A Vineyard Lullaby (The Vineyard Sunset Series Book 7) by Katie Winters

Author:Katie Winters [Winters, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Women's Fiction, clean & wholesome fiction, Sisters Fiction Family Life Fiction, Single Women Fiction Women's Sagas, Friendship genre fiction women's romance
Publisher: Katie Winters
Published: 2021-02-08T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Audrey hadn’t yet made it through an entire night of sleep. Every few hours, her eyes popped open, and her hands went to that once-familiar place, her abdomen, which had started its gradual shrink back toward her hips. There was no baby in there, she reminded herself in the dead of night. Her baby was far away, at the hospital. Her baby was a separate entity, a boy with a brain of his own and ten fingers and ten toes.

At around four in the morning, on March 10 and very nearly two weeks after Max’s birth, Audrey appeared downstairs in front of the kitchen table. There, she found her Grandpa Wes alert, his eyes toward the water. He had a pen lifted, the tip of it against one of the boxes of a crossword. Before the birth of Max, Audrey and Grandpa Wes had done a number of crosswords together. They were one of Audrey’s favorite pastimes, for one, but for two, she had read that doing puzzles like that helped dementia patients. Day after day, box after box, they’d filled in crosswords. And then, on February 27, Max had been born, and Audrey hadn’t bothered with a single crossword since. Actually, she hadn’t even thought of it.

“Morning, Grandpa,” she said.

Grandpa Wes yanked his head around, surprised. “You know it’s only four in the morning, don’t you?”

“I do.” Audrey stepped into the kitchen area to brew a pot of coffee. She then joined her grandfather at the table and tilted her head to see the clues for the crossword, so tiny and dull with the soft light from the hanging lamp.

“You couldn’t sleep either, then?” Audrey finally asked him.

Grandpa Wes removed his glasses and dotted a handkerchief across his forehead. “I had a bad dream. Although for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was about, now.

“Me too,” Audrey told him. She, too, couldn’t fully remember the dream, although it had had something to do with Max and her mother, two people on this earth she loved the most. “I hate it when your subconscious plays tricks on you like that.”

Audrey poured them both cups of coffee, and they sat in general silence, both of them reading the clues of the crossword over and over again. Occasionally, one of them would say, “What about ‘AL FRESCA’ for forty-two down?” or “I think fifteen across is ‘CALLIOPE.’” But otherwise, they let the sun rise around them without any other words. The puzzle was enough for them.

Christine arrived downstairs just after six-thirty. Amanda entered the kitchen area from her bedroom around seven. Audrey brewed more coffee, and there was discussion about who was up to what over the next hours. Naturally, Audrey wanted to head up to the NICU; Christine decided she would join her. They glanced toward Grandpa Wes, who they always had to “deal with” around this time of the day.

“I’ll call Kerry,” Grandpa Wes said. “Don’t you worry yourselves. She already said she wasn’t that busy today.

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