A Vineyard Crossing

by Jean Stone

  If right that second Kevin had been there and asked Annie what he should do, she might advise him to let Meghan go back to Boston and Taylor back to Hawaii and let everything sit for a while. And wait for the best solution to evolve.

  She knew, however, that was the kind of ending that looked good only on paper.

  “I’m leaving,” Meghan said. “I went back to see Kevin last night. He told me we’re divorced. He told me he married Taylor. So I have no business being here.”

  “Meghan . . .” Annie sat next to her on the staircase, not knowing what to say or how to feel. Restless wiggled in her arms; she scratched his ear to quiet him.

  “He said you knew. I figured you were protecting me, so thanks for that.”

  “I didn’t know he’d married her. Not until late yesterday. . .”

  “But you knew about the divorce.”

  “I wasn’t positive it was final.”

  She stood up. “Oh, it is. The good news is that I get to keep the trust fund. All of it. So maybe I’ll start my own business with it. Whenever I figure out what that business will be. I only know it won’t be turtles. As interesting as they are, I only made that up so no one would wonder why I came to the Vineyard by myself.”

  Annie readjusted Restless on her lap. “I’m so sorry . . .”

  “Me, too. But he’s right. We’re far too different for either one of us to be completely happy. We always were. I’d stopped taking the pill—I’d hoped a baby might help fix our marriage, but I don’t expect that really ever works, or at least, usually not well. Anyway, I was sorry that it died. Sadder than I would have expected.” She picked up her suitcase. “I told him I signed the consent form for his surgery as his wife. He said if anybody barked about it, he’d take care of it. Kevin’s a good caretaker, you know.” She offered a little smile. There had been good parts of their lives together, that was clear. “Francine agreed to follow me to drop off the rental car, then she’ll take me to the boat.”

  Annie stood up and hugged Meghan, the dog taking turns to lick both their faces, and Annie taking a moment to look one last time into those lovely cornflower blue eyes. She did not suppose their paths would cross again. With a teary sigh, she hugged Meghan again, then said told her that she and Francine needed to get a move on, if they wanted to make the eight fifteen.

  * * *

  After showering, dressing, and acknowledging a tiny hole that saying good-bye to Meghan had left in her heart, Annie tried to concentrate on Taylor—her new sister-in-law. If offering a “decent human gesture” to be kind to Simon had been important, perhaps Annie should also extend an olive branch to Taylor. If Kevin and Taylor loved each other and planned on staying married, Annie would work hard not to ruin that for them.

  She told John that she’d meet him downstairs. Then she headed toward the kitchen to grab coffee to-go.

  The table already was set, but, with Francine having taken Meghan to the boat, who was in charge of breakfast? It was ridiculous that Annie had been so distracted she hadn’t checked to be sure the basics of the Inn were being covered. But as she moved from the great room into the kitchen, she heard voices coming from the chef’s room—the sisters from Indiana. Ginny was providing instructions; Tina was piling muffins into a basket.

  “I know how to serve people,” Tina barked at her sister. “I was a waitress, you know.”

  “Just because you waited tables at our church tent at the State Fair doesn’t mean you qualify to call yourself a waitress. For one thing, it was forty years ago.”

  Toni set down the basket. “Forty years? That long?”

  “Closer to fifty,” Ginny said.

  Annie smiled. She expected that, now and again, the sisters squabbled. “Hello, ladies. I see you’re helping out this morning?”

  The women turned to her, both looking a little nervous, as if they’d been caught with their hands in the muffin tin.

  “Actually, Francine already put eggs and bacon in the chafing dishes, and your nice young man, Jonas, was supposed to help serve,” Ginny said. “So you could say right now, we’re helping out him. Bella had a fussy night. She rode with Francine and Jonas to Boston. We have no idea why they went, but when they got back, Bella woke up and wouldn’t go back to sleep. She kept saying, ‘Bella go for ride!’ That little one is so adorable. Anyway, he’s driving her around the island hoping she’ll fall asleep again.”

