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On the final Saturday of the first month of the New Year, the entirety of Martha’s Vineyard awoke to a sparkling winter wonderland. Lola blinked through the sterling light of morning, Tommy’s powerful arm wrapped over her stomach, and took in the heaviness of the silence in their cabin, tucked deep within the forest and now, covered in a foot and a half of snow. Tommy remained deep in sleep, his face soft as his head lay adorably against his pillow. Lola lifted her head the slightest bit to catch the time, which blared out from the red alarm clock on the side table. It was just past nine in the morning, over five hours later than Lola and Tommy ordinarily slept. It was a perfect luxury.
Lola tried to go back to sleep, to join Tommy back in the soft darkness of unconsciousness, but unfortunately, her body nagged for the bathroom. Slowly, she eased out from under Tommy’s arm and tip-toed to the bathroom in the hallway, where she took in her mirror reflection, a sleepy-eyed Lola with bright porcelain skin and hints of crow’s feet— proof of the forty years she’d walked on earth.
Once in the kitchen, Lola brewed a pot of coffee and peeked out the back door to investigate the snow situation. As Lola had spent the previous evening at the Sheridan House, playing cards with Grandpa Wes, Audrey, Noah, and Amanda, she hadn’t given a thought to any approaching weather. When snow was a surprise like this, it reminded Lola of her childhood. Back then, a blanket of snow had meant the world to her. It had felt like a delicious gift from God himself.
As the coffee pot bubbled and spat, Tommy appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, still shirtless, with baggy flannel pants floating around his muscular legs. His black hair was disheveled, hair sticking up every which way. Lola took two strides toward him before falling into his embrace. She then pressed her cheek against the soft pillow of his chest hair. Was it possible to tell someone you loved them too often? She held onto the silence until Tommy laughed good-naturedly and lifted her off the ground and into him.
“We got quite a snowfall last night,” he said, his grin widening.
“Looks like we’re trapped in this cabin all alone.”
“Oh no. Trapped with you? What have I done to deserve this?” Tommy demanded.
“It’s awful, isn’t it?” She cocked her top lip, trying to make a nasty face.
Tommy kissed her gently, then harder, before placing her delicately back on the floor. Lola whipped back around to pour them two mugs of coffee and placed two pieces of bread in the toaster. It was marvelous to be there, just the two of them, without rehearsals to run off to or freight lines to sail. Perhaps this was her version of happily ever after.
As Lola and Tommy settled into the breakfast nook with toast and coffee, Audrey sent a photograph of herself and Amanda, already knee-deep in the snow and erupting with laughter. Lola smiled inwardly and wrote back.
LOLA: You girls are always up to no good.
Another photo came in of Max, dressed in thick layers with little mittens on his hands. He touched the snow delicately as though he didn’t trust it. His blue eyes caught the sparkling sunlight that reflected off the snow.
Lola showed the photograph to Tommy, who answered with an appreciative, “He’s an islander, through and through, isn’t he?”
Lola and Tommy inched themselves through the rest of the morning, frequently falling into one another’s arms and often talking about “just getting back in bed” and avoiding all tasks for the day ahead. As the clock hinted toward noon, Tommy suggested they take the snowmobiles out for a drive through the woods, perhaps all the way to the sea.
“I can’t keep you landlocked for even a day, can I?” Lola teased gently as she pulled on a turtleneck, a sweatshirt, and then an additional layer, all of which would go under her winter coat.
“It’s the only way I know how to live,” Tommy told her.
Lola and Tommy had only snowmobiled together a handful of times the previous winter, especially as Tommy hadn’t been on the island for very much of it. Lola knew, however, that Tommy was a worthy snowmobiler, someone she could trust easily to forge a path forward. Wes Sheridan himself had taught Lola the ins and outs of the snowmobile culture throughout her teenage years— after Susan had already left the island and Christine was usually upstairs listening to Nirvana CDs and lamenting the world. Although Lola and her father hadn’t seen eye-to-eye until very recently, she had fond memories of those beautiful winter days, whizzing atop the snow as the softness of it rained on either side of her, projected back.
Lola fell into the daydream of the early afternoon. They whipped easily through the trees, their bodies leaned forward and their machines powerful, precise. Much of the island wouldn’t be plowed in time for anyone outside of the bigger towns to get anywhere at all. Several other snowmobiles were out and about, cutting around the snow-topped island joyously. Lola waved to several passers-by, each of whom wore their Skidoo outfits, along with helmets that protected them from the elements and made them generally unrecognizable until they stopped and lifted their visors.
