A Vineyard Wedding

Book 5: Vineyard Novel

by Jean Stone

Genres: Women's Fiction; Family Life

Synopsis

Finding love on Martha’s Vineyard has been a dream come true—but for the bride-to-be, the price of happiness may be too high . . .

With her long-awaited wedding to police sergeant John Lyons only weeks away, bestselling author and Vineyard Inn proprietor Annie Sutton is faced with more drama than usual. Between the hideous heirloom gown her new family expects her to wear and the challenges of bonding with John’s contentious daughter Abigail, Annie’s having serious doubts. But when the baby she once found on her doorstep goes missing, Annie has bigger concerns, including that the little girl’s pregnant, older half-sister is in no condition to hear bad news . . .
 
Desperate for answers, Annie combs the island, questioning friends and even her family-to-be. Because suddenly it seems as if Abigail will do just about anything to stop her father from marrying Annie—even if it means putting a child at risk. But if scaring Annie half to death is the plan, it’s working. Nothing else matters now except finding the little girl. And if postponing her future with John—indefinitely—is the only way to make that happen, it’s a sacrifice Annie may have to make . . .


Praise for Jean Stone’s Previous Novels

“Filled with heart. . . . Perfect for long summer days. For fans of DebbieMacomber or Elin Hilderbrand.” 
—Booklist

“Lie down on the couch, put a pillow under your head and enjoy the ride.”
—The Vineyard Gazette
 

Release date: April 26, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

It was the ugliest wedding dress Annie had ever seen. Which she knew was ridiculous, because all wedding dresses were beautiful, weren’t they? Like newborn babies and puppies and kittens?

She stepped back from the full-length mirror to see if the image improved. It did not.

“How is it?” Claire called from the living room, where she no doubt was wringing her arthritic hands, anticipating the verdict from her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. Originally, the dress had been made for Mabel Lyons, grandmother of John, Annie’s fiancé. But that wedding had been in 1941, when heavy fabric, big shoulder pads, and a bodice tufted as if made for a Victorian settee may very well have been the height of fashion. Claire hadn’t worn it at her own wedding to Earl because she was too short, and the “bottom line,” Earl later confided to Annie, was that it was two or three sizes too small.

But Annie couldn’t use size as an excuse.

“You’re slender enough not to strain the satin buttons that cascade down the back,” Claire had told her when she’d suggested that if Annie wore it, the gesture would be special for all of them, especially for John, who’d been close to his grandmother Mabel. “And you’re taller than she was, so on you it will be tea length. Which will be lovely.” Thankfully, she hadn’t noted that the dress was ivory, which would be more “appropriate” than white, as this would be Annie Sutton’s third wedding. Which Annie was trying not to think about now.

“Annie?”

She realized she had to come up with an answer that wouldn’t hurt Claire’s feelings. “John’s grandmother must have been a beautiful bride” was all she could utter in spite of the fact that, as a best-selling author of mystery novels, she might be expected to have “the perfect words” at hand on any occasion.

“Come, come!” Claire clapped her hands. “Step out here and let’s take a look.”

“One second,” Annie said, stalling. “Let me find shoes. Dresses always look better with the right heels.” She knew, however, that heels were not the answer. Maybe a large burlap sack . . .

“Judy said it’s in wonderful condition,” Claire affirmed. Judy worked at the dry cleaners in Vineyard Haven, where, according to Claire, they’d given it a thorough going-over.

“She’s right,” Annie replied. “It’s hard to believe it’s so old.” She pushed aside sandals, sneakers, and flip-flops in an attempt to locate the lone pair of heels she’d salvaged from the life she’d left in Boston when she moved to Martha’s Vineyard a few years earlier. In addition to writing novels, she now co-owned and managed the Vineyard Inn on Chappaquiddick and also spent time gathering berries and wildflowers for the soaps she crafted—activities that hardly required four-inch high-heeled Manolo Blahniks.

Finally she found the comfortable black pumps and slipped them on. Even the mirror seemed to grimace. Luckily, the wedding wasn’t until Christmas Eve, so Annie had time to buy proper shoes and a more suitable dress.

Right now, however, she needed to say something that wouldn’t make her seem ungrateful. As she put her hand on the doorknob, she tried to imagine how she would feel if the wedding dress had been her grandmother’s, instead of John’s. Annie had known only one grandmother—her father’s mother—and she’d been kind and loving. Turning the knob and opening the door, she willed herself to believe she was wearing Grandma Sutton’s dress.

As she stepped into the living room and onto the rug that had actually been braided by her softhearted grandma, Annie looked at Claire.