  Annie wasn’t sure what part was more “adorable”: Bella, or the way that Ginny told the story.

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I won’t be joining you, either,” she told the sisters. “I only came in for coffee, but now I think I’ll bring those delicious-looking muffins to the hospital. I have a feeling my brother will be having visitors. You probably know there’s plenty of homemade bread for toast if anyone wants it, and cookies in the freezer if they want something sweet. Okay?” She didn’t know why she was confirming with the Inn guests that taking the muffins would be okay, but Annie supposed she’d been raised to be polite, and some parts of the past simply had stuck.

  “But is there any dog food?” John came into the kitchen, Restless in his arms. “Like bacon and eggs? He really loves those.”

  The sisters from Indiana ooh’ed and ahh’ed over Restless (and John) and fixed a bowl for the dog while Annie bagged the muffins and poured a Thermos of coffee. Which was when Bill walked in.

  “Morning,” he said brightly and looked squarely at Annie. “I hope it’s a happy one for you?” He was dressed in khaki shorts and a golf shirt; his hair was neatly in place, and he was clean-shaven. It seemed that, like Taylor, he’d undergone a transformation.

  Annie took a step back, her defenses apparently still on alert. “So far,” she said.

  Bill gave her a wary smile. “If you have a minute, could we go outside on the patio? I’d like to discuss a couple of things.”

  She looked at John, then back to Bill. She avoided glancing at the sisters, whose eyes were glued to her. “Okay.” She moved outside to the patio, grateful that John was behind her. And Restless, too, of course.

  * * *

  “I took the photo,” Bill announced after they regrouped. “At Illumination Night.”

  Annie’s flicked her gaze to John then back to Bill. “Why?”

  “Look,” he said, “Simon and I talked last night. I know he finally told you the truth about the accident. He didn’t tell you the truth about me, though. I’m not his loyal assistant. We’ve been friends since grad school. He called me the night your husband was killed. I know the guilt he’s carried all these years. So does his wife. When he told us he’d found out where you were, he asked me to come with him for backup. Moral support. Whatever you want to call it. It was my idea to come incognito as his major domo. Anyway, once we got here, I could tell by the way he was acting stupid-nasty that he was getting cold feet. Stupid-nasty isn’t who Simon is.”

  By then, Annie’s mouth was dry. She was glad to feel John’s hand resting on the small of her back.

  “I called his wife—her name’s Tracy, by the way. We decided I should do something drastic to make him face the music. Or at least to make him have to face you. I told her I’d be on the lookout; then I saw my chance at Illumination Night. I’m really sorry for the nightmare it caused.”

  “The people you hitched a ride with said you didn’t have a fancy camera,” Annie said, as if that mattered now.

  Bill laughed. “I’m not a cameraman. I’m in advertising. One of those guys who still wears suits and works on Madison Avenue. I had my iPhone, though. Those little buggers take great shots.”

  So that was why the two men hadn’t been laden with camera gear that night.

  “How’d you know,” John interrupted, “about VineyardInsiders?”

  “The day we got here, Simon went to the library; I visited a few pubs, pretending to be fascinated by the island. It’s amazing what you can learn when you belly up to a bar, order a beer, and be friendly.”

  “And you put it in the Times?�
� Annie asked.

  “Not me. That was Tracy’s doing. She figured if Simon had more exposure it would make him nervous and shock him into telling you what he’d come to tell you before you—or the tabloids—started prying into his past, digging around for any kind of other ‘indiscretions.’ She wanted me to apologize to you, though. And to say she’d always known that if she’d been in your shoes, she would have wanted to know what really happened back then.”

  “For which you may thank her for me.” She closed her eyes. “I think my editor would like to thank her, too.”

  Then Jonas came around the corner with Bella, and John asked if he’d mind taking care of Restless, too, so they could get to the hospital.

  Jonas said he’d be happy to. He really was a nice young man, as Ginny had said. And Annie had a feeling that Francine would agree he was a keeper.

