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One week later.
Amelia-Ann Hannigan stood in front of her foggy bathroom mirror and patted her face dry. Raw skin glowed back at her. It had taken far too long to scrub away every last bit of rouge and kohl she’d painstakingly applied for the wrap party the night before.
No, she wasn’t the star of the show. Or even a supporting player. But Amelia considered herself to be a professional. And despite her pitifully tiny role as an extra in Little City Theatre’s production of Oklahoma! she wanted to prove to her director that she had potential. Even at the ripe old age of forty-something. Hah.
Anyway, the makeup helped to conceal the bags beneath her eyes from traveling to and from Birch Harbor for her mother’s funeral.
Still, it shouldn’t take nearly half an hour of washcloth-rubbing to get rid of her “face.”
Quietly, she promised herself to scale back a little on the makeup, even for rehearsals and performances and wrap parties. Amelia really wasn’t old enough to “put on her face” for any event.
Maybe she should lose five or ten pounds. Then, the struggling actress wouldn’t have to obsess over adding hollows to her cheeks with shadowy browns and angles to her cheekbones with shimmery highlighter crayons.
Amelia was too young for a full face but too old for trying to look twenty.
It was a hard spot to be in. Part of her wished to age enough to nab those “north-of-fifty” roles, part of her contemplated premature plastic surgery to better achieve the fresh-out-of-college-cover-girl roles.
Fat chance.
Amelia was due back in Birch Harbor that evening. Instead of flying this time, she planned to drive. Jimmy, her boyfriend of six months, was supposed to stay at her apartment and watch after Dobi, Amelia’s paunchy Weiner dog.
She’d half-heartedly considered bringing both of them. Ever since the funeral, Amelia could not shake the longing in the pit of her stomach.
Loneliness.
The realization that Amelia was entering middle age with little to show for it. No husband. No children (save for Dobi). No mortgage.
And now, no mother.
Losing her mom was hard as hell. Really, it was.
Plus, the whole thing was made harder by Amelia’s stark realization that she was bound on the same journey as sweet-and-spicy Nora, a wacky spinster whose closest friends were more often her most poisonous enemies.
And that just wasn’t Amelia-Ann Hannigan. She was not a wacky spinster. Even more than that, she had friends. Real ones, who weren’t also her enemies—that was important to note, a big difference between Amelia and her mother. Nora may have put on a show for the public, but her actress-daughter was the real deal. A good friend. Not a fake.
So, maybe no husband, children, mortgage, or mother... but Amelia did have friends. And a boyfriend, hapless though he may be. And a furbaby. And sisters.
And, hopefully—if her recent on-Broadway meet-and-greet was well-received, she might just have an exciting gig, to boot.
“Making it” in New York had been even harder than she thought it would be. Twenty years of working her way toward The Big Apple, one small-town community theatre at a time, had resulted in a demotion, actually.
Bit parts in off-Broadway productions that were poorly attended. So poorly attended, that she had to make ends meet elsewhere.
Waiting tables sucked. Plain and simple.
Who wanted to be a forty-year-old waitress? Much less, an over-forty waitress who was trying desperately to break into the ingénue-favoring theatre world?
Well, maybe some people. But not Amelia-Ann.
Now, as she felt herself pulled right and left by what she did not have and what she did have, she tucked away every last jar, tube, can, and palette of her makeup set and kept out only her mascara.
Three swipes. That’s all she allowed herself. Three quick swipes before popping the brush back in its tube and the tube in her bag and zipping it with finality.
Less is more, Amelia-Ann, the voice in her head trilled.
“When you going?”
It was Jimmy, leaning shirtless in the doorway.
He had absolutely no reason to be shirtless. He’d just arrived minutes earlier—fully clothed. Amelia had given him zero reason to undress. And there he was, an almost-six pack bulging beneath his shaved chest. Completely unnecessary.
But that was Jimmy.
“Now,” she answered, pecking him on the cheek before squeezing past to hunt down Dobi for a goodbye cuddle.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Michigan, you know.” Jimmy crossed his arms over his chest, flexing his pecs involuntarily.
That pang—that longing from the week before grew heavy in her stomach.
Her sisters would hate Jimmy. Amelia was sure of that. And Clara’s tiny little apartment had no room for a fledgling couple. It would be weird to invite him. If Amelia didn’t realize this before, she did now.
She bit down on her lip and raised her eyebrows at her brooding, out-of-work, younger boyfriend.
She sighed. “Jimmy, I would love for you to come... ” she started, suddenly feeling torn all over again.
“You would?” he asked, the corners of his mouth curling up in a lazy grin.
“Well, of course,” she replied, scooping Dobi into her arms and scratching beneath his collar. “But Clara only has a fold-out sofa.”
