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After Tommy’s spontaneous and heroic shoveling through the snow to save Lola from the auditorium, he and Scott sped off to shovel more sidewalks and assist the town of Oak Bluffs on clambering out from beneath the soft white, very thick blanket. Just before he left, Tommy kissed Lola tenderly and told her, “I’ll see you later today. Don’t be a stranger.”
According to a text from Sam, the road from the auditorium to the Sunrise Cove Inn was now “more plowed than not,” which led Audrey to pack her things and rush out. “I have to try to make it home,” she explained as she reached for the door. “It’s Max’s first birthday! I don’t want to miss any more time than I have already!”
Amanda, the ever-responsible one, stayed behind with Lola to ensure that the children of the theater troupe were able to get back home. One after another, parents arrived on foot, in massive trucks, or on snowmobiles, anxious to wrap their children with strong-armed hugs and bring them back to the warmth and safety of their houses across Oak Bluffs. Those who lived in Edgartown or other surrounding communities found refuge with friends in Oak Bluffs. Lola watched with bated breath as parents who could get there called up parents who couldn’t and explained the situation in greater detail.
“I can take her. Don’t worry about it,” one mother offered over the phone.
“I’ll get some good and healthy lunch in her before you come by,” another mother said. “Even dinner.”
“She can sleep over for as long as she wants.”
As Charlotte and Claire were both still trapped in their houses, Lola gathered up Rachel, Gail, and Abby, who were mid-way through learning yet another dance to yet another pop song, and tugged them out of the auditorium and back toward the Sunrise Cove. As they approached the inn, a large Oak Bluffs plow swept toward them, clearing out the road that led between the Sunrise Cove and the Sheridan House. As it went, Audrey leaped out of the Sunrise Cove, waving a hand as she took off down the road to meet her baby boy.
“There she goes,” Lola said with a laugh.
“This is where I part ways,” Amanda announced. “I’ll see you back at home later.” With that, Amanda struck up toward the front of the Sunrise Cove, where already, Sam awaited her, his arms outstretched. She flung into his arms as he lifted her, twirling her in a big circle.
When Lola turned back, she found Rachel, Gail, and Abby in almost comedic formation, watching Amanda with bugged eyes. Lola could feel the teenagers’ adoration for this moment. How romantic teenage girls were! How they craved to meet the love of their lives, even at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen! Lola wished she could bottle that feeling, one that convinced her anything was possible, as long as she was in love.
“Come on, girls. Amanda will meet us back at home,” Lola said.
Slowly, she dragged Rachel, Gail, and Abby back down the road for the ten-minute walk to the home where she’d grown up. It was nearly eleven o’clock in the morning, and the sunshine was bright as ever, confident that everything would turn out just right. Abby, Gail, and Rachel practically skipped back to the Sheridan House, walking that strange line between girlhood and adulthood and unsure where they belonged.
“Hello?” Lola called as she opened the back door into the mudroom.
“Mom! Look!” Audrey appeared with Max in her arms, her eyes lined with tears. On the other side of her, the living room and dining area were decorated with bright blue balloons and streamers. A large banner hung over the top of the room, which read: “HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY, MAX!”
Lola stumbled out of her boots and coat before she rushed for her daughter and grandson. She wrapped them in a warm hug as Christine and Susan jumped out of the kitchen to greet her. Typical of Max, he seemed very much in tune with the fact that all the attention was meant for him. He excitedly smacked his hands as Audrey showed him the beautiful birthday cake that Christine had baked for him. He even lifted a finger out as far as he could to attempt to slide it across the icing, but Audrey brought him back just in time.
“We thought that, well...” Susan shrugged and glanced toward Christine.
“If we couldn’t celebrate your wedding, then we had to celebrate something,” Christine affirmed. “I baked the cake last night when we had a hunch that the snow would be plowed enough to get you out of there.”
“Baby Max is one! Baby Max is one!” Audrey sang in sing-song, which resulted in Rachel, Gail, and Abby giving her a disgruntled, teenager look. Audrey laughed outright and said, “You can just tell me I’m not cool anymore, girls. I don’t mind. I gave up on being cool when I brought a baby into the world.”
“Hello? Is anyone here?” Noah made his way through the backdoor carrying a big bouquet of flowers and a bright blue balloon. His smile was meant for Audrey and baby Max only, and it seemed he hardly noticed anyone else in the room. After removing his coat, he kissed Max first on the forehead and then Audrey on the lips.
If anyone had seen them without knowing who they were, they would have just assumed that Noah was Max’s father. And in fact, Max even looked at him with love and adoration— the way a baby might look at his father.
“It’s good to see you,” Audrey murmured under her breath.
“What a wild few days,” Noah agreed as he slowly lifted Max out of Audrey’s arms. “Grab yourself a piece of cake. I know how much you like sweets for breakfast.”
Audrey cackled. “Not just for breakfast. For every meal.”
“Your momma’s never going to grow up, is she?” Noah said to Max.
