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Lola Sheridan’s Aunt Willa hovered on the outskirts of several different auditorium rehearsals throughout late January and early February. The beautiful yet tired-looking woman tapped her foot along with each musical number, mouthed along to the actors’ lines, and took diligent notes throughout. Cora burned with curiosity regarding this woman. Didn’t she have anything better to do than watch a community theater troupe rehearse? And what on earth did she scribble on that notepad of hers?
After Cora had a brief pow-wow with Lola regarding the afternoon’s rehearsal on the first Tuesday of February, Cora watched, cat-eyed, as Willa gathered her things and slipped on her coat. Audrey Sheridan said something to Willa, something like, “We need to come by and check out your new apartment soon!” To this, Willa said simply, “Oh, it’s not much. Just a couple of rooms to call my own.”
Cora hadn’t made a real friend in what seemed like twenty-five years. Victor had been her constant throughout adulthood, the only person she needed to get her through dark, chilly nights and everyday anxiety. Willa seemed a few years older than her, but not much, and she seemed to echo back the same sort of loneliness that Cora felt, day-in, day-out. Perhaps this was why Cora sped up to walk alongside her. Perhaps this was why she heard herself ask, “Where is it you’ve moved?”
Willa tilted her head, her face glowing with curiosity. “Miss Hannigan! Hello!”
Cora laughed outright, surprised at Willa’s genuine gladness. “Please, call me Cora.”
“Oh goodness me. I’m terribly embarrassed.” Willa placed a hand on her heart and stumbled to a stop. “I’ve just watched you on that stage the past three weeks or so and thought to myself, ‘What a talented woman.’ You’ve become a celebrity in my book, is all. It’s like Jennifer Aniston herself just walked up to me to say hello.”
“You flatter me.”
“It’s silly, I know.” Willa drew a dark strand behind her ear as her brows stitched together. This motion showed a wedding ring on her fourth finger. “Oh, how rude of me. I should answer your question. I’ve moved to a little apartment in downtown Oak Bluffs. I never imagined myself in an apartment, really, but it’s quaint. And it’s lovely not to have to do yard maintenance.”
But where was the husband? Who had given her that ring? Cora ached with curiosity. She ached to know a story that wasn’t her own.
“Are you from Oak Bluffs originally?” Cora asked.
“I am,” Willa told her. “But my parents moved off the island when I was a little girl.”
“I suppose that’s why I don’t know who you are,” Cora replied. “Everyone knows everyone else around here— especially around our age.”
Willa nodded as the color drained from her cheeks. Cora’s heart quickened. What was the script for making a new friend? Had she already messed it up?
“Listen,” Cora began. “There’s a winter festival in downtown Oak Bluffs with a few small kiosks of mulled wine, various foods with coffee and sweets. I thought that since we’re both headed downtown anyway, would you like to grab a cup of mulled wine with me?”
Willa’s eyes widened with hesitation. “Are you sure about that?” She chuckled then added, “I’ve been something of a mess the past few months. I’m sure you’ve heard about it.”
Cora shook her head. “On the contrary, I can’t imagine that anyone could be viewed as a bigger mess than me.”
Willa processed this information slowly, as though she tried to see it from all angles.
“I’ll probably grab a mulled wine whether you join me or not,” Cora tried a final time. “But I’d love the company.”
“Good evening, ladies!” Lola, Amanda, and Audrey hurried past, waving before they disappeared into the darkness of the back hallway. Both Willa and Cora watched them depart in silence.
“I wish I could bottle their energy sometimes,” Willa breathed. “They burn so brightly.”
“Your sister was their mother?”
“Anna. Yes.” Willa dropped her gaze to the floor and seemed to draw deeper into herself.
Cora cursed herself for bringing up such a wretched memory. “I’m terribly sorry. Really. I promise, if we head out for mulled wine, I won’t say a single bad thing.”
Willa’s smile was genuine, yet sorrowful. “Promising that will get you into heaps of trouble, I imagine.”
Cora laughed good-naturedly. “You have me pegged, don’t you?”
**
THE TWO WOMEN STRUCK out from the auditorium, bundled up in coats and walking carefully across the shoveled sidewalk. Silence hung heavy between them. Cora knew the weight of this was on her shoulders, that she’d requested this fresh conversation due to general fear about returning home for another night alone.
“When did you get started in musical theater?” Willa finally asked, drawing them out from the depths of their silence.
“Oh goodness. I was just a little girl.” Cora swallowed as waves of memories crashed over her. “I fell in love with tap dance and ballet and singing myself silly. My mother nearly tore my head off.”
They stopped at a traffic light, shifting their weight. Willa’s eyes flashed toward hers as she asked, “Lola mentioned your husband. I’m terribly sorry.”
Cora was surprised at the sincerity that lurked beneath Willa’s words. It was true what she’d sensed. Willa’s sorrow was a mountain, just like her own.
“Thank you,” Cora breathed. “He would have loved working with Lola. He always had such energy when it came time for the musical. He always woke up early, exercised and then worked until rehearsal while banging out musical number after musical number. I told him he was like the Energizer Bunny.”
They made their way toward downtown as Willa asked a series of questions about Cora and Victor’s time in the theater troupe and her favorite roles that they’d taken on. Very soon, they neared the little winter market and waited in a line of five for two mugs of mulled wine and a little bag of powdered donuts. They then shifted off to the side and perched on a downtown park bench with the donut baggy between them, their mugs steaming.
