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Hit and Run Reveals Inner-Working of a Much Bigger Criminal Organization
Reported By: Audrey Sheridan
Last month, the island of Martha’s Vineyard was rocked by a dramatic hit-and-run out on State Road. Given the neighborly instincts of most Vineyard residents, it seemed outside the bounds of reason to imagine that someone— the driver of a maroon Chevy Cavalier— could smash into a vehicle, causing a three-vehicle crash, and then U-Turn into the road from whence he’d come and disappear.
The story grew even more strange afterward when two of the victims of the crash found the “runaway” vehicle along the edge of the water in Chilmark, thus allowing officers to conclude that whoever was guilty in the hit-and-run case wouldn’t be easy to find.
Lola read the article aloud on the back porch of the Sheridan House, with Audrey, Amanda, Max, Christine, and Susan seated around the table alongside her. Two bottles of rosé cooled in ice buckets in the center. Upstairs, Max and Mia took their mid-afternoon naps, graciously allowing the Sheridan women a few hours of gossip time.
And, just in time, the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette had arrived, hot off the presses, with the inclusion of Audrey’s well-researched article.
“Dang, Audrey,” Amanda breathed. “You’re a real writer.”
Audrey laughed. “The article is so long, Mom. You shouldn’t read the whole thing.”
“Come on. It’s brilliant,” Lola boasted proudly. “You tore into this big criminal gang and found out the inner workings of all the cars they were stealing on the east coast. Harry was just a cog in their machine.”
Audrey waved a hand knowingly, her eyes dancing. In truth, Lola had been terrified the past two weeks as Audrey had driven across Boston, interviewing police officers and other gang members who were willing to talk. Essentially, Harry’s scrapyard had revealed a greater illegal community, which was the reason why Harry had fled the scene of the hit-and-run in the first place. It seemed stranger than fiction, but it was real-life. Plain and simple.
“I was glad that Valerie agreed to be interviewed,” Audrey offered, placing a chip on her tongue and chewing slowly. “I know she’s embarrassed that she ever got involved with that guy. But I just told her that Max is my greatest love— and he’s the result of a very stupid affair I had out in Chicago.”
“Are you suggesting that all women have done very stupid things for men?” Christine asked, feigning shock.
“I would never go that far,” Audrey shot back sarcastically.
“What did she say in the article?” Amanda asked.
Lola scanned through to find Valerie’s quotes, which discussed Harry’s “strange habits” and his “even stranger friends.” According to Valerie, Harry frequently left the house around midnight every night and could be heard having phone calls in the garage, during which he frequently yelled about “stuff he could hide” and “stuff he couldn’t manage to hide.”
“It was terrifying,” Valerie told Audrey in the article. “Never knowing exactly what he was up to kept me up at night. I’d told this man I’d loved him— and I wasn’t sure what he would do if I ever left him. He was a master manipulator. Hopefully, I’ve learned my lesson.”
It was now the end of June. Sun-kissed waves crept toward the beach, cresting before they flashed across the sands. After Lola finished reading the last of the article, she led the rest of the Sheridan women to the beach, where they held hands and gazed out across the waters. Her heart swelled with a mix of sorrow and pride and joy.
“I can’t believe you’ll be gone for two weeks,” Audrey breathed beside her, gripping her hand.
“Two weeks is nothing,” Susan tried from the far end of their link. “Try twenty-five years. That’s how long I went, basically, without talking to your mother. I’ll never get those years back. I hate myself for it.”
“We can’t do that,” Lola interjected. “We can’t demonize the past.”
Together, the Sheridan women held the silence, tossing their shoes to the side and dropping their feet into the waves. Lola lifted her chest toward the gorgeous sky, feeling the breeze across her skin.
“Tell me again what your itinerary is,” Susan finally asked, breaking through the silence.
“Gosh, we’re hitting, what, thirteen islands? Fifteen?” Lola began tentatively. “We start on Antigua, which is apparently the largest English-speaking island and offers plenty of historical sites.”
“I never thought of Tommy as a history lover,” Christine chimed in.
“Gosh, it’s ridiculous. He’ll watch a seven-hour history documentary rather than do the dishes,” Lola said with a laugh.
“The other islands! What are they?” Amanda asked.
“Well...” Lola pushed through her raucous mind. “After Antigua, we sail to Nevis, then St. Kitts, then Saba. That’s where we’re going to go scuba diving.”
“Mom! You didn’t tell me you were doing that,” Audrey cried.
“That terrifies me,” Christine said. “Under water? For hours at a time? No thanks.”
Lola laughed, the sound of it twinkling out across the water. “Then we’re going to St. Barts, where they speak French apparently? Then, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands. Gosh, you look up the images of these, and they’re all seafoam green and turquoise and gorgeous twenty-somethings on beaches.”
“You’re a gorgeous woman who’s soon to be on a beach,” Susan countered.
“A honeymoon...” Christine breathed. “I can’t imagine that when Zach and I get married, we’ll be able to do anything like that.”
“Why not?” Audrey and Amanda demanded in unison. “You deserve it.”
“Come on. We have a new baby,” Christine offered.
Together, the other Sheridan women glanced at one another, perplexed.
“We’re there for you, Christine,” Audrey finally said. “And by that, we mean, we’re there to babysit Mia. You and Zach should run off and celebrate your love, don’t you think? You deserve it.”
Christine’s cheeks burned with a mix of embarrassment and joy. She dropped her gaze toward the water, where seaweed wrapped itself around her ankle. She attempted to kick it off but ultimately failed, laughing as she bent to remove the slimy green strands from her skin.