“What do you think?”

The only parts of Claire that moved were her pearl-gray eyes as she scanned Annie from the hemline to the bulbous shoulders.

“Well,” Claire said.

Just as Annie was about to smile and say, “It’s a bit much, don’t you think?” Claire said, “You look so beautiful, Annie. Oh, yes, this is going to make Earl and John so happy.” She wiped away a tear. Then another.

There was little doubt that Claire wasn’t crying for the same reason Annie wanted to. What made it worse was that Claire had insisted they not tell John about the dress because it would be a wonderful surprise. Which meant Annie couldn’t enlist his help to convey the news that she did not want to be caught dead, let alone married, in it.

She stifled a groan. “I’ll get matching shoes, of course.”

With an enthusiastic nod, Claire said, “Turn around. Let me see the back.”

While Annie was doing a one-eighty, she wondered if there was some other way to convince herself that the dress would be fine. But when she turned back to face her again, Claire was frowning.

“You don’t seem excited.” The woman’s flyaway white hair was nailed down with a headband that day, causing her seventy-five-year-old face to look more intense than usual.

“Well,” Annie said, “it’s amazing how the quality of the fabric has held up all these years. But the style . . .”

Claire chuckled. “Right! You probably never had shoulder pads. I think they were last popular in the eighties.”

Not wanting to correct her by saying the fad had lingered into the nineties and that she’d had more than one outfit with two padded triangles stitched at the shoulders, Annie reluctantly replied, “The dress does fit. You were right about that.” Then she checked the clock over the sink. “I’ll adjust the rest later. Right now, I’d better change so we can start making our Thanksgiving pies.”

But as she started to retreat to the bedroom, the door to the cottage swung open, and Lucy, John’s younger daughter, the delightful designated maid of honor, walked in. After a quick look at Annie, Lucy halted.

“Wow,” she said matter-of-factly, “that’s the ugliest wedding dress I’ve ever seen.”

An awkward pause gave way to Claire’s resounding sigh. She dropped into the rocking chair, brushed back a lock of hair that had escaped the headband, and said, “I might be an old lady, but I’ve always thought tradition never goes out of style.” She sighed again. “Let’s go make the pies. And worry about this later.”

Claire and Lucy headed up the small hill to the Inn to begin the annual baking extravaganza. Annie stepped out of the dress, put it in the garment bag, and hung it on the back of her bedroom door. Then she changed into her jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt, and sneakers, and added a light wool jacket. She mused that people on the island wouldn’t be startled if a bride showed up at the altar wearing this outfit instead of traditional wedding attire.

Stepping outside onto her porch, Annie breathed in the stillness, the soothing calm of off-season. It was one of those late-fall afternoons when the sky and the water merged into the same color—gunmetal gray. But the leaves were not yet done falling from the scrub oaks and the cedars, so splotches of autumn’s red and gold glowed in the air. In the distance, a small fishing trawler chugged into the still water of Edgartown Harbor, no doubt carrying the last of the striped bass and bluefin tuna of the season.

Earl had taught her that kind of trivia when he’d been the caretaker of the small place she’d rented long before she’d known the difference between a fishing trawler and a yacht. And before she could have imagined he would become her foremost teacher of the rhythm of the island as well as a supportive friend and, soon, a father-in-law. And now, she had no idea how to tell him that his mother Mabel’s wedding dress wasn’t going to be the catch of Annie’s wedding day. But as she watched another boat bob in the harbor, she wondered if it would be kinder if she simply wore it. Would it serve as a symbol to the family that she was accepting love from all of them?

Of course it would. That would be Murphy speaking. Although her old college friend had died several years ago, Annie occasionally still heard her friend’s voice and sage advice.

“Even though it looks like something I picked up at a flea market?” Annie asked.

John will think you’re beautiful no matter what you wear. Of course, there is one sensible alternative . . .

“Which is . . . ?”

Have it altered. A good dressmaker can work miracles.

“There isn’t time. The wedding’s a month away, and with the holidays coming, the seamstresses here must be busy. I’d be better off going over to the Cape and buying my own dress. One I actually like.”

Don’t you have soaps to pack?

Murphy was referring to the inventory Annie had amassed a month ago so it would be cured and ready for wrapping in time for the Christmas in Edgartown Holiday Fair. For the past couple of years, Annie had a booth; this year, Lucy was going to help. Annie had lost precious time in the early fall thanks to her latest book tour, so she’d need to work nonstop from the day after Thanksgiving for the two weeks until the Fair, which would be another two weeks before her wedding.

