AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Five days after the Sunrise Cove closed, Amanda received a call from her mother. Amanda could see Susan at the law office, her posture statuesque as she said, “I’m thinking of sending a cease and desist. Bruce thinks it’s a good idea.”
Bruce Holland was another criminal justice lawyer at their law office.
Amanda groaned. “I don’t think anything will work against these people. It feels like the Arnouts are above the law.”
“Hilton is in prison,” Susan reminded her. “We just have to get creative about how we protect ourselves from the other Arnouts.”
Amanda was stretched across the sofa, flicking through television stations and streaming sites and killing time until Genevieve woke up again. She sensed it coming like a storm.
It wasn’t like Amanda to laze around like this in front of the television. She remembered telling Audrey that TV “rotted people’s minds.” Why didn’t Audrey smack her? Past Amanda was so annoying! She had no idea how difficult it was to raise a baby!
“Are you holding up okay?” Susan’s voice switched from lawyer tone to mother tone in a second flat.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” Amanda’s voice wavered.
“You don’t sound fine. Can I bring you anything? You want a burrito for dinner? I can stop by your favorite place.”
When had Amanda become the sort of woman to yearn for a burrito as though it was the secret to happiness? She closed her eyes and groaned.
“How is Sam?”
“He’s bad,” Amanda answered honestly. “He’s working so hard to get the inn back up and running.”
“You told him about the Arnouts?”
“Not really. I don’t think telling him there’s no use in trying would help anything,” Amanda said. “I don’t want him to feel hopeless.”
“Does that mean you feel hopeless?”
Amanda rolled her tongue across the back of her teeth and wondered when she’d last flossed. “I don’t know.”
Susan gave her a brief pep talk about the benefits of eating, showering, and getting outside “where the sun was shining” to ensure better mental health, then had to get off the phone to tend to a client. “I’m coming over later,” she announced. “Whether you let me in or not.”
This was the kind of tough love Susan Sheridan offered others in spades. Amanda half remembered it from more than three years ago— after Chris had left her at the altar and she’d spent a period of time moaning in bed. Where was Chris now? Amanda gave in to her reckless tendencies to stalk Chris on Instagram and see that, apparently, he’d bought a house in Greece and had a very beautiful blond girlfriend and a shaggy dog. They beamed from tiny squares on her phone, seeming to say, “We have no problems!”
Amanda threw her phone to the far edge of the couch and continued to flick through the stations. She wound up on The HISTORY Channel, her father’s favorite. An older man walked through what had once been the battleground of Gettysburg with his fingers laced together and spoke about the “bloody battle” and its ramifications during the Civil War.
Suddenly a gong went through Amanda’s head. She bolted to her feet and stared at the man on-screen.
Off the top of her head, she could name twelve people borderline-obsessed with the Civil War in her life. Her father. Her grandfather. Uncle Steve. Uncle Trevor. Others she’d met in law school. Others she’d gone to undergrad with. The Civil War was the storied horror that had once cratered through this great nation and kept them apart.
If Sam’s hunch was correct, the secret room beneath the Sunrise Cove was a part of that history. People needed to see it. They needed to learn about the dramatic history of the Underground Railroad on Martha’s Vineyard. And maybe Amanda could be the one to bring it to them.
Amanda fled the living room to find her laptop beneath a stack of old books and unused diapers. It was remarkable how unused the laptop was now that she had no reason to work her brain. She immediately googled Cynthia Brighton, then tapped her leg with one hand as she scouted through Cynthia’s LinkedIn page and her new law office in Los Angeles for contact details. Cynthia was an entertainment lawyer who’d handled numerous documentaries for HBO, The HISTORY Channel, and Hulu. Did she know the right people to get this going?
Amanda and Cynthia went way back. They’d originally met in undergrad at a pep rally they hadn’t wanted to be at. Amanda was there with Chris; Cynthia was there with a jock she was dating at the time. They’d spent an hour screaming at each other over the sound of the pep rally about why they loved law so much. Their friendship was solidified. But Amanda hadn’t understood why Cynthia had wanted to go into entertainment law of all things. To her, it was the crassest of law arenas. Why didn’t she want to help people and deal with real-life cases?
The answer was money, of course. It always came down to that. And right now, Amanda needed money more than anything to keep the Sunrise Cove alive.
Amanda wrote a polite and professional-sounding email. She didn’t want to seem too cozy with Cynthia, as they hadn’t kept up with each other after Amanda had moved to Martha’s Vineyard full-time and taken law classes online. She’d sort of abandoned her friends and replaced them with her Sheridan family. She didn’t regret it, but it came with professional consequences.
In the email, Amanda suggested that one of Cynthia’s clients might want to document the “exciting new historical site on Martha’s Vineyard and analyze the dramatic history of the Underground Railroad on the island itself.” It was amazing bait. People across the United States loved the idea of Martha’s Vineyard; loved the long stretches of white beaches, the lighthouses, the fishing boats, and the wealth of the celebrity tourists. The fact that its history went so far back was illuminating. It activated the imagination.
Amanda was so excited about her idea. She felt restored. She vacuumed the living room, scrubbed the kitchen counters, then prepared a feast of salmon, greens, and sweet potato fries for dinner. She even popped a bottle of wine that she’d been saving for Thanksgiving or Christmas. When Sam stumbled into the house, world-weary and gaunt, his eyes stirred with confusion.
“What’s all this about?”
Amanda threw her arms around Sam and said, “I don’t know if it will work. But hear me out.”