“I bet we can fit,” he answered, his voice dropping an octave as he uncrossed his arms and strode to her.
Amelia closed her eyes, her heart racing in her chest. She opened her eyes and lifted one palm against him. “I’m so sorry. Clara is super prim and proper. It’s a no. It’s such a no, and I’m so sad about it.” She put on a pout. Dobi let out a low growl.
He took a step back and raised his hands in surrender. “All right. I get it.”
“Oh, Jimmy, honey,” Amelia set Dobi on the overstuffed armchair and reached for her roll-on suitcase. “I want you to come. But you’d be bored. I’ll be with the probate attorney and my sisters, and—”
“I get it,” he answered, letting her hug his torso as he gazed off.
“I’ve got an idea!” Amelia’s eyes flashed open. The perfect solution occurred to her. A light at the end of the tunnel. A way for her to quell the pit in her stomach with a little hope. “Why don’t you come down this weekend? We can play tourist for my last day in Birch Harbor. You could rent a car and drive to the lake. That way you don’t have to be around for the lawyer stuff, but you can still meet my sisters, maybe, and see my hometown. We’ll ride back to the city together. A mini-vacay. What do you think?”
He smirked. “Yeah, maybe.”
Amelia smiled and threw one more look at Dobi, the one she really wanted to take. But she knew this was for the best. Her attention could be on all the legal stuff that would no doubt be confusing and stressful.
Then, when it was over—she’d enjoy the reward of reuniting with Dobi and put on her docent hat for Jimmy. Maybe, just maybe, seeing him outside the city would do her good, anyway. Give her some perspective. An answer. Maybe it would show her whether he was commitment-worthy or just another unemployed construction worker looking for love. Or, lust.
Maybe Jimmy could even help, in some way.
Her boyfriend was a bit of a project, but Amelia was not afraid of a project.
She bid them both goodbye and trotted down four flights of stairs and out onto the busy thoroughfare.
She took a cab to the car rental place and accepted their cheapest offering: a smoky, puke-smelling sedan that, with any luck, would take her directly to the car rental hub nearest Birch Harbor where she could deposit it and be whisked away by Clara, who, naturally, drove a cute little VW Bug. One that didn’t smell like an ashtray or a vomit bag.
***
“Amelia!”
Amelia whipped around just as she passed the single key over the counter to the car rental guy. It was Clara, waving wildly from the curb.
She smiled and waved back, thanking the clerk and wheeling her luggage through the greasy doors and out into the warm Michigan afternoon.
Clara rounded her car and squeezed Amelia in a tight hug. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she gushed.
Amelia hugged back, hard. “I’m so glad I’m here. I forget that New York sort of has a smell to it. Until I leave.”
“You mean to tell me that place doesn’t have a smell to it?” Clara pointed behind her toward the boxy, dated building that was once a fast-food joint.
“Touché,” Amelia replied. “But out here? It’s... nice.” She hugged Clara again, and they drove together back into Birch Harbor.
“How was your week?” Clara asked, adjusting her grip on the steering wheel.
“Busy. We wrapped Oklahoma! I packed to come back. Dobi is with Jimmy. I should have just brought him.”
“Jimmy or Dobi?”
“Dobi,” Amelia replied pointedly.
Clara grinned. “How’s that going, anyway?”
“You mean with Jimmy?”
“Yeah. Isn’t he... younger?” Clara lifted an eyebrow at her older sister.
Amelia blew out a sigh and tugged her ponytail loose, letting her warm chestnut waves fall around her shoulders. “Jimmy is... a good guy.”
“When did you two start dating again?” Clara’s voice was light, but her words were heavy.
“Um, December? It was right after we got Mom’s diagnosis.”
“Oh, yeah.” Clara brought a second hand to the steering wheel and switched lanes after checking over her shoulder.
“How’d you meet?”
Amelia frowned. Clara wasn’t the type to put twenty questions to her older sisters. “At a bar. I was... I was there with Mia. Actually, it was the exact day I found out. I remember now. I drove here the next morning. But the night before, well. I was a wreck. Mia tried to distract me. And, we met Jimmy. He got my number.”
Clara didn’t respond, instead maneuvering off the highway and down toward the water.
Birch Harbor. A tourist community on Lake Huron known for its small-town feel, ocean-like beaches, and quaint lakeside eateries.
Just before they pulled up to Clara's digs, The Bungalows—a group of four ground-level units, owned by the Hannigan family trust—Amelia’s phone buzzed with a new text.
She opened it up and saw two faces looking back at her: Jimmy and Dobi, posing in front of the very same car rental agency where she’d been just hours before. Jimmy stood there, grinning from ear to ear, dangling a single key above little Dobi’s worried face.
A caption below the attached image read: The tourists are on their way!