She closed her eyes and wrapped her jacket more tightly to ward off a sudden chill. “So I have to wear the dress?”

Like I said. Have it altered.

Annie shoved her hands into her pockets. “Thanks, Murph. And like I said, there isn’t time.”

It’s all in whom you know.

Claire, of course, was the first person who came to Annie’s mind. In spite of the pain in her aging hands, the woman remained adept at knitting sweaters and making doll clothes. She also knew more about sewing than Annie, who could barely thread a needle. “But Claire thinks it’s great the way it is.”

I’m not talking about Claire. I’m talking about her granddaughter.

Annie flinched. She knew that Murphy didn’t mean Lucy but the other one, the older one. Abigail.

What have you got to lose? You know she’s good at fashion stuff. It’s her college major, for God’s sake. What more do you want?

“It would help if she liked me.” As hard as Annie had tried, Abigail, unlike Lucy, hadn’t been receptive to her father’s fiancée.

You’re the adult. You can do something about that. But first, get yourself up to the Inn. I don’t eat much these days, but the aromas of Thanksgiving still make me happy.

If Murphy were a real ghost and not a figment of Annie’s overactive writer’s imagination (the jury was still out on which of those things was true), she might have formed a cloud of wispy, white smoke, spun around a few times, then swirled up to the sky. As it was, Murphy’s aura merely vanished, leaving Annie with the uneasy prospect of trying to enlist self-centered, eighteen-year-old Abigail’s help. Or not.

“Apple-cranberry and pumpkin,” Claire said as she stood at the long marble counter, rolling out piecrust.

“No pecan?” Lucy whined. “And no chocolate cream?” She pouted as if she were five instead of fifteen.

Claire looked at Annie. “Please explain to my granddaughter that four grown adults do not require two pies, let alone one apiece.”

Like Annie, Claire was probably a little sad that this Thanksgiving only Earl, Claire, John, and Annie would sit at the big table. The others in their world were, or would be, off island, except for Rose Atkins, their quiet and shy retired winter tenant.

“I hate that I can’t be here,” Lucy said. This year, John’s daughters had “switched parental schedules,” as Lucy expressed it, and would be performing “mother duty” in Plymouth over the long weekend. That way, they could be on the Vineyard for Christmas Eve and attend their father’s wedding to the woman who did not want to wear their great-grandmother’s dress.

“I wish you could be here, too,” Annie said, then perused the kitchen. “But we’ll have fun making pies. How can I help?” She was about as adept at baking as she was at sewing, but Claire and Lucy never seemed to mind.

“The pumpkin’s in the oven, starting to roast, and Gramma’s working on the crust for the apple-cranberry,” Lucy said. “Do you want to peel and slice apples?”

“Don’t use the machine,” Claire interjected. “They come out nicer when we do them by hand, don’t you think?” From oven roasting sugar pumpkins for pies to preparing apples by hand, Claire, like her husband, usually preferred to stick with the old ways. Annie could not disagree, especially since pumpkins and apples had been grown and harvested right there on Chappy without pesticides, organic before organic had become a household word.

As for the cranberries, they, too, were local, having been harvested from the bog in Vineyard Haven. Annie had learned that the bogs in Massachusetts yielded the best berries because, eons ago, glaciers had formed them; they were not man-made. The island was lucky to have one. It was one of those facts that Annie-the-writer loved learning.

“I’ll help you pick out the best apples in the root cellar,” Lucy said, as if the amount of apples needed for a single pie required a two-person team.

Once they were outside, however, Lucy whispered, “That wedding dress really is gross.”

Annie tried not to smile. She opened the bulkhead and went down the half flight of wooden stairs. The root cellar was well stocked; it emitted a scent of autumn’s sweetness, though the chill felt more like winter.

“What are you going to do?” Lucy asked, carefully selecting a combination of McIntosh, Cortland, and Granny Smith apples and setting them in a canvas bag that Annie held open.

“I don’t know, honey. But I love that it was your great-grandmother’s—and don’t tell your father that. It’s supposed to be a surprise.” She examined a McIntosh. “So I do want to wear it. I might ask your sister if she’ll help . . . uh, renovate it.”

Lucy made a face. “Knowing Abigail, she’ll probably tie-dye it or turn it orange.”

“But if we can convince her to keep its original color, it will look nice with your powder blue.” Instead of traditional holiday red and green, Annie wanted the wedding décor in shades of winter white, silver, and powder blue—with Lucy’s dress accented by an overlay of tiny glittering stars. The colors would blend with the sea-glass shades of the great room at the Inn where the wedding was going to take place. Claire had noted that she could remove the wintry sparkles from Lucy’s dress afterward so she’d be all set for the spring prom.

