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.
Chapter 3
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.
