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Susan, Lola, and Wes drove Christine to the ferry port that afternoon with heavy hearts. Christine had drunk a half-bottle of wine at lunch and looked hazy-eyed and fearful. She’d confessed to Susan that she wasn’t sure what she would return to in New York. Things with Frank had been frantic as the restaurant had shut down, but they’d had several conversations over the phone—ones that yanked her back, just to see if they could patch any of this back together.
“Besides. I’m a pastry chef,” she had said. “I have to work. And New York has a million different jobs for that sort of thing. If I don’t work, I don’t know what my reality is. I’m not a wife or a mother or anyone special to anyone.”
“That’s not true,” Lola and Susan had both snapped. “You’re our sister.”
“And we’re not going to let so much time pass. Not again,” Susan insisted. “Not now that we know the truth about Mom and Dad.”
Christine had nodded sadly. All of them had commented on how bizarre it was to know the truth about this. It felt like a weight had been lifted, as though they could proceed with their lives differently and with fresh perspectives. Their love for their father felt different and less shadowed.
Christine hugged Susan the longest at the ferry port. “You brought us all back here. I have to admit; I thought you were crazy. But this trip totally changed my life.”
Susan rubbed her back and blinked back tears. When she stepped back, Christine beamed at Susan, Wes and Lola. The ferry blared its horn, a sign that it was nearly time to depart. She then grabbed her suitcases and said, “Until next time, Team Sheridan. I love you forever.”
When she disappeared, Wes wrapped his arm around Susan’s shoulder and hugged her against him. They watched the ferry as it buzzed out across the waters. Lola took a phone call while they waited for the ferry to disappear. Susan listened to Lola, set up an interview with another Boston artist in a week’s time. Her heart sunk.
Maybe the summer she’d planned for, with all of them there together, wasn’t to be.
When Lola hung up the phone, though, she shrugged and said, “I’ll just be gone for a few weeks. Don’t worry. I plan on making it back. I’m having too much fun!”
Susan and Wes both laughed. Wes suggested they pick up steaks to grill out later that night after he spent a bit of time at the office. Lola said she wanted to work for a while at the main house, while Susan said she wanted to head out for a walk.
“You okay to go alone?” Lola asked her, a pen already sliced between her teeth and ready to be gnawed on.
“Oh yeah. I have a lot to go over,” Susan said, tapping her temple. “But, they’re mostly good thoughts.”
Lola sighed. “I miss her already. I wish we could have convinced her to stay.”
“I know. But she’s a New Yorker now, I guess,” Susan said. “Just because my life is over in Newark, doesn’t mean I can expect it from her.”
Although Susan had initially thought she would just walk around the area by their house, she instead got into one of the Inn cars and started to drive. The island wasn’t a big one, and she found herself weaving and winding on the old roads she and Scott had taken as teenagers—always with the windows down and the radio blaring. Nothing about their lives had been difficult back then. They’d had each other and they’d had the island and the water and the sun. They hadn’t needed anything else.
To her surprise, Susan found herself easily back at her and Scott’s favorite make-out spot at the Great Rock Bight, which was located in Chilmark. The land was owned by the MV Landbank Commission, which meant that nobody could ever build on it. She parked in a wooded parking area, her head flashing with memories of long-lost summer nights, and then headed down the little steep path toward the water. It was late June at this point, but not many tourists knew about Great Rock Bight, as they normally kept to Jaws Bridge.
The beach pointed westward and had been one of the best places for sunsets and long conversations and whispered secrets. Now, standing there alone on the beach with the salty breeze collecting her locks and whipping them over her cheeks, she exhaled and closed her eyes and tried her best to organize her mind. The days had been explosive.
Now, she had to figure out what came next.
She was a divorced woman with an ailing father. She was still in the beginning stages of repairing her relationships with her sisters. She had a daughter on the way to the altar and a son with two adorable babies.
But she was ready to build something on the island for herself.
And she could do that either with or without Scott.
Of course, there was so much he didn’t know.
Suddenly, she heard her voice whip through the wind. She froze and glanced at the sky. Was she losing her mind? Was the earth trying to talk to her?
But then, it came again.
“SUSAN!”
She turned quickly to find Scott Frampton himself walking down the beach toward her. Her heart leaped into her throat. Wasn’t she supposed to be cripplingly angry at him?
But no. As he approached and his gorgeous eyes found hers, she knew with every ounce of her being that Scott Frampton would never wrong her or her family.
He loved her. It was the only constant in her life at the moment.
Scott Frampton loved her and wanted her back. Maybe he had always wanted her back, ever since she’d left him. Maybe they could stop wasting the time they had left.
Maybe.
They stared at each other for a long time. It felt like there was too much to say; they didn’t know where to start.
Finally, Susan said, “How did you find me?”
“I stopped by your house. Lola said that you went out for a walk, but that you took the car for some reason. I had a weird hunch you’d come out here.” He scratched the back of his head, then gave a wry smile. “It’s always where you wanted to come back in the old days.”
“I’d almost forgotten all about it,” Susan said as she looked down at her palms.
“I guess you remember more than you think,” Scott said. He swallowed and then shifted his weight. “I have to tell you that I went through everything you said. The receipts, the ledgers—everything. Chuck has been stealing from Sunrise Cove and so many other restaurants and businesses across the island. I cannot even begin to fathom the weight of what he’s taken. It probably sounds nuts that I trusted him all these years. But—”
Susan reached out to grab his hand. Immediately, the tension in his body released. She stepped toward him, closing the distance. Their hands hung, locked together, between them. She studied his handsome face.
“It’s okay, Scott. We’ll figure it out,” she whispered.
