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Lola knew that of all the Sheridan sisters, she looked the most like their dead mother, Anna. Add to that the fact that she was thirty-eight, the same age her mother had been at the time of her death, and she didn’t blame her father for his confusion. Heck, even she started when she saw pictures of her mother sometimes. The resemblance was uncanny and she kept it that way, ensuring her hair remained long, flowing down her back.
“It’s not Anna, Dad. It’s me. It’s Lola,” she said softly.
For a moment, Wes’s eyes stirred with confusion again. His hand stroked his stomach, and he tilted his head. “Right. Well, regardless—you really must see this woodpecker. Whoever you are.” At this, he winked, as though he wanted to be in on the joke about his declining mental health.
Naturally, Lola didn’t laugh.
She did step toward him and accept the binoculars, so that she could peer up at the bird, at its gorgeous yet peculiar red markings. Her father placed his hand on her shoulder and said, “I love it out here. Just me and the birds and the squirrels. Glad to share it with you.”
Lola dropped the binoculars onto her chest. Her heart stirred with panic, fear, and sadness, and she surged toward him and hugged him tightly. He seemed both shocked and open to it, and he slid his hand down her back and said, “What a wonderful way to start the day.”
Lola sniffled and drew her head back. She was reminded of a long-lost time when Audrey had taken her rollerblades out to the parking lot beneath their apartment building. Lola had worked in the living room, with a full view of the parking lot. After a few minutes, however, she had blinked up to see that the parking lot was empty. When she’d scampered down, Audrey was nowhere to be found.
Eventually, she had found her on the other side of the building, trying to con an ice cream truck driver to give her a free cone.
This was the way of Audrey.
Heck, maybe it was just the way of the Sheridan clan.
“Why don’t we go inside? I can cook us breakfast,” Lola said. She snaked her arm through her father’s and leaned her head against his chest.
“Breakfast? Wow, what a treat,” her father said.
“We can head back out to watch birds later if you want,” Lola returned. “I just finished my article for the day, so I have the rest of it free.”
“Must be nice, being a freelancer,” he said. “Making your own schedule like that.”
“I guess you were shackled to the Inn for all those years,” Lola said. “Must have been exhausting.”
“It was like constantly having a toddler,” Wes said with a laugh.
“A toddler like me, or a toddler like Susan?” Lola asked.
“I think you know the answer to that,” Wes returned. “Susan could have done her own taxes at the age of four.”
“Fair enough.”
Back at the house, Lola brewed up a fresh pot of coffee, and Wes returned to his puzzle. She turned on the old radio and began to heat some oil and slice some potatoes. As the potatoes began to fry, she grabbed her phone and swiftly shot toward the back mudroom, where she knew she could chat with someone in peace.
Immediately, she dialed the doctor.
“Hey. Thank you so much for taking my call,” she began.
“Not a problem, Lola. Anything for the Sheridans,” Doctor Miller said. “What’s up?”
“Well, my dad kind of ran away this morning. I found him, but he was a little bit confused. And it’s not like him to just leave without telling me,” Lola said. “I wondered if you think I should bring him in for a check-up?”
Doctor Miller clucked his tongue. Lola remembered this very tick from when he’d grown up with Christine and Susan. He had been a little bit older than her, but she’d seen him around.
“I guess it stands to reason that he would do something like that. He’s reaching that stage of the illness, I suppose. If he’s not injured and feeling okay now, then I guess it would only alarm him to bring him in,” Doctor Miller said. “All we can do during these stages is make sure he’s comfortable and happy and that his mind is occupied.”
“I guess it’s up to me to keep better watch on him, then,” Lola said with a sigh.
“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry this happened. It must have given you a good scare.”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
They hung up. Lola went back to stir the potatoes and check on Wes again, then returned to the mudroom to dial Christine and Susan. Neither of them answered the phone. Lola breathed a sigh of relief. She would tell them what happened another time. Heck, maybe she wouldn’t tell them at all.
They had avoided disaster before. All they could do was keep going.
Lola fried up some eggs and placed them, glowing yolks and all, across the old china that her mother had picked out. She then added the crispy potatoes and dotted their plates on the porch picnic table. The breakfast table had long since been designated as the puzzle table. Nobody dared touch it or eat there.
Out on the picnic table, they both inhaled the fresh morning air and ate heartily. Lola told her father a bit about her article about the brunch place in Boston and also about her editor back there, Colin.
“We used to work together at a different paper, around ten years ago,” she said. “And he’s a really great guy. One of the best I’ve met. He’s a huge champion of my writing, and he gives me a leg up all the time. I don’t know where I would be without him,” Lola explained.
“What a good friend to have,” Wes said. He arched his brow and chewed his potatoes contemplatively. “I don’t suppose you ever considered him as a potential, you know—date?”
Lola stifled a laugh as she peered at her father. Was it possible that he was better at reading people than she’d always thought? Since she felt calmness— a stillness after the panic earlier that morning, she decided to just come out with the truth.
“We actually dated briefly about ten years ago,” she said. “When we worked at that same newspaper. It went okay. I mean, I was, what? Twenty-eight at the time? And he was only thirty, and he wasn’t really sure about the whole, me having a kid aged nine, thing. He didn’t meet Audrey till years later when we rekindled our friendship.”
“Interesting,” Wes said. “Again, it’s remarkable for me to hear stories about my girls’ lives. All I ever knew was my high school sweetheart. All I ever knew was this island.”
“I think you might have struck gold,” Lola said with a laugh. “They always say that happiness is right in front of you if only you look for it.”
“Well, that’s certainly true for me at the moment,” Wes returned, beaming at her.
“Dad...”
“I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about the potatoes,” Wes said with a wink.
How could he still have such a sense of humor? Lola marveled at it and shook her head, a huge smile snaking from ear to ear.
That moment, they heard tires creak across the stones in the driveway. Lola yanked around to watch as Scott led Susan in through the back door. They were bleary and shadowed, with the screen door between them. Lola lifted her hand in greeting.
“What smells so good?” Susan asked. Her voice wavered a bit, proof of her fatigue. Still, when she appeared in the crack of the door, she grinned down at Lola and Wes with a clear smile.
“There are plenty more potatoes if you want to heat them up,” Lola affirmed.
“Ah, maybe Scott is interested. