“I think you still have some good years left,” Andrew offered.
“I guess you probably didn’t hear this, but I went on to play baseball in high school,” Jonathon said.
Andrew’s heart quickened. “No way.”
“Yep. Pitcher on varsity all four years,” Jonathon said. “I was never as good as you; they were weak years on our team.”
“He’s being modest.” His wife, Carrie, appeared beside him with a toddler; apparently, she’d gotten the baby to go to sleep. “He was the star of the team. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with him.”
Jonathon blushed heavily. “Don’t listen to a single lie that comes out of her mouth. She was after my buddy on third base, but he was already taken.”
Carrie rolled her eyes and swatted Jonathon across the arm. Charlotte cut forward, passed them both glasses of wine, and told everyone that the clam chowder was very nearly ready. The screen door slammed closed again to bring Isabella, the spitting image of Laura round-about the time Andrew had met her for the first time. Behind her was Christine Sheridan, the same woman Andrew had seen on Charlotte’s doorstep. In her hands, she held several French-style baguettes.
“Christine! What are you doing here?” Charlotte asked brightly.
“I heard you guys were having a little dinner get-together, and I wanted to make sure you had enough bread,” she said. “Freshly baked by yours truly.”
“Christine, you’re too generous,” Claire said as she accepted the baguettes in her arms. “Seriously, this will go perfectly with...”
“Clam chowder?” Christine finished. “How could you have anything else? Especially with Andy back after so long.” She gave Andrew a tiny wave and added, “I bet you hardly remember me. I left when you were just a kid.”
Andrew shrugged. “Guess we’re both back now. How ya been?”
Charlotte ushered Christine in and threw an arm around her. “She’s been all over the world, is how she’s been. What was it you were telling me? Paris? Stockholm? London?”
“Yada yada yada,” Christine said. “But now I’m back where I belong. I do the desserts and pastries at the Sunrise Cove Bistro. My boyfriend is the chef.”
“Wow. Full circle,” Andrew said.
Christine blushed. “It’s been a pretty big year for me and my sisters. I never imagined any of us would return to the Vineyard. Now, I can’t imagine my life without it.”
Kelli’s children arrived after that: Sam, Josh, and Lexi. Andrew could hardly believe that this full-grown teenager, Lexi, had been the teensy babe he’d held in his eighteen-year-old arms. Apparently, they had all heard tons of stories about him; they spoke to him as though he was a celebrity.
Claire ushered everyone to the big dining room for clam chowder, freshly-baked bread, heaps of salad, homemade cheese from the nearby dairy farm, and buckets of wine. Christine bid everyone goodbye; she had to return to Zach for the night. When she ducked out of the house and disappeared, Claire mentioned, “She used to be so upset when we were growing up. Who could blame her though after Aunt Anna died and with Susan leaving the island right afterward.”
“She looks very happy,” Andrew said.
“She really does,” Charlotte affirmed as she decorated the edges of her plate with salad and cherry tomatoes. “There has been a bit of drama in the Sheridan house lately. Lola’s only daughter, Audrey, is pregnant and Christine has offered to raise the baby for the first few years so Audrey can go back to college. What else? Oh, Amanda, Susan’s daughter, is about to get married. And they also discovered Aunt Anna was having an affair with Stan Ellis and he was with her when the accident happened.”
“That’s a whole lot of something,” Andrew said with a hearty laugh. “I thought I had problems.”
“We all have problems,” Steven said as he broke off a healthy dose of baguette. “The Sheridan sisters have always handled their problems with style.”
Aunt Anna’s funeral was one of Andrew’s first really powerful memories. He’d been eight years old at the time, and his mother had forced him to wear a suit, one that made his neck itch terribly throughout the service. The Sheridan sisters had been inconsolable throughout, Lola especially, as she had been the youngest, the one more apt to fall apart. There had been a great deal of bickering after the service. Andrew’s mother had struggled with Wes. There had been a number of discussions between his mother and father about “how to help Wes” and, “what should we do about the girls?” As an eight-year-old, Andrew had only known one thing: what had happened couldn’t be taken back. Nothing would ever be the same again.
