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Scott Frampton marched off the freight behind his older brother, Chuck, and cast his eyes toward the bliss of a bustling island afternoon. Chuck grunted as he shot up into the waiting truck, filled with the last of their supply for the morning and early afternoon. He smeared his arm across his forehead to wipe away the beads of sweat that had formed from the morning sun. The last few restaurants and hotels and other tourist havens awaited their supplies for the week—and Scott knew they were anxious. After all, he and Chuck were about an hour late, due to especially violent waves. They’d had to keep things slow.
Chuck drove the truck away from the docked freight and clicked around on the radio. Chuck was a fan of country music, and in seconds, his whistle found the tune. Scott leaned his head back and closed his eyes for a second. It had been a tough night. His son, who lived up in Boston with his mother, had struggled with his math homework and called Scott several times for help. Scott had never been what you might call a “stellar mathematician,” and he had scoured the internet for pre-algebra help until after midnight. That wasn’t the kind of thing a guy with a four-thirty wake-up time should be doing, but they were, after all, dad duties that he couldn’t just ignore.
Still, Scott liked the idea that he remained at least partially in his son’s life. When his wife had taken him away, Scott had more-or-less resigned himself to the fact that his version of fatherhood wouldn’t look the way he wanted it to.
“You heard that Wes Sheridan went to the hospital?” Chuck asked. He turned down the volume on the radio.
“No. It’s gotten worse, then?” Scott and Chuck had been noted Wes Sheridan’s lackluster mental state as of late. They’d heard the rumors of dementia. This more or less confirmed it.
“Guess so,” Chuck returned.
“I wonder if his daughters know,” Scott said.
Chuck clucked his tongue. In the wake of Wes’s ailments, Scott had asked the older man if there was anything he could do to help out. He had noticed that the Inn had grown increasingly dilapidated. In fact, he had spoken with several guests at the Sunrise Cove Inn, who weren’t pleased with their stay due to its current state. “It looked really different online,” was how one guy had phrased it. This sort of talk cut Scott to the core. He had countless good memories in that Inn.
He had even lost his virginity in one of the rooms.
Still, Chuck always said that Scott shouldn’t care so much about other people’s business. Scott tended toward nostalgia and empathy, but Chuck was the actionable of the two of them: a sturdy man who lacked passion, but who wasn’t afraid of hard work. The two men balanced each other out, and together, they had made their father’s business much more profitable than it had ever been before.
When they pulled up in front of the Sunrise Cove Inn, Scott hopped out and yanked open the back of the truck. Inside were stacks and stacks of wine bottles and beer kegs and frozen foods with flour, sugar and yeast—all the things the attached bistro needed during the high tourist months. Chuck headed off to greet Zach, the main chef, while Scott began to carry things in. Zach Walters had gone to high school with Scott, although he had been a few years younger. This meant he was maybe just over forty. He had only worked as a chef at the Sunrise Cove Inn for the previous nine months or so, since late-season when Wes had had to let the head chef go. The rumor was that Wes had gotten into many tiffs with the previous chef, as a result of his diminishing health. Wes hadn’t wanted to admit that he’d been ill. Once he had fired him, it had been too late.
Chuck and Scott piled up the boxes and kegs in the storage room. Zach yanked his white chef hat off his head and wiped his palm across his forehead. He gave Scott an exhausted grin.
“A big day?” Scott asked.
“I forgot how much it picks up during the season,” Zach said. “And with Wes being in the hospital, it’s been a bit of a rough few days.”
“He’s doing okay, though, yeah?” Scott asked.
“Sure. They discharged him yesterday. He’s in the sitting area now, if you want to go take a peek and say hi,” Zach said. He gave Scott a peculiar smile.
“I have to run off and write up a few receipts for you guys,” Chuck said as he looked at both of them. “I’ll meet you back here in a bit.” He gave Scott a gruff pat on the shoulder and disappeared into the main hotel lobby, where he normally helped Natalie write up the ledger and gave her receipts for what had been delivered since she was still pretty new.
“Go on. Say hi to Wes. I’m sure he would be happy to see you,” Zach encouraged him again.