Eventually, Tommy led them to the Aquinnah Cliffside Overlook Hotel, where Lola’s cousin Kelli and her new boyfriend developer had ceased work over the previous few weeks due to winter conditions. They parked the snowmobiles in the makeshift parking lot, which would soon become a parking lot filled with antique vehicles, Porsches, Lamborghinis, and BMWs, the vehicles of the wealthy folks who would come to darken the doors of this once-great and soon-to-be-great-again hotel.
“It’s hard to imagine the future, isn’t it?” Lola breathed as she walked toward the cliff’s edge. “When the island takes on winter, it’s like summer never happened at all.”
“That hotel is going to be just about the ritziest place on this island, isn’t it?” Tommy scrunched his nose as he inspected the outline of the place, which was mostly covered up with snow.
Lola leaned her head on his chest and peered up at it. “You know the old story. That my grandfather met my grandmother there, but she was married to a terrible man.”
“And your grandfather sold the hotel to her husband just before he found out about the affair,” Tommy recited.
“In the middle of a hurricane!”
“You love the old romance of this place, don’t you,” Tommy teased.
“How could I not.” Lola returned, her throat tightening. “Call me a sap, but it’s my family’s history. And it’s larger than life.”
Tommy studied her, his brow furrowed. “Did I ever tell you about the story of how my mother met my father?”
“No...” Lola’s eyes widened. “I didn’t think you even knew.”
“My mother told me,” Tommy began gently. His eyes turned toward the horizon line, a wide-open Atlantic Ocean, which the wind toiled against, drawing large waves toward the sky. “She was traveling through Italy, which I suppose you know, and she was nearing the end of her trip. She was short on funds but managed to find a little bed and breakfast in Rome.”
“What is it about the hospitality industry?” Lola asked. “It seems like that’s where all stories begin and end.”
“Yes, well. In this particular story, my mother awoke in the middle of the night to fire. The entire bed and breakfast had gone up in flames. Something was wrong with the oven, I believe, although I’m not entirely sure.”
“Oh my gosh.”
“She ran to the staircase, but the smoke was too intense. She couldn’t get through. So she returned to her bedroom and found that the house had a little escape ladder out beside the window. As she pulled open the bedroom window to escape, she found that a man had crawled up to save her. He didn’t speak a word of English, but he beckoned for my mother to take the ladder up above him and crawl down so that he could guide her, catching her if she fell. My mother was terrified of heights and of water and most certainly, of falling. But inch by inch, my father guided my mother down that ladder, back to the ground below. And then, almost immediately, she fainted.”
Lola shrieked. “Evelyn! I had no idea.”
“Yes, well. He took her back to his mother’s house, and together, the two of them nursed her back to health, refusing to allow her back on her journey. By the week’s end, my father had charmed her so much that she called it a version of Stockholm Syndrome.”
“Roman Syndrome,” Lola countered. “With all that pasta, I don’t know how you could resist.”
“Yes,” Tommy agreed, smiling. “My mother said there were red flags about him left and right. That he flirted with everyone and probably had some other lovers at the time that they met. But when it came time for her to return home, she couldn’t bear it. They stayed up all throughout the night talking, and then my father told my mother he wouldn’t let her go. Not unless she allowed him to come along with her.”
“Wow...” Lola breathed. “That’s so romantic.”
Tommy shrugged flippantly as his eyes hardened. “It is. It’s a beautiful, incredibly romantic Italian story. But you see... this story is the reason that I’ve never been able to trust anything or anyone. How could my father say such beautiful things to my mother and then leave her like that? Leave her with a little boy who hardly knew anything at all? How could you build such a story with someone and then completely retreat without looking back?”
Lola recognized the weight of Tommy’s sorrow— the sinister reason why he’d never believed in the power of love or marriage. Unfortunately, he had this ingrained into him at such a young age.
Lola placed her hands across Tommy’s chest and gazed into his eyes, which reflected the damage of his youth.
“Stories are never enough, Tommy,” she whispered. “The sheer fact that my grandparents met during a hurricane when my grandmother was married to someone else... doesn’t make their love a success. Rather, for me, their love was a success because they had mornings like the morning we just had. They woke up next to one another and chose to talk and laugh and experience the world together. They woke up every day and chose love.”
Tommy bowed his head gently and closed his eyes. Lola could almost feel the thumping of his heart beneath the layers of his thick outfit.
“I’ve never heard someone explain it like that before,” Tommy whispered. “But I should have known from the moment I met you that you’d shift my perspective.”
A dramatic chirp erupted above them. Lola lifted her head to catch the flash of a bright red cardinal overhead. It landed on a long, skinny branch of a nearby tree and seemed to blink down at her expectantly.
“Look at him. He looks so perfect against the snow,” Lola murmured.
But before Tommy could turn his head back to catch sight of him, the little cardinal swept out from the trees and headed back toward the inner part of the island, where he belonged.