“Hush, you. Don’t teach him bad things about me,” Audrey teased.
Grandpa Wes stepped into the dining area from the back porch. His binoculars danced across his chest as he greeted Audrey, Lola, Rachel, Gail, and Abby. “My thespians are back home! We were worried about you.”
“We had Amanda on our side,” Audrey explained. “Grandpa, I had no idea, but she takes after you. She’s very resourceful— a complete survivor.”
Grandpa Wes considered this stoically. “That is good information to have, Audrey. I suppose I’ll take Amanda with me on all my adventures from now on.”
After a light breakfast of eggs and toast, Christine slid a candle into the center of Max’s birthday cake and lit the tip. Together, everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to a little Max, who bounced outrageously in his mother’s arms. With the help of Noah, Audrey leaned forward so that she and Noah could blow out the candle and “hint” that Max had helped as well. Everyone cheered excitedly as the flame extinguished.
Susan cut the cake and slid plates into birthday revelers’ hands. The cake was decadent, something only Christine Sheridan could have come up with, with cream cheese frosting and raspberry jam sandwiched between the cake layers. Max ate a tiny bit and then flung it toward Audrey’s chest, dousing it with icing.
“Thanks, little man,” Audrey told him playfully. “I’d do anything for you, and this is how you repay me?”
“And it’s only the first year,” Susan warned.
Throughout the afternoon and early evening, everyone in the house received updates regarding news from the outer world. Scott and Tommy continued to work tirelessly, digging out older residents of Oak Bluffs and ensuring that nobody got plowed in. Finally, Claire arrived to pick up the rowdy teenage girls, who were, by then, over-sugared from Max’s birthday cake and singing their renditions of old pop songs. When they disappeared through the snow, Grandpa Wes breathed a sigh of relief.
“My three girls were never as loud as those three girls...” he commented.
Susan laughed and insisted that the Sheridan Sisters had had their boisterous days as well. “You just choose to remember the good days, Dad.”
“I refuse to believe that,” Grandpa Wes countered. “You three were perfect every single day of your lives.”
Just past five in the afternoon, Susan disappeared for a few minutes and then returned wearing a black dress and a pair of tights. She shoved her feet into her boots and then called out to them, “I just have to run a few errands outside. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” She then disappeared through the pink haze of the snow-filled evening.
“Where’s she going?” Lola asked Christine.
Christine shrugged flippantly and then returned her attention to little Mia, who alternated between little frowns and what looked to be near-smiles, although it was far too early for something like that.
A little while later, Audrey and Noah decided to head out on a walk of their own. They bundled Max up and called out their goodbyes from the mudroom.
“You want company?” Lola called.
“We’re good!” Audrey returned.
A few minutes later, Zach arrived to pick Christine and Mia up. Their reunion was beautiful if brief. “We better get a move-on,” Christine said. “Dad? You coming?”
“Going where?” Lola demanded.
“Oh um. Dad says he wants to help us with a job back at the house,” Christine explained timidly. “Zach and I have worked in kitchens our whole lives, and we don’t know anything about um... bathroom plumbing.”
“You should ask Scott about that,” Lola returned.
“Dad said he’d help. Anyway, we’ll see you later?” Christine nearly leaped for the door, leaving Lola in a strange huff in the kitchen, there before Max’s half-eaten birthday cake.
As the door closed, Lola collected the dirty plates and forks and began to scrub everything in the sink. The house seemed enormous around her, creaking against the severity of the winter wind. Lola couldn’t remember the last time she’d been alone in the house where she’d grown up. Their memories, their ghosts, seemed extra heavy without the welcome distraction of Max’s squeals or the ding of Christine’s baking timer. Even her father was gone, hovering over some pipe at Christine’s house, pretending like he knew a thing or two about plumbing.
This was supposed to be the day of Lola’s wedding.
The day when she and Tommy stood up in front of the people they cared for the most and professed their undying love for one another.
But instead, Lola would spend the night beneath an afghan, flicking through TV stations and waiting for the rest of her family to return home. It was almost a sure bet that the roads weren’t cleared all the way out to her cabin. Perhaps she would sleep at the Sheridan House alone.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the back door. Lola jumped from the couch on high alert, her heart in her throat. The knock terrified her. Nobody ever knocked on the Sheridan House door. It was an ever-swinging door, a welcoming path for every Martha’s Vineyard resident.
“Hello?” Lola called.
Again, the knock.
Slowly, Lola tip-toed toward the back door as her heart slammed against her ribcage. When she’d been a girl, she’d adored scary movies, but those nightmares that had collected on-screen made her especially frightened of the silly creaks and noises of her normal house.
“Hello?”
When Lola reached the door, she saw nothing but the outline of a broad-shouldered man. Soft snow had begun to fall again, mere sprinkles when compared to the monster snowflakes of the previous few days. It was beautiful, soulful, and quiet— the sort of dark winter night that made you think about your life and what you really wanted.