Was this what it was like to have a friend? Cora hadn’t done anything like this with anyone but Victor... ever? Cora sipped her hot wine. The spices simmered across her tongue. In the distance, the high school choir sang a selection of winter-themed songs, like “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow.”
“I lost my husband, too,” Willa confessed finally, her voice barely audible.
“I saw the ring on your finger,” Cora returned. “I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.”
Willa nodded. “I remember being a younger woman, hearing stories about widows. Reading about the crippling loneliness. Nobody ever tells you what it’s really like.”
“How would you describe it? I’ve struggled to put it into words.”
Willa considered this for a moment. She lifted a powdered donut toward the soft light emanating from a nearby streetlamp. “It’s like every day tramples over you. You’re battered, bruised, and terrified to keep going because you know that every day will be the same. Just as painful and just as suffocating. And then you realize that you have to do something menial, like buy milk or pay your bills. Then you ask yourself, ‘Why me?’ And there’s no answer, so you just keep going.”
A tear rolled down Cora’s left cheek. She swiped it away before it froze against her cheek. “Why me? I think that all the time. He was so young.”
“Mine too.”
Cora shuddered inwardly, then lifted her mug of wine toward Willa’s. “To the loves of our lives. How blessed we were to have had them for as long as we did.”
“Terribly blessed,” Willa agreed as she clicked her mug against Cora’s.
Willa then went on to tell Cora about the events that had transpired after her husband’s death. She’d developed psychosis and essentially forgotten who she was, who her husband was. She’d arrived on Martha’s Vineyard, searching for her long-lost sister, and had fallen into the arms of the Sheridan clan.
“They’ve been such a Godsend,” Willa finished. “They're always eager to help out wherever they can— eager to sit with me and talk to me about everything and anything. The younger one, Audrey Sheridan, she’s the one who discovered the truth of my husband’s death, believe it or not. I can hardly believe it all happened the way it did. But now, the doctor says my medication is working well; I have full control over my thoughts. Now, as sad as it sounds, all I have to do is deal with my own sorrow. And that will be a lifelong journey.”
Cora bowed her head. “After my husband’s death, the funeral home sent me information about widows’ groups. It’s meetings for women to gather around and talk about their feelings. The thought disgusted me. Why should I allow anyone to hear my thoughts about my husband? They’re private. Yet here with you now, I feel a relief that I haven’t experienced since... well. Since everything happened.”
Willa folded a hand over Cora’s and made eye contact with her. Sometimes, words weren’t enough. Just as she opened her lips to attempt some sort of dialogue, anything to get them through the sharpness of their sorrow, a name came out through the little winter festival crowd.
“Cora? Cora!”
Cora’s eyes lifted in surprise. There, coming out of the crowd of Oak Bluffs residents, was Hank, the man who played Daddy Warbucks in their production of Annie. His smile was electric, friendly in a way that suggested they hadn’t seen one another in quite some time, rather than only about forty-five minutes.
“Hi, Hank.” Cora stood on shivering legs to greet him.
He drew closer. He walked with overzealous energy, like a teenager about to ask a young woman on a date. When he neared them, he lifted his mulled wine in greeting and said, “You were a wonder at rehearsal today, Miss Hannigan. I told my daughter on the phone last night that you were meant for Broadway or something like it. The kind of talent you don’t normally find in community theater.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“It’s true,” Willa interjected as she, too, rose from the bench. “I’ve been amazed at her performance and yours, Daddy Warbucks. The way you dance around that stage with little Annie... It almost breaks my heart.”
“It’s keeping me young,” Hank told her, beaming. “And I have to push myself to keep up with my costars.”
Cora had never said much more than a few real, unscripted words to Hank. She tried to drum up some sort of interest in him, in his life. After all, he was a person in her community theater troupe. It was best to show a vested interest in those around you, wasn’t it?
“I um. I suppose you’ve had quite a career in community theater?”
“I did quite a bit in New Jersey,” he explained. “I tried to make my daughter fall in love with it, but she chose a very different path. She always thought it was a little silly to play pretend on stage. For me, playing pretend was the only way I could get through real life.”
Cora’s false smile faded slightly. Hank began to form into a full, three-dimensional person, right before her eyes. She wasn’t accustomed to such honest conversations, especially not all in one night.
“I know exactly what you mean,” Cora murmured.
An expectant silence brewed between them. Cora felt suddenly as though Hank could see all the way through her. She swallowed another gulp of mulled wine while in the distance the high school choir began to sing a capella version of “That’s Life” by Frank Sinatra.
“Well, I hope you ladies have a beautiful evening,” Hank said finally. “I’m headed off to meet a friend. But I’ll see you at rehearsals tomorrow?”
“Sure thing,” Cora replied. “Thanks for saying hello.”
Hank disappeared back through the crowd as Willa and Cora returned to the bench. Cora’s legs jumped around beneath her as Hank’s words swirled through her mind.
“So...” Willa began, her words almost playful. “How long has that man been in love with you?”
Cora’s jaw dropped with surprise. “What? He’s not in love with me. We’ve hardly ever spoken before.”
Willa shrugged. “I don’t know much about the world any longer, Cora. But I do know love when I see it. And that man, my dear, is in love. With. You. I guess you don’t feel the same?”
“I don’t, no,” Cora returned. “I don’t know that I could ever feel that way about anyone else. The concept of marrying again after all that...”
“I know,” Willa agreed. “It seems crazy to build yourself up if only to hurt yourself again and again.”
“It really does,” Cora breathed. “No point to it. No point at all.”