Immediately after Amanda and Audrey had glided downstairs to mingle with wedding guests, hopefully indicating to Sandra that nothing was amiss and that nobody was the wiser, Xander had bolted from the stairwell and appeared on the landing to find Kelli, Susan, Lola, Christine, and Noah in shock. Just a few doors away, Sam apparently sat, bound, and gagged, awaiting Sandra’s return. And none of them could be in that hallway when she made her appearance. It would foil Sam’s plan.
After Kelli had quickly explained everything to Xander, during which time he’d stared at her, his jaw slack, she’d asked him to stand at the railing of the third floor, where he would have a view of the second-floor landing. “When you see Sandra whip down the hallway, text me immediately. Then, I can alert the cops that she’s on her way downstairs.”
With Xander now set up on the third floor, watching, and the police officers in plain clothes watching the back entrance, Kelli felt jittery and nervous and unsure what to do with herself. She stood at the edge of the wedding crowd, watching as Amanda blushed crimson with embarrassment as Kelli’s mother, Kerry, tried to make her feel better about being jilted at the altar. Amanda was playing the part well, probably because she’d done it all before.
Gosh, Kelli was exhausted. That fainting episode had terrified her. Her head remained cloudy, but her motivations were clear. It wouldn’t be long until this nightmare was over.
Still, she couldn’t help but blame herself for promoting Sandra so quickly. She’d allowed herself to be manipulated by her, to be drawn into her kindness. Kelli now had a hunch that Sandra had framed Piper and forced Kelli to fire her, if only so that Sandra could get the master key to herself. Kelli made a mental note to hire Piper back immediately. Maybe she would even promote her.
Suddenly, Kelli’s phone buzzed.
Kelli’s heartbeat escalated. As though she ran from a fire, she headed toward the kitchen with her heart in her throat, where Chef Billiard continued to berate his sous chef. “I can’t believe nobody is willing to confess to stealing my knife! Do you know who I am?” It seemed his insults had no bounds, which also seemed expected amongst kitchen staff who respected their chef.
Kelli tucked herself in the shadows of the back hallway, separated from the kitchen by a single wall. From here, she could see the door that led to the fire exit stairwell, down which Sandra was bound to come soon. As her legs wavered dangerously beneath her, Kelli prayed she wouldn’t faint again. She wanted to see this— and she also didn’t want her weakness to indicate to Sandra that something was amiss downstairs.
Before Kelli could drown in any more anxious thoughts, a woman in sunglasses and a big black hoodie burst from the fire escape doorway. She had a massive black backpack over her back, probably filled with goods from the hotel and from hotel guests— all of which she’d deftly pocketed as the guests and Kelli had been elsewhere and discombobulated. Sandra even had the nerve to wave to one of the kitchen staffers and say, “Hope you guys are holding up okay? It’s crazy out there! But that’s just weddings, right?” The kitchen staffer laughed.
Sandra bolted from the exit after that into the shining light of a beautiful afternoon. Kelli tip-toed to the doorway to peer out as Sandra traipsed directly to the van in question. Kelli couldn’t believe it: it was the same van she’d wanted to search a few hours before. The same “vendor” she’d spoken to walked from the darkness in the van, placed his hands on Sandra’s cheeks, and then kissed her with his eyes closed.
At this moment, they felt like Bonnie and Clyde, as though nothing in the world could get them down, as though they were the two smartest people in the world.
“Stop! You are under arrest.” Officer Bobby’s voice echoed through the vendor vans and made Kelli’s spine shiver with its power. “Separate, put your hands up, and walk slowly down the ramp of the van. No sudden movements.”
Kelli fixated on Sandra’s face as her kiss with her criminal lover broke. All the blood drained from her cheeks as she staggered away from her boyfriend, who glared at her and began to spit insults. “What the heck did you do wrong, Sandra? Huh?” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her like a rag doll.
“Hey! Stop that!” Kelli couldn’t stop herself. She was too exhausted, swimming in memories of Mike’s cruelty. “Let her go!”
“Put your hands UP!” Officer Bobby called, approaching from the left of the vendor van as the other officer approached from the right. Officer Bobby had drawn a gun, and his jaw was sharply clenched.
Sandra’s boyfriend released Sandra’s shoulders, which resulted in her falling off the ramp and onto the hot pavement. There, crumpled up on the ground, she raised her arms and began to sob.
“Give it a rest, Sandra,” the boyfriend ridiculed her as the cops got closer. He then yanked himself around to peer through the shadows of the back of the van, as though weighing up the probability that he could leap through the mess of boxes and vintage goods and get to the driver’s seat. Even from where Kelli stood, it looked very unlikely.
