A Vineyard Christmas Guest by Katie Winters

Author:Katie Winters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: womens fiction, sisters fiction, later in life fiction, clean and wholesome fiction, sea stories
Publisher: Katie Winters
Published: 2021-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Max’s little lips curled around the top of the bottle before he latched powerfully and began to gulp down his milk. The once-teensy baby had grown enormously, especially in Audrey’s eyes, as she’d missed so much. As he ate, she tipped her fingers across his seemingly large toes, which wiggled at her touch, and she stroked his chunky calves and arms as her heart tried to choose between stress at the passage of time and gladness that her baby was plump and healthy.

Grandpa Wes entered the living room to find Audrey seated on the floor, her back against the couch, Max in her arms. He grinned at her sheepishly, like a mischievous teenager, and then pressed his finger against his lips.

“Do you know what I found?” he whispered.

“What?” Audrey asked.

Grandpa Wes’s knees creaked as he bent low to grip a Tupperware container on the lowest shelf of the kitchen cabinet. He then ripped off the top to reveal an entire container of Buckeye Christmas cookies, a treasure trove.

“I thought Amanda told us that we were out of them!” Audrey gasped.

“I’m pretty sure that Amanda lied to save our waistlines...” Grandpa Wes clucked his tongue.

“That is so typical Amanda,” Audrey blurted. “Remember all those months last year when she tried to get us to eat salads for lunch?”

“I’ve never fully recovered,” Grandpa Wes affirmed. He placed a napkin on the couch to the left of Audrey’s head, on which he planted the Buckeye for a post-feeding snack. “Guessing he’ll be out like a light after that big bottle.”

“That’s the hope,” Audrey said.

Grandpa Wes’s dark grey eyebrows dropped low. He dug his teeth into the Buckeye as he studied Audrey and little Max.

“It’s really nice to have you back here, Audrey,” he said. “When you left, a little light left with you.”

Audrey tried to drum up a smile as she met her grandfather’s eyes. But before she could, her phone buzzed at the far end of her leg. Max’s surprise at the sound made him unclench his lips and let out a wild wail until Audrey coaxed him back to the bottle once more.

The phone buzz was an email alert. Audrey puffed out her cheeks as she lifted the phone toward her eyes, even as Max continued to eat. Grandpa Wes settled across the living room, a crossword puzzle stretched out before him on the top of a book and a pen settled gently in his right hand.

The email read: AUDREY SHERIDAN - SEMESTER GRADES

Audrey couldn’t envision a worse time to receive this message. Here, with her baby son across her lap, in the cozy ecosystem of the Sheridan house, at the edge of the Vineyard Sound— here she would learn the fate of her horrific semester. She tapped the link and was flung through the internet portal, all the way to the university website’s grade listings.

And there, alongside her name, was a smattering of Cs, Bs, and a single A, in Creative Writing. The final exam that she’d missed had knocked her grade from a B+ to a C-, which dragged her GPA all the way down to a gut-wrenching 2.

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