THE CLAM CHOWDER WAS sinfully delicious. It tasted every bit the same as their mother’s, and perhaps the tiniest bit better, although Andrew would have never informed Kerry Montgomery of this opinion unless he was after a beating. He dunked Christine’s perfect baguette into the sludge-like goodness and closed his eyes as he chewed. Since his departure from the island, he’d eaten perhaps thousands of TV dinners, fast-food-take-out, and random bags of chips. He had forced himself to forget what it meant to eat something made with love.
“Was a real shocker to see Beth Leopold today,” Steven said as they finished up the meal. “I guess I forgot about her over the years.”
“She has a young son,” Charlotte said. “Will. Poor thing has autism.”
Andrew’s heart sank. Beth hadn’t informed him of this. It added color to the sadness behind her eyes, the truth of the weight of her life.
“It was such a horrible thing when her parents passed,” Claire said. “I thought the poor thing was going to break in half.”
“She might have if it wasn’t for Will,” Charlotte said. “She had to be strong for him.”
“Where did she take you today?” Steven asked Andrew. “You guys were gone quite a while.”
“We just went for a drive,” Andrew said. “It calmed me down a lot.”
Steven studied Andrew’s face, contemplatively. He looked on the verge of asking a question that had way too much in its answer: what the heck happened to you over there?
But Claire interjected before Steven had the chance. “Who wants to help clean up?”
“I will,” Andrew said immediately. “I owe it to you. That was one of the best meals I’ve had in my life, or at least, in the past seventeen years.”
“Let’s not make our baby brother clean up,” Charlotte said. “He’s been gone all these years. We shouldn’t put him to work.”
“I insist,” Andrew said. This would allow him to avoid any uncomfortable conversations that could pop up.
Once at the sink, his leg tried its best to seize upon him. Andrew placed his elbow on the counter to support himself as he sipped his wine. Claire arrived with the first stack of bowls and winked at him. “Thanks for doing this.”
Kelli appeared with another stack as Andrew ran the water. Steam billowed around them as she beamed at him. “What if you wash and I dry?”
“A bit of teamwork in the Montgomery clan?” Andrew heard himself ask.
“That kind of thing. Yep,” Kelli said. “If you think you can handle it?”
“I’ve been a lone wolf all these years.” He chuckled.
“Oh, you mean, like this?” Kelli suddenly dropped her head back and wolf-howled toward the ceiling.
The sound and the look of it made Andrew burst into outrageous laughter. Carrie rushed into the kitchen and hissed, “You guys! I don’t want to wake the baby.” She looked on the verge of attack.
When Carrie disappeared again, Kelli winced and said, “She almost tore us to pieces.”
“And she would have been in the right,” Andrew said.
“Sure. I remember what that was like. If anyone messes with your baby’s sleep schedule, it’s grounds for murder.”
Andrew scrubbed the bowls and plates and passed them over to Kelli. Between bowls, Kelli snapped on the radio and hummed along. After a few rounds of forks and spoons, Andrew said, “You know, I was reading about Charlotte’s
wedding thing in a magazine when Claire called.”
Kelli’s eyebrows snapped up. “That’s eerie, isn’t it?” After a pause, she added, “But not as eerie as you actively purchasing a wedding magazine.”
Andrew chuckled. “Are you suggesting my heart is too black to read about the joys of marriage?”
“Naw. I saw the way you looked at Beth Leopold today. I know your heart is still the color of cotton candy,” Kelli teased.
Andrew rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Right.” He leaned toward her then and whispered. “What happened with Jason? Obviously, Charlotte was out west with some guy called Everett, but I can’t get a full read on what’s up.”
Kelli’s eyes grew shadowed. “He died in a fishing accident. It was awful. To be honest with you, Charlotte has only just begun to act like herself again. Claire and I thought she would never find a way out of that black hole. But that’s the thing about life, isn’t it? The only way through is... through.”
