard that guy who drove us up to Boston. People crave the life we have.”
The waves pulsed against the boat and tilted it to-and-fro.
“My dad is so intense sometimes,” Andrew said. “I worry that if I don’t leave, I’ll never get out from under him, you know?”
“He can be a real SOB sometimes,” Kurt agreed.
Andrew chuckled. “But then again, I think about my siblings. Steven already has Jonathon and Isabella. Kelli has three kids, with Lexi just a little baby. I know Charlotte and Claire are itching to have babies with Jason and Russell. I don’t want to miss them growing up.”
“You want to be Uncle Andy?” Kurt asked. A grin splayed across his face.
“Sure. Who wouldn’t want that?”
“I guess you’re right. If Beth has kids, I want to be around for that.”
Andrew’s eyes flashed at the sound of Beth Leopold’s name. She was a raven-haired beauty, no more than five-foot-one, with glowing green eyes and an easy, expressive laugh. At just one year younger than Kurt, she had chased at their coattails for as long as either of them could remember. Andrew couldn’t pin down exactly when he had fallen for her, though; it had unfurled from his heart one summery day, maybe, when he’d realized he wanted no life without her.
The thing of it was, now that she was seventeen, she had a boyfriend.
Andrew shoved his hands deep into his pockets, hidden from the chilly wind. Before long, they latched themselves to the side of the Montgomery family dock. Both Andrew and Kurt had flung themselves off of this very dock time and time again, summer after summer, as they laughed up to the blissful blue sky above.
“Thanks for one of the wildest nights of my life,” Kurt whispered as he cut away from the dock and back toward his house, only a few streets away. “I’ll never forget it—ever.”
Andrew hustled up to the screened-in porch that overlooked the dock and the Vineyard Sound. Tentatively, he cracked open the screen door as gently as he could, grateful that the house was dark and shadowed. Nobody noticed he hadn’t come home before curfew.
Or at least, that’s what they wanted him to think.
When he opened the porch door that led into the kitchen, he found his father at the kitchen table with a book in his hands and a small candle flickering beside him. For a long time, Andrew hovered in the doorway, his mouth gaping open. It was almost like his father was a ghost.
Finally, Trevor Montgomery closed his book slowly, turned his eyes toward his youngest son, and said, in an ominous voice, “Andrew, won’t you close the door? It’s January, and you’re freezing up the house.”
It didn’t take long for the ax to fall.
“What on earth were you thinking? Your mother is half-sick with worry, but I told her, our Andrew? Our Andrew is just being a fool, maybe, but he’s also smart as a whip when he chooses. He knew just what to do to get himself out of here, and he knows just what to do to slip right back. Thing of it is, Andrew, I’m pretty smart, too. I caught wind of your little trip. I hope you’re happy. I hope you had a damn good time. Because son? If you ever do anything like this again, you’ll be out of this house in a damn flash. Do you hear me?”
A wave of darkness fell over Andrew’s face. He found it difficult to answer.
What did he want to say, exactly? Something like; If you made it easier to talk to you, maybe I would have asked if I could go. Oh, no, wait. That wouldn’t have worked, either, because you refuse to listen to anything I ask or say. You don’t care. You already had four children and me? I was the mistake, wasn’t I? God, forbid you have any time left for me. You want me out of the house just as much as I want to go.
Just as he opened his lips, his mother appeared in the kitchen doorway. She adjusted the belt of her fuzzy pink robe and blinked sleepily.
“Why doesn’t everybody head to bed?” she whispered. “It’s almost three in the morning. Nothing good happens at this time of the night.”
Chapter Two
2003
TREVOR MONTGOMERY DIDN’T look at his son Andrew for a good two months after that— he was always known for being a little too bitter. But Andrew knew that having a son involved in sports was currency, especially on Martha’s Vineyard, and Trevor began to greet Andrew with high-fives and pats-on-the-back as the first game of the season grew closer to spring.
“There he is. My star pitcher!” he called, sometimes even from his fancy car as he drove past with celebrities in the passenger side, ready to look at properties.
Andrew loved baseball. Throughout his younger years, his older and only brother, Steven, had taught him almost everything he knew now. He had stood out in the yard near the Vineyard Sound and played catch with him, adjusted his stance, and helped him to really focus. Steven was now thirty years old; his eldest son was now seven. This left Andrew to teach Jonathon everything Steven himself had taught him about baseball, especially since Steven was busy at the auto shop. “When it comes time for you to provide for a family, Andy, you’ll be just as exhausted as I am now. I can’t find the energy to do anything but eat and sleep,” Steven had told him recently.
The first five or so games of the season went better than okay. The local newspaper interviewed Andrew a handful of times about his performance and called him “Martha’s Vineyard’s Greatest Athlete.” Everything seemed to simmer with potential, especially after a college scout called him and said, “I can’t believe we missed out on you last year. We might be interested in having you come play with us next school year.”
All that changed when Andrew and Kurt were caught drinking out behind the baseball diamonds on a beautiful April night. Andrew was halfway through a fifth of whiskey, and Kurt had fought his way through about seven beers so far. Apparently, their screamed lyrics of the Goo Goo Dolls song they loved so much had alerted the neighbors, and the police had responded.
“Dad’s so pissed,” Andrew said at Steven’s dinner table.
Steven cast him a dark look and gestured toward Jonathon, who played on the floor with a selection of plastic dinosaurs.
“Sorry. I mean, Dad’s never going to forgive me for this. Better?” Andrew asked.
“I guess. And you know that’s not true,” Steven said. He opened the refrigerator, grabbed two beers, and placed one in front of Andrew. As he sat across from him at his kitchen table, the smell of the auto shop wafted in the air around him.
“You sure you want to give me one of these?” Andrew asked, arching an eyebrow.
Steven shrugged. “You’ve had a long day. Dad probably tore your ear off. I think you deserve it.”
Andrew popped the top off his beer, just as Jonathon hustled up with a dinosaur toy.
“Uncle Andy! Do you know what this dinosaur is called?” he asked.
“I don’t, Jon. Tell me,” Andrew said.
“It’s called a Brachiosaurus,” Jonathon said. “Do you want to know what that means?”
“I think you’re gonna tell me,” Andrew said with a laugh.
“It means ‘arm lizard,’” Jonathon explained. “They lived during the mid- to late Jurassic Period, and they’ve mostly been found in North America, which is where we are.”
“Almost right, Jon,” Andrew said. “We’re actually on an itsy-bitsy island alongside North America. I imagine there weren’t that many Brachiosaurus here.”
Jonathon’s smile crumpled, which resulted in instant proof of Andrew’s mistake.
“Shoot, I mean. Well, I’m sure there were at least a few of them,” Andrew corrected himself. “I�
��m sure some of the Brachiosaurus saw our little Vineyard and thought, hey! Maybe we could camp up there. Build our fancy houses and eat our caviar and...”
Jonathon tumbled back on the floor and busied himself with his dinosaurs again. Andrew shrugged at Steven and added, “I guess he doesn’t care about my own personal scientific analysis of Martha’s Vineyard.”
“Most people don’t, Andy,” Steven said. “Where did that hatred come from, anyway? I never remember you having it out for the Vineyard when you were younger.”
Andrew considered this. He tilted the beer bottle in his hand and remembered the blissful summers, the wild nights, and the cozy winters on his mother’s lap while she read him a bedtime story.
“I don’t.” The words tumbled out of his lips before he could stop them. “I really don’t.”
Steven furrowed his brow. “Then what’s the problem?”
Andrew took a long sip of beer. “Mom and Dad just really want to be done with me. They don’t see me the way they see you, Kelli, Charlotte and Claire. I was a tag-on. A mistake. And now that I’ve messed up yet again...”
“Come on. Almost all of us got in trouble for drinking as kids,” Steven said.
“Well, I don’t think Mom and Dad remember that,” Andrew said. “And with my luck, they’ll only remember my mistakes. Their final problem child. The black sheep. The one that made them look bad and tarnished their perfect reputation.”
“None of us could have known that their real estate company would have taken off the way it did,” Steven affirmed. “Their quality of life has really shifted in the past years.”
Andrew shrugged. “So you admit it. They’re different. And they need me gone.”
That minute, Steven’s wife, Laura, appeared in the kitchen. She rubbed Steven’s shoulder softly and gave Andrew a guarded, yet still friendly, smile. She looked like she wanted to say something about the beer but didn’t.
“Hey Andy,” she said. “How’s the end of senior year going?”
“It’s going, I guess. One accident at a time,” Andrew said, then took a long swig from his beer.
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