Lola opened the back door with a massive creak to find none other than Tommy Gasbarro, the man she’d planned to marry on that very day. He’d opened his thick winter coat to reveal a suit jacket and a pair of slacks. He carried a beautiful bouquet of flowers in his gloved hand— all from the list of wedding flowers that Claire had named. Orchids. Roses. Lilies.
“Tommy...” Lola breathed as her eyes reached his. Her eyes trailed from his shoes back up to his face.
“Lola,” he rasped as he stepped toward her, wrapping his arm around her waist and placing the tip of his nose against hers. “What are you doing in this big house alone?”
Lola laughed outright as her eyes filled with tears. “I think I just realized what I’m doing here in this big house alone.”
“What’s that?”
“Waiting for you to come and save me— yet again.”
Tommy laughed and dropped his lips over hers, kissing her. “Go get dressed. Susan says there’s something special for you in the upstairs closet.”
“Those monsters planned this, didn’t they?” Lola asked, shaking her head ominously.
Tommy didn’t answer but instead waited for Lola downstairs as she shot up the staircase to find a gorgeous burgundy vintage dress, one that suited Lola’s style perfectly. On the dress, someone had scribed a little note that said:
“FOR THE BRIDE TO BE.”
At first glance, Lola knew the handwriting belonged to Audrey.
Hurriedly, feeling the weight of her family at the Sunrise Cove and Tommy Gasbarro downstairs, Lola leaped into her gown, stepped into a pair of boots, and grabbed her coat. She lined her eyes with black eyeliner, bright red lipstick and touched up her dark eyebrows, a look that Audrey had called “sultry Italian beauty.”
When Lola appeared at the top of the staircase, Tommy blinked up at her, captivated. Lola had half a mind to tease him, maybe call him her “prom date” or something like that. But luckily, she kept the thought to herself. She didn’t want to ruin the magic of this moment.
“Between saying and doing is half a sea,” Lola whispered when she reached him, echoing back the old Italian saying.
“Baby, we’re going to do it. We’ll do it all.”
Tommy drove Lola back to the Sunrise Cove in his massive truck. On either side, enormous snow cliffs reached for the sky. All the while, Lola and Tommy’s hands were latched together in the center of the truck— a couple on the verge of something enormous, even if that something enormous wouldn’t begin today.
As Tommy led Lola through the front door of the Sunrise Cove Bistro, the entirety of the Sheridan and Montgomery family burst out from either side of the Bistro in celebration. “Happy Engagement!” they cried joyously, as “This Will Be Our Year” by The Zombies blared from speakers. Tear-filled, Lola lifted her chin to kiss Tommy as her heart beat around like a teenager’s. Perhaps she wasn’t so different from Gail, Abby, and Rachel, after all.
“You tricked me!” Lola cried as she wrapped Audrey in a hug. “I was all alone in that big house, thinking the world had gone on without me.”
“We had to do it,” Audrey confessed. “It was the only way to really surprise you.”
Susan, Amanda, and Christine hustled forward for hugs as well, each of them delivering their own words of love.
“You two were made for each other,” Amanda began.
“I just love this guy, Lola. He’s perfect for the family,” Susan added.
“He dug the whole town out of a snowstorm, and then he cleaned himself up as one of the most handsome on the island,” Christine said, impressed. “No wonder he changed your opinion about marriage.”
As Lola continued to celebrate with her extended family, sipping champagne and talking about the “true” wedding, which would probably come sometime during the summer, Lola glanced toward the far end of the Bistro, where Sunrise Cove guests sat eating dinner and sipping wine. Something curious caught Lola’s attention— an oddly familiar couple, seated across from one another, in conversation with a woman in her late twenties or early thirties.
The older woman in the couple sat facing away from Lola, but her motions were captivating. She talked expressively with her hands as she told a story that made both the young woman and the man burst into laughter.
With a funny jolt, Lola realized that the man at the table was none other than Hank, her Daddy Warbucks.
Which meant that...
It couldn’t be.
Could it?
Lola hustled toward the far end of her party to get a better look. Sure enough, the beautiful Cora sat at a table with Hank and a woman who seemed to be his adult daughter. The three of them seemed to alternate between jokes and laughter, parading their way through a bottle of wine as another soft snow fluttered down outside. Lola’s heart seized with wonder at the sight.
She felt she witnessed something incredible.
A woman who’d thought all was lost, taking the first steps toward hope.
A man who was open enough to let her take her time.
Lola turned back to watch Tommy in conversation with Scott, his soon-to-be brother-in-law. Scott smacked Tommy on the back as laughter erupted through him.
Tommy had never wanted this life. He’d never wanted a family. He’d never wanted comfort or to be in the same port for too long.
Yet here, at the Sunrise Cove, he’d found a home with Lola and the rest of her family.
Lola couldn’t have written an ending better than this. And she knew there was so much of their story still to come. All she had to do was lift her eyes to the horizon and have enough strength in her heart to dream and hope.