Andrew’s throat felt tight. How dare he think, after all these years, that he was the only one of his siblings who had gone through trauma and horror? He scrubbed at another bowl and said, “I should have been here.” The words were a surprise to him.
“It’s okay that you weren’t,” Kelli breathed. “Charlotte understands. We all do. At least, as much as we can. I know we’ve missed so much. It seemed like you were always on one tour or another when we tried to get in touch with you.”
“I was pretty purposeful with that, I guess. I didn’t want it to be easy to find me,” Andrew admitted.
“Oh, really?” Kelli said with a sarcastic smile. “Huge shocker.”
Andrew blushed as he sipped a bit more wine. “You never lost that sense of humor after all these years? I would have thought you would have turned into an upstanding lady by now.”
Kelli scoffed. “A lady? I can’t believe you would insult me like that.”
Chapter Twelve
Lexi, Gail, Abby, and Rachel ambled into the kitchen a few minutes later. At seventeen, fifteen, and fourteen, they were among the most terrifying creatures Andrew had witnessed as of late. They looked at the world with an understanding he would never know. They were on the verge of their entire lives.
“Hey girls,” Kelli said. “You come in here to help me and your Uncle Andy?”
“What? No way,” Lexi said with a funny smile. “We’re here because the speaker system is taken over with the game, and we want to practice our dance.”
“Oh, no. Here we go again,” Kelli said playfully as she leaned back against the counter. “A new routine or a different one?”
“Mom, come on. The dances change constantly,” Lexi said. “And if we’re going to go viral, we have to keep working.”
Lexi spoke with the matter-of-fact tone that Kelli had once worn with her younger sisters and brother. She placed her phone on the counter and connected it to a Bluetooth speaker further up the counter. It bubbled up then offered a firm, “You are now connected to MONTGOMERY BLUETOOTH.”
“Easy as that,” Kelli said.
Lexi, Rachel, Gail, and Abby got into a line after that. They crossed their arms over their chests and nodded their heads in time to the beat, four times in a row. Then, their right foot burst out to the side in almost perfect unison, and they built up the first several steps in what seemed to be an elaborate routine over the top of a horrible pop song.
At least, the song was horrible in Andrew’s ears.
When they stumbled on a dance move, Lexi stopped the music and instructed the other girls on where they had gone wrong. Andrew watched perplexed. Kelli’s elbow found his rib as she said, “I bet this is like watching aliens from another planet for you, isn’t it?”
“Something like that.”
Lexi turned and arched her eyebrow with curiosity. “Do you not know this song, Uncle Andy?”
“Never heard it in my life,” Andrew told her.
The girls exchanged gasps. Even Kelli chuckled and said, “Wow. I feel like that song’s been crammed into my skull. I’ll never lose it.”
“Yeah. It played on every single radio station all summer long,” Rachel informed him. “Where were you?”
Mostly alone in my apartment, trying to relearn how to walk.
“Guess I missed out,” Andrew said.
“Were you living under a rock?” Gail asked.
“I guess I was. And it wasn’t even a very nice rock,” Andrew said with a smile.
The girls giggled. He could see it reflected back in their eyes: they thought their Uncle Andy was rather funny. This was all he could have ever dreamed for.
“All right. Let’s get him in the group,” Abby said suddenly.
The other girls looked perplexed. Andrew muttered to Kelli under his breath, “Are they talking about me like I’m not here?”
“I think they’re having a business meeting,” Kelli whispered back. “You know how it is in the entertainment industry. It’s hard to get everyone on-board.”
The girls completed their meeting, turned to face him, and cleared their throats in unison. If their goal was to operate as a kind of in-unison-forever dance-troupe, Andrew thought they had a pretty good chance.
“We’ve decided to offer you a place in our dance troupe,” Lexi announced. She seemed to be their leader, as she was the oldest.
“I see,” Andrew said.
“The thing is, there’s a higher likelihood of going viral if you include an older family member in your dance video,” she continued. “Like, people always go viral with their dads, for example.”
“And we’ve asked our dads. They don’t want anything to do with it,” Gail affirmed.