  After thanking Bill again, Annie left the Inn in Jonas’s capable hands. Then she and John got into his truck and buckled up, and Annie was catapulted back to the present, back to reality, back to Kevin, who was the one who mattered now.

  On the way, she explained the latest Kevin-Meghan-Taylor development; John sat very still as he took in every word.

  * * *

  Kevin had been moved out of ICU and into a regular room, which was good, because he was allowed more than a single visitor for more than a few minutes. When Annie and John arrived, those visitors included Earl, Claire, Lucy, and Francine, who didn’t mention that she’d taken Meghan to the boat. Taylor was there, too, sitting close to Kevin’s bed. His eyes kept drifting over to her, his mouth set in a soft smile. He looked happy, which counted for . . . everything. And though there might have been too many people in the room, it made for a nice family portrait of sorts.

  Even more surprising was that Simon was there. He’d brought a bucket of flowers that he’d picked in the meadow. Annie smiled at him and nodded.

  “I have muffins for everyone,” she said, setting them on a table. “Enjoy.”

  “Not for me,” Francine said, patting her small belly. “I’m on a diet.”

  Earl laughed. “You’re the last person who needs to be on one of those.”

  “Oh, hush,” Claire said. “Leave the girl alone. She wants to eat healthy now.”

  Annie frowned, then looked back at Francine. “You’re such a great cook. You already eat healthy, don’t you?”

  Francine shrugged. “I want to do better now. Because I’m eating for two.”

  It was another of those old clichés that Annie loved. And this time, it was the best of all.

  Exclamations filled the room, followed by joy, tears, and a smattering of applause. Claire started chattering about knitting baby things; Lucy offered to babysit; Earl said he hoped it was a boy because, no offense, but it was beginning to feel like there were an awful lot of females on Chappaquiddick.

  “Hello?” Kevin interrupted. “May the patient say a word?”

  Everyone shut up.

  He reached over and took Taylor’s hand. She hesitated at first; she wasn’t one for displays of affection. Perhaps she simply wasn’t accustomed to someone loving her that much. “My wife and I . . .” he began, but then he got choked up because he was an old softie just like Earl. “My wife and I are going to be grandparents,” Kevin said. “There’ll be a brand-new baby in our family.” Then he cried because he couldn’t help himself. Earl said it must be because of all those narcotics Doctor Mike was giving him.

  Everyone laughed, and everything was good.

  Then Francine said, “Stop all this nonsense! Before the baby comes, I’m going back to school. Jonas is coming with me. My aunt and uncle insisted that he’ll stay with them, too. Jonas will paint and look after Bella; I think I can finish classes before the baby’s born in the spring. Then we’ll be back. This is our home.”

  Annie had a hard time holding back her happiness. She looked at Kevin and wondered if he’d told Taylor about the baby Meghan lost, but Annie supposed she needed to stay out of that, too.

  “I have one question,” Earl said. “Kevin, if you and Taylor are going to be grandparents, how’re you going to do that from Hawaii? All this internet stuff is fine, but a baby needs his family.”

  Kevin looked back at Taylor, who shook her head a little, as if she were resigned. “Every time I try to leave this island, something drags me back,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s karma; maybe it’s time I stopped trying to fight it.”

  “We can spend time in Hawaii in winters,” Kevin said. “Now that I’m no longer afraid to fly.” As usual, he was trying to make someone he cared about happy. It wasn’t a bad trait to have.

  “But you can’t go until after the holidays,” Claire said. “We need family here for the holidays.”

  Sometimes Annie wondered if anyone actually remembered who were the blood relatives and who were not, though by now she knew none of that mattered.

  She looked at Simon—a newcomer to the group, but she had a feeling he might be back, too. Maybe he’d bring his family; she thought that would be nice. Then Annie glanced back to Francine, who was beaming, and wanted to tell her to hold on tightly to the happiness that she felt now, to savor every second of her time with Jonas and their bewitching young love.

  Then Earl signaled Annie to join him in the hall.