“I’m going to tell you one more time,” Officer Bobby warned. “Put your hands up.”
With a dramatic roll of his eyes, as though he was just a teenager who’d been caught staying out too late, the man raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders. Things sped up after that, as though Kelli was fast-forwarding through a criminal show on television. Officer Bobby walked toward the thief and managed to manipulate his body so that his torso fell forward and his wrists were cuffed together in one fell swoop. Kelli was impressed. Sandra was much easier to handle, of course, as she’d turned to putty in the officers’ hands. Even still, they couldn’t trust her, removing the backpack filled with hotel things before they cuffed her. As the other cop pulled her to her feet, Sandra turned spontaneously to meet Kelli’s gaze. Sandra’s jaw dropped. For a moment, they regarded one another— both bleary-eyed and exhausted for very different reasons. Kelli couldn’t believe it. Her heart broke for this poor, stupid creature, so young and so naive, who’d obviously allowed herself to be manipulated by her criminal boyfriend.
Kelli had fallen for Sandra’s tricks. Maybe it had hardened her for the future. Maybe she would move forward in time with the knowledge that very bad things could happen, even with the best intentions.
As the cops shoved Sandra and her boyfriend into the back of the cop car, Kelli walked toward the vendor van, which remained open like a mouth. On the ramp, she peered inside to find mountains of boxes and bags. Toward the back was something long and large and thin, wrapped in paper. With a nervous jump in her gut, she approached it and tore at the edges of the paper to peer inside. Just as she’d suspected, it was the painting that had been taken in the foyer. How had they managed that? It was incredible.
“Kelli?”
Kelli leaped out of her skin and turned around, gasping, to find Xander on the ramp. His face was drawn. Kelli staggered toward him, threw her arms around him, and shook violently. Although Kelli hadn’t known he was capable, he slowly lifted her up and carried her down the ramp, away from the van, and back into the sunlight, where she sat on the lush grass for a quiet moment. The cop car’s tires cracked over the gravel on the edge of the parking lot as they returned to Oak Bluffs. It had been one hell of a day.
“That was absolutely crazy, Kelli,” Xander breathed, his hand on her cheek as he gazed into her eyes.
“At least I know I wasn’t going insane, though. Things really were going missing. They were stealing things, right and left,” Kelli said.
Xander nodded wordlessly.
“Hey! They’re here!” Audrey’s voice came from the doorway to the kitchen before she burst into the sunlight, still in her bridesmaid dress. Amanda and Sam hurried up behind her, bride and groom, hand-in-hand. Amanda and Sam looked world-weary and fearful, the same way they’d looked after their car accident last year. These poor kids, Kelli thought now. They’d already been through so much, and they hadn’t even made it down the aisle yet.
“Are you okay?” Amanda said, perching gently beside Kelli. There were now two rips at the bottom of her wedding dress, and more beads had scattered off, leaving behind ghost-like strings.
“Oh, Amanda. I’m so sorry your wedding is ruined,” Kelli breathed.
Amanda’s face glowed with surprise. “It’s not ruined, Aunt Kelli. Not in the slightest.”
“Come on,” Kelli said, gesturing vaguely toward the van.
Amanda placed her hand over Kelli’s in the thick grass. “It has not been the easiest day of any of our lives,” Amanda said. “But everyone I love is still here. Sam didn’t take off the minute he saw the altar. And those criminals are long gone, now— they’re the cops’ problems and not ours.” As she tried to smile, her face seemed to get the hang of it, and she began to beam like the bride she was.
“We can clear another day in the schedule,” Kelli tried, wanting to fix this. “Any day, all summer long. We can do this all over again.”
But Amanda wouldn’t hear of it. “I want to marry Sam today. That is, if Sam’s still up for it.”
Sam pressed his forehead against Amanda’s, his breaths coming in fits and starts, as though he’d just run a marathon or held his breath for too long. When he locked eyes with Amanda, there on the lawn that encircled the tremendous and historical hotel, Kelli felt she could see everything that would come after this for them— the wedding, the babies, and the life-altering decisions that went hand-in-hand with middle age and even the shattering reality of death. Kelli blinked back tears, remembering that life was something none of us got out of alive. But somehow, during the small era of time that she and Amanda had been on this earth, they’d both been able to find their person. It was truly an incredible thing.
“I don’t just want to marry you today, Amanda Harris. I need to,” Sam told her, which settled it. Amanda gasped with relief.