Lucy stared into the canvas bag. “My sister has a new boyfriend. She’s bringing him to Mom’s for Thanksgiving. And the weekend.”

“Oh. But at least Abigail will be out of your hair, right?”

“It’s not fair. Kyle’s been my boyfriend since last summer, but I’m not allowed to bring him even for dinner. Abigail meets some guy on the boat a couple of months ago and suddenly he’s moving in, like he’s part of the family.”

“Is he an island boy?”

“He’s in college in New Hampshire. I guess he lives there, too.”

“But you’ll bring Kyle to the wedding, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, I think that’s more important.” Annie smiled. “Now, do we have enough apples?”

“More than.”

As they headed out of the cellar, Annie’s phone rang: it was her brother, Kevin, who’d gone to Minnesota to spend the holiday with part of their mismatched island family—“the troops,” Kevin liked to call them. She handed the bag of apples to Lucy, then stepped outside and answered.

“Whatcha doin’?” Kevin asked nonchalantly.

“Lucy and I were foraging for apples.”

“If they’re for Thanksgiving pies, you’d better forage a few more. Taylor and I will be home tomorrow. And we might have a few tagalong troops if we can get enough plane reservations.”

“They’re coming back?” Claire asked after Lucy scampered into the kitchen ahead of Annie, dumped the bag of apples on the counter, and blurted out the news about the pending arrivals from the Midwest. “And more importantly, why?”

“Kevin and Taylor will be home tomorrow,” Annie said. “He’s trying to find more seats on a plane, so I don’t know who all will be with them. As for why they’re coming, I have no idea. Maybe they’re afraid of missing out on your cooking.” Her smile widened; she was pleased that her brother would be there, even though his sometimes-crabby wife, Taylor, would be with him.

“So Francine and Jonas are going to come?” Claire asked, wiping her hands on her bib apron. “Will Bella be with them?” Once a stranger, Francine had become much beloved; Jonas, her boyfriend, was Taylor’s son; and Bella was Francine’s adorable little sister. None of which mattered, because they all now felt like blood relations.

Lucy looked at Annie. “Gramma wants answers.”

Annie forced a laugh. “Sorry. All I know is that Kevin and Taylor will be on the three forty-five boat tomorrow, so I’ll be there at four thirty to get them.” It went without saying that the travelers would fly into Boston and take the bus down to the ferry terminal. It also was taken for granted that when mentioning the boat’s schedule, islanders rarely referred to the boat by when it was due to pull into Vineyard Haven but by when it departed from Woods Hole on the Cape—in this case, three forty-five.

It was an island quirk; Annie had learned there were a lot of those.

“I wonder if Francine’s aunt and uncle will be with them?” Claire asked, as if Annie hadn’t already clarified what she knew.

“I have no idea,” Annie replied. She secretly hoped not; she’d met them only once, briefly, and though they’d seemed nice enough, their presence would shift the comfy dynamics of the group Annie loved.

Don’t be greedy, Annie would swear she heard Murphy say.

“No matter what,” Lucy interjected, “if more than Kevin and Taylor show up, you’re going to need more than your Jeep to haul them and their stuff back to Chappy.” Then she pressed a forefinger to her chin as if she were in deep thought. “Hmm . . . As it happens, my dad is supposed to bring me and my sister to the noon boat tomorrow . . .”

“Abigail and me,” her grandmother corrected.

“Right,” Lucy said. “Anyway, if everybody comes in at four thirty, won’t it make more sense for my sister and me to take the five o’clock boat? Then my dad would be right there in Vineyard Haven to help.”

Lucy’s agenda was transparent to Annie: by taking the five o’clock boat instead of the one at noon, Lucy would spend less time in Plymouth with her mother and sister. And her sister’s new boyfriend.

“Let’s see who winds up coming, and what your dad says,” Annie said. “For now, we need to think about pies. And turkey. And everything else! What do you think, Claire? What will we need if more of them come?”

Claire pulled her iPad from her purse. (It always surprised Annie that old-fashioned Claire never went anywhere now without her tablet.) Ever the matriarch, she quickly calculated that if five to seven additional people showed up, they would need more potatoes and butternut squash, but that they had plenty of those in the root cellar. She added that the turkey would work for dinner, but there wouldn’t be leftovers. “Earl says leftovers are the best part of the meal,” she said. “So he can battle the crowd at Stop and Shop and pick up another turkey, if there’s one left in the meat case. And extra stuffing.” She figured they could take green beans and Brussels sprouts that they’d canned in September out of the pantry. “And Earl should get more cream for whipping. And vanilla ice cream. And cheese, because Kevin would rather have cheese with apple-cranberry pie. And Bella loves chocolate cream pie, so we should make one of those. And maybe everyone would like a sample of pecan.”