  “I told him Meghan left,” he said. “Francine called me from the boat after she dropped her off. She also told me about Kevin and Taylor being married.” He lowered his head and let out a low whistle. “I did not see that one coming. Anyway, Meghan told Francine it was for the best. Who are we to say otherwise, right?”

  Annie agreed. The sad part was, it was clear that everyone liked Meghan. Of course, they did not know the whole story—and they’d never hear it from Annie.

  “Sometimes things happen for a reason,” Annie said. “Even if it’s years before we understand what the reason was.” Her dad had said that the night Brian had been killed. She thought of her dad now: he would have loved Kevin; he would have loved John. He would have thought Taylor was curious, but he’d never judged anyone, the way he hadn’t judged Aunt Sally. “If you’ll excuse me, Earl, I think I want to go up to the garden for a few minutes alone, okay?”

  Because he was Earl, he simply nodded and didn’t ask questions.

  * * *

  It was called the Healing Rooftop Garden. And though Annie had no physical pain, she realized she’d kept her emotional hurt buried inside for too long. Now that it had been lifted, she was able to see that the trauma from Brian’s accident had stopped her from doing so many things, mostly from trusting that life could be, would be, good again.

  She sat on a bench and gazed past the pots of beach grass, out to the harbor. The Island Home was making its way back to Woods Hole, crossing Vineyard Sound to that other world, “the mainland,” some islanders called it, “America,” others said.

  Letting her thoughts drift back to Brian, she wondered how things would have been different if he hadn’t died, if they’d moved to California, if he had become a principal. She imagined they would have had a family, children of their own to share their love. She would have kept teaching third-graders, because she’d loved that, too. But Brian was gone before any of that had happened.

  As the air stirred, softening the heat of the August sun, Annie supposed that maybe sometimes things really did happen for a reason—even if we could never be sure what that reason had been. All she knew was that she now had wonderful people and wonderful things all around her. Regardless of what Simon’s brother had taken away, she would have missed out on more than she could have imagined.

  Getting to know Donna.

  Meeting Kevin.

  If Annie had gone to California with Brian, she would not have been able to be with Murphy at the end of her life.

  She would have missed out on knowing Winnie, which Murphy must have arranged so Annie could have a living, breathing version of her to lean on.

  Nor would Annie have had Earl, Claire, Franc
ine, and precious Bella. Or Jonas, and the new life that he and Francine were expecting.

  And Meghan. Annie would never have known her, nor would she have met Simon. But with them had come unforeseen challenges that ultimately helped shape Annie’s vow to embrace Kevin and Taylor’s marriage. Challenges, after all, would always be part of living.

  If things had turned out differently, Annie would not have had the chance to love John. She would not have met Lucy. Or Abigail, who would always be in John’s world. Annie would try hard not to judge her.

  But perhaps as significant as the new people and all the love now in her life, was that if Annie had gone to California with Brian, she might never have written a book. She would not have moved to Martha’s Vineyard, this magical island that had taken hold of her heart. And there be no Vineyard Inn.

  It was because of both the good and the bad that Annie had finally found harmony—that she’d learned the real meaning of gratitude, and the importance of having hope for whatever would come next.

  Surprisingly, Murphy did not toss down her opinion from high in the crystal blue summer sky. But then Annie felt her old friend’s hand rest gently upon her shoulder, and together they sat in silence, looking out to the sea.

  Don’t miss Jean Stone’s next Vineyard novel . . .

  A VINEYARD WEDDING

  After months of procrastination and doubt, Annie Sutton has finally set the date to marry John Lyons—Christmas Eve on Martha’s Vineyard. But though it’s already the end of November, Annie knows a lot can happen between now and then, especially on the island where life, like fishing nets, often gets tangled. This time it will be worse. Because a much-loved member of her island family suddenly goes missing, sending shockwaves from Chappaquiddick to the Gay Head Cliffs.

  Love and betrayal, vengeance and trust, among family, among friends. A VINEYARD WEDDING tackles the challenges of how to navigate it all. How to know when it’s safe to be happy. And when to walk away . . .