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That night, Lola’s answer to Tommy’s sudden question of marriage, a resounding YES, resulted in more popped champagne bottles, countless shrieks, impressive looks at the engagement ring, and several smacks on the back to Tommy, first from Scott, then from Zach, then from Grandpa Wes and Uncle Trevor and cousin Andy. Lola remained latched to Tommy, her heart nearly bursting from her chest. Since her return to the Vineyard a year and a half before, she’d pushed the limits of her happiness. She wasn’t sure if it could get much higher than this.
Audrey wept with surprise, throwing her arms around her mother as her body shivered. Lola sensed what her daughter thought. For nineteen years, it had been just the two of them against the world. The return to the Vineyard meant growing up for both of them— Audrey with her baby, Lola with her engagement, and both of them finding space for the enormous love they now had for their extended family. They could never return to that cozy ecosystem of the original Lola and Audrey show.
Soon after, Max’s baby monitor gave out a resounding wail, and Audrey sped off to tend to him. There could be no waiting around, reminiscing. Life was happening all around them.
When Lola and Tommy returned to their cabin that night, they sat for a long time in the truck, as though they wanted to extend the length of a night they would never forget. Lola gazed at him, wordless. Finally, she mustered the strength to say, “I thought you never wanted to.”
To this, he returned, “Me neither. But with you by my side, I’ve become the kind of man I’ve always wanted to be. I’ve become stronger and more alive and more empathetic. It would be my honor to call you my wife. And I would be an idiot never to ask you. To be honest, I kind of thought you’d laugh in my face and tell me that Lola Sheridan isn’t the marrying kind.”
Lola’s jaw dropped open with surprise. “You’re making that up.”
Tommy shrugged playfully before he leaned in for a kiss. “Maybe. Maybe I knew you’d say yes.”
“Hey!” Lola whacked him on the shoulder, grinning as he kissed her. They both fell into heaps of laughter before they leaped out of the truck and headed into the cozy warmth of their cabin. “Would my fiancé like a glass of water?” she asked in the kitchen, poised at the counter.
Tommy’s smile was electric. “Is my fiancée suggesting that I’m not hydrated enough?”
“I’m only saying that my fiancé is forty-six years old and not exactly keen on hangovers,” Lola told him.
He took two large strides toward her and pressed her against the counter, using a bit more force than she’d expected. Her smile fell from her lips as she lifted her eyes toward his. This was to be the rest of her life.
The ring on Lola’s finger was, in fact, a relic from a previous era and a previous continent. Apparently, it had belonged to Tommy’s Italian grandmother, and his father had brought it over from Europe. “He never proposed to my mother with it,” Tommy started to explain the history behind it. “But Mom told me that the ring was very important to him and that his grandparents’ marriage was a powerful one, one that he wanted to emulate. Perhaps he did, somewhere across the Atlantic. But he left the ring here, perhaps as some sort of memento to his previous love for my mother and his sorrow for his inability to grow old with her.”
**
SEVERAL DAYS LATER, the end of the bed tipped low and lifted Lola from the calm of her sleep. She blinked through the darkness, sensing Tommy awake. Her hand wavered above the bedside table and turned the lamp on.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Tommy whispered, placing his hand over the covers above her ankle so that his fingers wrapped tenderly around the thin bone above her feet. “I got a text from Scott late last night, asking if I could work at the freight company this week.”
“Ah.” Lola blinked toward the harsh red light of the alarm clock, which read back 3:47 a.m. “You must be crazy.”
Tommy chuckled. “You know I miss being out on the water more than anything. The freight’s no sailboat, but it’s at least something. And I’m useless, hanging around the Vineyard waiting for the winter to pass.”
Lola pulled her legs out from under the blankets and hustled toward him, burrowing her head against the warmth of his chest. The thudding of his heart filled her skull. “Let me make you a pot of coffee,” she whispered. “I’ll hurry.”
Lola leaped up and headed to the kitchen, where she brewed a large pot of black coffee while Tommy took one of his classic soul-crushing ice-cold showers. When he appeared at the kitchen table, his cheeks were bright as Christmas bulbs. He bent to draw his thick wool socks along his massive feet, an intimate performance. Still down there, he murmured, “I’ve given some thought to the wedding.”