Annie wasn’t surprised that Claire had a quick grasp on the essentials. She’d gladly feed the whole island if she were asked.

Lucy checked to see if they had enough chocolate for pie (they did) and enough pecans for a fourth pie (they did not). They also decided to make an extra pumpkin pie, which Claire calculated they could have underway by the time Earl returned from the store. Five pies for a total of eight to ten adults and one toddler ought to be enough for both dinner and leftovers.

Lucy got her grandfather on the phone, filled him in on what was happening, and rattled off the shopping instructions.

Annie knew that everything would not be as befuddling as it seemed right then; she’d learned that, on the Vineyard, a little confusion was part of the fun. She was curious, however, as to what had triggered the wish to return to the Vineyard. After all, Francine was currently in college in Minnesota; she also was pregnant with Jonas’s baby. Along with Bella, the young couple had been living with Francine’s aunt and uncle in their home. If something was wrong, Annie hoped that it wasn’t about the new baby.

As Lucy hung up from talking to her grandfather, her eyes filled with tears. She put both hands on her slim hips and looked at Annie and Claire. “Everyone’s going to be here but me. I’m even more bummed now about having to go to stupid Plymouth.”

Claire patted the top of her granddaughter’s head. “Plymouth is not stupid, dear. Some of our ancestors landed there.” She straightened the bronze-colored plait that stretched halfway down Lucy’s back. Though Lucy’s childhood freckles had faded and her tomboy ways had been morphing into softer femininity, she was still a child at heart. “And your sister won’t be here, either.”

“I’m sorry, Lucy,” Annie said, not giving Lucy a chance to offer a comment about Abigail. “Maybe they’ll still be here when you come home. And maybe only Kevin and Taylor will show up. It’s such a busy time for air travel.”

But the teenager’s tears slipped out, glistening on the remnants of her freckles. She pulled a large stainless steel bowl and a colander from a cabinet and began scrubbing the apples in the sink with more vigor than necessary.

Annie’s phone rang again; this time, caller ID read: BRIGHTON, TRISH. Annie let the call go to voice mail. Trish was the editor of Annie’s best-selling mysteries. But with Annie’s last book successfully released and a new one underway, chances were, whatever the call was about could wait.

The following morning, Kevin texted Annie from the airport. They were coming on two separate planes: Kevin and Taylor on one; Francine, Jonas, and Bella on the other. That was all. Francine’s aunt and uncle were not with them.

Annie grinned and tried not to feel guilty.

John agreed that Lucy and Abigail would leave on the later boat. And Annie and Claire went into high gear, rearranging the feast and everything to go with it, including making sure that the plates, glasses, silverware, and serving dishes were “holiday clean.”

Earl had procured an extra turkey; it would make for great leftovers—sandwiches, soup, Claire’s famous potpie. Thankfully, Claire and Lucy had made lots of cranberry sauce after the harvest at the bog in October.

The organizing, planning, and the timing of dinner weren’t done until after two o’clock. Annie was in the great room, touching up a few wrinkles in the linen tablecloth, when John came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist.

“Put down that iron,” he ordered, “or I’ll have to arrest you.”

Annie set down the iron, not because she always did as she was told, which she did not, but because his arms enveloped her body. She tipped her head back and rested it below his shoulder. “Yes, sir, Officer.”

“That’s detective sergeant,” he said.

She turned and yielded to a lingering kiss. “How silly of me to forget,” she said when they at last pulled away.

“The same way that, like my mother, you’ve probably forgotten to eat today. Which is why I brought vittles. Cheese-and-avocado paninis. Not exactly Thanksgiving food, but I figured one will keep your taste buds hankering for turkey tomorrow.”

“Hankering,” she said. “What a great word.”

He rolled his pearl-gray eyes the way Lucy rolled hers. And as Earl often did, too, though his eyes were brown, while John’s and Lucy’s were clones of Claire’s.

Annie followed him into the kitchen, where Claire was sitting at the island, relishing a sandwich.

“Here’s the deal,” John said after he poured glasses of water. “I’ll bring the girls to the boat and meet you in the lot. Do you still have the car seat for Bella?”

“I do. It’s even still hooked up in the back seat.” She bit into . . .