“I see,” Andrew said. “So, your last chance has fallen on my shoulders, huh?”
“Don’t think of it that way,” Lexi told him. “Think of it as an opportunity to let the world see you shine.”
Andrew had never been a gullible person. In the previous seventeen-some years, in fact, he had grown increasingly pessimistic, prone to not believing what he read in the news or what people told him.
But now, with these four bright-faced and optimistic teenage girls in front of him, he was frozen. How could he possibly tell them how little he thought of the internet? How could he explain that he hadn’t moved his body in a dancing motion in years?
“Okay. I’ll give it a try,” he told them.
Kelli’s jaw dropped. Her eyes glittered with good humor. “Wow. Uncle Andy. You’re really back, aren’t you?”
“Don’t rub it in,” he said as he took a delicate limp toward the girls. As he went, he smacked his hand on his thigh and said, “Just so you girls know, I have a bum right leg. I can still put weight on it; I can still move it. I just might have to switch up a few moves.”
“No problem,” Lexi told him. “When I twisted my ankle in cheerleading, I learned to switch up some of the moves so I could still perform.”
That was the funny thing about kids. They didn’t allow the world to weigh them down. They found ways to ease around the pain and move forward. It was something humans necessarily forgot along the way.
Why was that?
The girls instructed him as best as they could, given the circumstances. They showed him the head-nods and the hip-tilts and the foot motions, which they eventually sped up to match the sound of the song. They played the same song so many times that it, too, was crammed into the back of Andrew’s skull. After a while, he even found that he rather liked it.
Thirty minutes later, they managed to record their first dance. Kelli held the phone as they performed in the space near the piano in the living area, and her face was stoic and firm the entire time to ensure that she didn’t shake the phone around. When they finished, the girls and Andrew hovered around the phone to watch. Although there were a few hiccups, a few forgotten motions, Andrew had done better than all right and the girls made sure to tell him how pleased they were.
“If this goes viral, we might need to have you back in the troupe,” Le
xi told him. “I hope you’re ready for that.”
Before filming, Kelli had snuck a tray of chocolate chip cookies into the oven. On cue, the oven timer blared out, and she shuffled back into the kitchen to draw out the gooey batch. Andrew re-entered the kitchen to fully take in the sight: his favorite sister, a tray of freshly-baked cookies, Christmas decorations hanging in every corner. It was enough to take his breath away.
Gail snuck up behind him and switched the song on the Bluetooth to an old Christmas classic: “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
“That’s a little on the nose, don’t you think?” Andrew said with a laugh.
Gail shrugged. “It’s a beautiful song. It always makes my mom cry.”
Claire entered the kitchen and placed her hands on her hips. “What always makes Mom cry?”
“This song,” Gail said. She stretched out her arms and beckoned for her mother to come toward her. Claire did. She scooped her daughter up in a hug and then pretended to ballroom dance with her to the gorgeous, sweeping music.
Lexi and Rachel joined up into a partnership; then, Laura and Steven even joined, with Steve insisting that he’d only come into the kitchen to steal a chocolate chip cookie. Kelli tapped Andrew’s elbow and said, “I don’t want to beg, but...”, and Andrew flung his arm around her, grabbed her hand, and twirled her round-and-round, the way she had done for him when he’d been just a little boy and eager to spin around until he got dizzy.
These moments were blissful. They ached with nostalgia, yet cried out with something else: the urgent desire to make something new with the people Andrew loved the most in the world. Maybe it was the drama of the Christmas music; maybe it was the string instruments getting to him or the bravado of the singer’s voice. It didn’t matter, though. Regardless of it all, he was home.
A shadow appeared in the doorway. For a long moment, Andrew forced himself to avoid it, like a memory he didn’t want to look at too closely. But as the song closed out, the shadow stepped forward. Lexi dropped her arms from around Rachel; Gail and Claire moved to the side. Instantly, Kelli’s smile dropped, and she drew her hands away from Andrew so she could greet the newcomer to the room.
A Vineyard White Christmas Page 8