“I can’t tell you how happy I’ve been lately,” Lola breathed, dropping back on the sand, no longer caring what the sand would do to her clothes. “Every day, I come home and think, is this really my life? Is this really my gorgeous husband?”
The rest of the Sheridan women were quiet for a long time, watching the horizon. Lola felt the sand caked into her hair and the back of her head. She imagined herself later, scrubbing herself of sand. It didn’t matter. It was summer, wasn’t it? That’s what summer was for.
**
FAMOUS SAILOR TOMMY Gasbarro was seasoned in the art of sailing from Martha’s Vineyard to the Caribbean Islands. Three days prior to their departure, he’d written a “TO DO LIST” that was thirty-five items long, none of which he thought was “that difficult” to figure out. Ultimately, Lola and Tommy found themselves scrambling for the last few items the night before their departure, throwing bread and cheeses and fruits into their grocery cart and laughing at the ridiculous nature of their “getaway.” It was now early July, only two days before the Fourth of July, and the island was ridiculously alive, with fireworks blaring in the evening sky, all the way to three in the morning.
They’d decided to depart the docks at seven-thirty on the morning of the third, telling everyone that they would sail to the Caribbean, island-hop, and return in two weeks (approximately). It had been a very long time since Lola felt so free, so alive. And as they prepared the sailboat for departure, she was hardly able to speak. Such was the dramatic nature of her excitement.
Around seven-fifteen, when Lola poked her head out of the storage space of the sailboat, she spotted four familiar faces peering out from the far end of the dock. Lola popped up and waved at them: Audrey, Amanda, Christine, and Susan, her heart in her throat.
“I can’t believe they came all the way here to say goodbye,” she muttered to Tommy.
“Are you kidding me? Where else would they be,” Tommy shot back.
Lola laughed and leaped from the sailboat, bumbling down the dock toward her daughter, her niece, and her two sisters. She hugged Audrey extra-long, obviously, inhaling the density of her brand-new “patchouli” perfume and asking herself if she was really “okay” with the fact that Audrey had moved on from her Ashlee Simpson perfume of yesteryear.
“There he is. Your handsome sailor husband,” Christine breathed, drawing an arm over Lola’s as they turned back to watch Tommy as he traced a rope around and around his elbow.
“He really is something,” Lola affirmed. “But don’t tell him that.”
“I would never,” Christine returned, her grin splitting open.
“You’ll send us pictures, won’t you?” Audrey asked.
“I don’t know,” Lola offered. “I had this idea that I could go completely off the grid. Force Tommy to crash into an island. Live out the rest of my days like Tom Hanks in Cast Away.”
“You think you’re really funny, don’t you? You’re not,” Audrey howled.
Lola laughed. “Come on. I’ll send you pictures. I’ll probably annoy Tommy so much with how much I want to reach out to you.”
“Just make sure he doesn’t divorce you on the way home,” Susan said with a laugh.
“Although if he does, I’ll tell him that I have a pretty damn good lawyer,” Lola said.
Just before she scampered down the dock to join her new husband, Lola gripped Amanda’s hands and glanced down at the ring that now shone prominently. She yanked the hand around to show Susan, both surprised and aghast.
“Did you know about this?” Lola demanded.
“Oh, yeah. I just learned when he put the ring on her finger the other day at the Sunrise Cove,” Susan said, her laugh erupting over the waters.
“Amanda! When were you planning on telling us?” Lola scolded.
“Come on. She’s basically been floating through the air for weeks. If you couldn’t have figured it out by now, you’re not paying attention,” Audrey said.
“Aud! Are you suggesting that you’ve known this whole time and didn’t bother to tell me?” Lola demanded.
Audrey shrugged, her smile so crooked that her dimples dug in deep. Lola stepped back, pressing kisses into her palms and blowing them several.
“I’m so grateful for all we have here,” she whispered. “And I can’t wait to continue summertime with all of you when I get back.”
“Get back safe!”
“We love you!”
“Bye!”
Lola felt the words rain down upon her as she scampered back toward Tommy’s boat. There, she flung into his arms, burrowing her head in his chest as he whispered, “Are you ready?”
Lola had never been more ready for anything in her entire life.
Tommy strung the ropes out from the side of the docks, opened the sails, and sped them out across the waves of the ocean. Lola leaned forward with her chin lifted to allow the salt-filled splashes to course across her cheeks. Within a half-hour, they were charted down south, headed toward the Caribbean. The sun was heavy and bright above them, forcing them to remove their clothing and relax in only swimsuits.
When the waves weren’t so frantic, Tommy sat across from Lola in just his swimsuit, his broad chest open and the black hairs of it shining in the sun. Lola placed her feet on either side of his body, lifted her chin, and asked him:
“So, what’s next, sailor?”
Tommy laughed, his mouth wide with surprise and joy.
“I guess the rest of our lives,” he shot back.
“Good answer.” Lola turned to gaze out across the horizon, eastward, with the next spot of land, Europe itself. “If I could have written the story of my life, I couldn’t have gotten it quite this good.”
Tommy wrapped his hands around her thigh, the thumbs rubbing softly on her sore muscles. Since that wild run on the morning of her wedding, she’d taken to running with exuberance, loving the freedom and the strength. In many ways, she couldn’t figure out why she’d never done it before. It seemed to embody everything she adored: streaming through life as fast as you could, with a clear head and a full heart. She prayed she’d live every day with that much enthusiasm. She supposed she had a pretty good chance with Tommy by her side.
**
Coming Next in the Vineyard Sunset Series
Book 14 - Once in a Lifetime