“Oh yeah?” The coffee pot bubbled and spat as the last of the black liquid oozed through the filter.
“I see no reason we should wait,” Tommy told her, finally lifting his head. “All my life, I’ve thought of marriage as this prison. Who would ever want that? Now, I’m eager to lock the door and throw away the key as quickly as possible.”
“You sound like some of my girlfriends at the end of college,” Lola teased. “Thinking if they weren’t married by twenty-three, they’d be labeled as old maids.”
“I think that ship has sailed,” Tommy told her.
“Tra il dire e il fare c’e di mezzo il mare,” Lola tried, her Italian accent soft and inarticulate yet nearly musical.
“Between doing and saying is half a sea, I know,” Tommy said, his smile crooked. As he rose to kiss her, he breathed, “What about February?”
“You are eager,” Lola returned with a laugh.
“Are you saying you need a little more time to think?” Tommy teased, bucking toward the door, forgetting the coffee altogether. “Are you saying you’re not so sure about me?”
“Tommy!” Something about the wretched chilly darkness outside led Lola back toward him. She flung her arms around him, yearning to threaten to make him stay in bed with her forever.
His smile was warm, soft behind his thick sailor’s beard. “Say you’ll marry me in February.”
“I’ll marry you tomorrow if Charlotte can plan it in time,” Lola breathed before she dipped her head back for a final kiss.
Lola listened to the sound of Tommy’s truck engine as she sat at the kitchen table with a large mug of coffee steaming before her. She positioned her feet on the edge of the chair and formed herself into a tight little ball. The bed beckoned her back into its warm folds, but her mind whirred gently, coming alive as the minutes passed.
With her laptop opened wide before her, Lola dug into the meat of a story she’d been working on for the Boston-based restaurant magazine. They had asked for a feature on the up and coming restaurants in Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. To her surprise, her language was articulate, her voice sharp as she sizzled through paragraphs three through eight. When she lifted her chin from the sterile glow of her laptop, she caught the first sunlight of morning as it beamed through the glorious forest.
Without giving it another thought, Lola grabbed her phone and texted her wedding planner cousin, Charlotte, who’d once planned the entirety of a celebrity wedding in three weeks flat (a feat that had projected her into wedding planning royalty).
LOLA: Hey lady. How’s your schedule in February? Am I crazy to ask you to plan a small (50-75 guests) wedding by then?
It was nearly seven, which meant Charlotte was guaranteed to be up with her teenage daughter, Rachel, scrambling through the frantic events of another early morning before school. She wrote back in three minutes’ time, probably over-promising on a feat that seemed, to Lola, nearly impossible.
CHARLOTTE: What a relief!
CHARLOTTE: I was terrified you’d ask for a summer wedding. My summer’s nearly all booked.
CHARLOTTE: February, on the other hand? Not exactly wedding season on Martha’s Vineyard.
CHARLOTTE: Why don’t we meet later this week to discuss your vision for the ceremony?
CHARLOTTE: Gosh, you and Tommy are just about the hottest couple on this island. Everyone always told me he wasn’t good news, you know. And I just told them they don’t know Lola Sheridan like I do. You’re just as bad news as Tommy. I suppose that’s why it works.
Christine texted not long after to ask if Lola wanted to meet at the Sunrise Cove Bistro for a round of croissants and coffee. Lola leaped into the shower, fresh off three hundred precise and edited words and a nearly-set marriage date. She brushed through her luscious brown hair and tore through her fully stocked closet, something that, unfortunately, she’d felt to be slightly too youthful since the coming of Max Wesley Sheridan. She wasn’t ageist; she was simply wary of coming off silly. It was something she’d have to discuss with her sisters at length. Not today, though. Today was a day for long flowing skirts, tight turtlenecks, and thick-soled boots. It was a day for overindulgences and gut-busting laughter. It was yet another day in the beautiful story of her love.
Audrey and Max awaited Christine and Lola in the Bistro dining area. Max sat in a highchair with a plastic spoon in hand. His big blue eyes found Lola and widened immediately with surprise and joy.
“Gosh, I wish I could bottle that feeling,” Lola said as she greeted him with a kiss on the forehead. “He won’t look at us like that forever.”
Audrey stood up and hugged her mother as Max threw the spoon onto the floor.