Scott arched his brow and headed out of the steamy kitchen. Once outside, he stood behind the pastry counter, with a full view of the gorgeous bistro, with its baby-blue painted walls and its enormous window with a full view of the Nantucket Sound. Martha’s Vineyard sat to the west of it. Scott’s eyes fell toward the far window, which in his familiar spot, sat old Wes Sheridan. He shared the table with a dark-haired woman who faced away from Scott.
Immediately when he spotted her, Scott’s heart gave a peculiar thud and he could feel a lump form in his throat.
The woman tilted her head. Wes said something, his face bright. The second he finished, the woman across from him erupted with laughter.
The laughter was a sound Scott hadn’t heard since he had been eighteen years old. He literally couldn’t breathe and felt his knees lock beneath him. He felt transported through time, and back to his high school days.
Susan. Susan Sheridan.
The love of his teenage years.
The girl who had gotten away.
He turned quickly and returned to the kitchen. Once inside, he leaned against the wall and watched as Zach Walters burst into laughter. His hat shook so hard it fell off his head again.
“You should see your face. You look like you just saw a ghost,” he laughed out loud.
“You set me up!” Scott shot.
Zach shrugged, tapping the sides of his eyes to get rid of his tears. “I have to make my own fun around here. You can’t blame me.”
“You knew she was here and you just sent me out there to...”
“She looks good, Scott. Really good,” Zach interrupted him.
“Who looks good?” Chuck entered again, his voice booming.
“Susan Sheridan is here,” Zach affirmed.
Chuck drew a smug smile. “Oh, great. The prodigal girlfriend.”
Rage swam through Scott. Still, he couldn’t blame Chuck. It was true that when Susan had left him, left the island, Scott had gone on a kind of eighteen-year-old bender: hardly going a day without drinking too much, spending as many hours as he could out on the boat. He had fallen out of his life and away from everyone who had ever known him. She had taken a piece of him when she’d left.
Scott had always thought he would marry Susan.
And then one day, she was just gone.
“Come on, man. Let’s get out of here,” Chuck said.
Scott felt strange to leave like that. Wasn’t it more honest to stay and say hello? But still, what could he possibly say after so much time had passed between them? I can’t believe you had someone else’s baby so soon after you left. I can’t believe you betrayed everything we’d ever said to each other. I can’t believe—
But then again, Scott could believe it. The Sheridan sisters had gone through hell and back. He had watched Susan fall into depression, unable to eat some days, always trying her best to keep her younger sisters afloat. She had gotten into countless fights with her father during those last months. Staying on the Vineyard hadn’t been an option.
“She’s trouble,” Chuck said all of a sudden when they were back in the truck. “You know it, too. It’s why you didn’t just casually go up to her and say hello. You know what she could do to you. She was such bad news back in the day. Always crying. Don’t you remember? You had to miss a football game once because she...”
“Had a panic attack? Yeah and I don’t regret it either,” Scott affirmed, his nostrils flared. “She lost her mom. Things were really hard for her and her sisters. I was there for her as much as I could be.”
“And then she chewed you up and spat you out,” Chuck scoffed as he started to walk away.
“We were kids,” Scott retorted.
Chuck lived a bit away from the water, deep in a forested area, while Scott had a little house close to the water, on the outskirts of Oak Bluffs. They had lived together for a brief time after Scott’s divorce; this had ended in a thrown beer bottle and a screaming match in the middle of the road. They’d rectified their differences since, however. They’d had to, for the good of the freight business.
Chuck dropped Scott off and gave him a flat-palmed wave. Scott nodded back, then turned and walked up into his house. The water crashed up on the sand and rocks and filled Scott’s ears. He entered the kitchen area and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, then returned to the porch swing. Out there, he spotted old Stan Ellis in his fishing boat. The man spent most of the summer out there, far from people, far from conversation. Most people knew what he had done. Most people didn’t want anything to do with him.
Most people were okay with pretending that he didn’t exist.
Still, there he was and there Scott sat—both alone. For the first time, Scott saw himself the way others might have seen him—just a disgruntled, lonely old man who operated a freighting business and then returned to his home for a single afternoon beer. What sort of life had he lived so far? And what would Susan think if she knew him this way?