Scott furrowed his brow. “You didn’t seem like that a few days ago. I thought you were going to rip my head off.”
“So many things have changed since then if you can believe it,” she said.
As the waves crept over the shore, inching their way to Susan and Scott’s feet; as the sun dipped toward the horizon line, Susan explained what she had learned about her mother’s death: that she hadn’t been with her father after all; that Stan had been the driver; that she’d had a two-year affair; that Wes had fought tooth and nail to try to keep their family together. It hadn’t been enough—but that didn’t negate all he had done.
“So we’ve been angry with him all these years for no reason,” Susan finished. “And now, he’s losing his memory and the Inn has lost all this money and... And I guess all I can do is try to make up for it by staying here and helping him and returning to my roots. I feel my mother here. I feel her in the sky and in the water and in every room of the house. But I also understand there’s so much about my mother that I’ll never really understand. My husband, he cheated on me. We’d been through so much together, and it was one of the most painful things I’ve ever gone through. My mother did the same thing.”
Scott’s eyes were heavy. His thumb smoothed over the top of her hand.
“But you can’t spend your life blaming her for everything either,” Scott said. “It’s poison.”
“I know.”
They locked eyes for a long time.
“You were the only thing I could cling onto after she died. I was such a mess, and you were my anchor. And then I just—”
“It’s okay,” Scott said. “Don’t linger on that, either. We’re here now. We’re together.”
Suddenly, Susan fell forward and wrapped her arms tightly around him. His large hands fell over her back and eased across her shoulders. She let out a single sob and closed her eyes. He still smelled like his old self: like cedar and a subtle hint of cologne. She loved him more than she could bear.
Suddenly, his hand found the curve of her cheek and his lips fell onto hers. It was the first kiss they’d shared since he’d left her at the ferry port over twenty-five years before, and it was urgent and overwhelming, the kind of kiss that could have knocked Susan to her knees if he hadn’t had her all wrapped up in his arms.
When the kiss broke, Susan stepped back and dropped her arms to her sides. Shock rang through the air between them, as the last of the orange and pink sunlight filtered across the waves.
“I’ve wanted to do that since I first saw you,” Scott whispered as he searched her face.
Tears raced down Susan’s cheeks now. It was too much. The lie. It had grown and grown and now it felt like a block in the road between her and any kind of happy life she might have been allowed to have.
“I don’t know if I can love you back in the way you want me to,” she confessed.
Immediately, Scott looked as though she had stabbed him directly in the heart. His shoulders fell forward.
“I guess I should have expected something like this to happen. It was so much time. I don’t know why I thought maybe we could have a second chance,” he said.
“No. That’s not it,” Susan corrected. She closed her eyes tightly and willed herself to keep going. She hadn’t articulated these words to anyone. Not Amanda. Not Jake. Not her sisters or her father or anyone she loved.
“If you want to love me, Scott, then you have to know the truth. You have to know that... I have had some pretty big health scares over the last year. I was diagnosed with Stage II Breast Cancer last year.” she explained. “And right now, I don’t know about my future. I only know right now. Can you handle that?”
She expected Scott to demand more answers. It was his right. But instead of panicking, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her even tighter. She wavered on her knees but remained there, her cheek against his chest. His heart pounded with such certainty. She could have stayed there, listening to it for hours.
Scott and Susan sat out on the beach for a long time, their arms wrapped around one another. Scott asked her delicate questions about her diagnosis, about her mental state, about what she wanted in her life in the here-and-now, if she wasn’t sure how much time she had.
“I didn’t want to tell my sisters because I only just rekindled our friendship,” Susan said. “I don’t want them to think that I’m using them or trying to manipulate them into being in my life again. I had no idea how much I would fall back in love with all of this again. With the Vineyard. With my cousins and with the big house and with the Sunrise Cove Inn. The thought of going back to Newark is a painful one.”
“I think your gut is telling you what you need to do,” Scott said. “The gut is the only thing with sound logic in this world. I’m not a scientist, but even I know that’s true.”
Susan laughed and placed her head on his shoulder. “How did we miss out on so many years?”
“We didn’t,” Scott said. “We had all the years we needed apart. And now, we can have time together. We can watch as many sunsets on Great Rock Bight as you want.”
“The tourists better not swarm it,” Susan said. “This is our place.”
They shared another kiss. Scott then suggested they head back to her place. Susan bolted upright in sudden memory: they had to do something about Chuck Frampton and his thousands and thousands of stolen cash.
“Do you think he’ll run?” she asked.
“Maybe we should call the cops just in case,” Scott said.
They returned to Scott’s truck. Susan was underfed and exhausted and bleary-eyed and decided to pick up the Sunrise Cove Inn vehicle in the morning. Scott dialed the local police station in Oak Bluffs.
“Hey, Randy. This is Scott Frampton,” Scott said.
Of course, Randy was another guy they’d gone to school with. The island was a densely layered photo album of memories, come to life.
“Yeah, I actually have a report to make. I have good reason to believe that Chuck might be making his way off the island to escape from the law. I just learned that he’s been stealing a good deal of money from a number of hospitality locations across the island and potentially beyond. Any chance you can get someone out to the ferry docks to check if he’s on his way out?”
At first, Randy seemed confused. Scott explained again, this time a little slower with a bit more detail. Finally, Randy got off the phone.
“He’s going to call me when they track down Chuck,” Scott said. “I guess that’s all we can do right now.”
Susan scrubbed at her cheeks. “It feels like the entire world is upside down.”
Scott took her hand and laced his fingers through it. “We’re going to get through this together—all of it. I promise you.”