“I love the looks,” Audrey admitted with a smile. “But the throwing game he’s just come up with? I’m not a big fan of that, to be honest.”
“Well, how else do you expect him to get that football scholarship?” Lola teased.
Audrey rolled her eyes and collected the plastic spoon. “Max Wesley is no football player. He’s more of a beat poet. Isn’t that obvious?”
“You can’t plan out your child’s future. They’ll only surprise you and go the opposite direction,” Lola said as she sat across from Audrey.
“Yeah?” Audrey’s smile was mischievous. “Then what happened with me? I’m a journalist, just like you; we live ten minutes from each other, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”
Lola’s heart lifted into her throat. “You broke the mold.”
After the server brought them two mugs of coffee and two glasses of orange juice, Christine entered the Bistro tentatively, with little Mia wrapped tightly against her chest. Despite her forty-three years and new-mother status, Christine looked fresh and vibrant, her skin glowing and youthful. Lola remembered all the mothers she’d spoken to over the years who’d called pregnancies after thirty-five “geriatric.” What an alienating term. She was grateful Christine had paid it no mind.
“There they are. The most beautiful women in the room,” Lola greeted Christine, rising up to hug her gently as Christine joined.
“She looks peaceful right now,” Christine agreed. “But tell that to the version of her at one in the morning. Zach’s still knocked out on his back, snoring on the couch. After his years in the restaurant industry, you’d think he’d be able to handle all kinds of complaints. His new daughter is his downfall.”
The three adults and two babies settled in for a beautiful brunch as soft snow settled across the rolling hill that led toward the Vineyard Sound beyond. They ordered Eggs Benedict and stacks of blueberry pancakes and large, cloud-like croissants and spoke quietly over baby Mia’s head. Even Max snoozed soon after his arrival and allowed himself to be placed gently in his baby carrier.
Audrey spoke about her new semester of online classes through Penn State, which had been specially set up for her after her newfound success as a journalist. She’d revealed the horrific secrecy of a particularly evil electric power plant, which had covered up decades of accidental deaths. One of the men who’d lost his life was their Aunt Willa’s husband, a tragedy that had resulted in a loss of her memory and a retreat to Martha’s Vineyard.
“The Penn State newspaper has agreed to give me a weekly column,” Audrey explained as she smeared butter on a slice of her croissant with her knife. “I had this idea that I wanted to represent people like myself— students off-campus who are still very much involved with Penn State. Every week, I plan to interview a different student about their majors, life goals, and particular situations. This week, I’m interviewing a twenty-five-year-old woman in Alaska who works at a little diner with a view of Mount Foraker and studies microbiology in her spare time. Her father has cancer, and she requested to do her course load online to stay home to be with him.”
Christine’s daughter lifted a tiny pink hand toward the sky as Audrey finished her story. Christine chuckled and nodded toward it, saying, “Mia approves of this woman.”
“And of your brilliant idea for this column,” Lola agreed. “How do you find students to interview?”
“Mostly Penn State message boards,” Audrey explained. “People write to one another for advice on various projects or talk about the occasional ‘loneliness’ of living off-campus and away from everyone else. Although I hated last semester, it’s felt strange not going back yet still performing the same homework duties and watching classes online. It’s like performing a play off-stage without a costume.”
“We love having you here,” Christine told her firmly.
“Especially now, since I’ll need your help with the wedding,” Lola rushed out this news secretively before she took a sip of coffee.
Audrey’s eyes widened. “Are you suggesting that you have a date? I thought for sure you’d push that off as long as possible.”
“You wouldn’t hold out on us, would you?” Christine demanded.
Lola shrugged playfully. “It just might have been suggested by one Tommy Gasbarro... that we marry in February. The sooner, the better.”
Audrey’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“Miss ‘I’m Never Getting Married’ has decided to jump in head-first!” Christine shook her head as her long locks cascaded across her shoulders. “Now, I’ll be the only hold-out.”
“You skipped a few steps, I think,” Lola returned, grinning toward little Mia, whose pink hand curled into a fist.
“We Sheridan women don’t do anything in the correct order,” Audrey stated, beaming down at Max in his carrier.
“It’s because we’re artists at heart,” Christine agreed, half-teasing.
“Dancing to the beat of our own drum,” Lola laughed.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Audrey chirped.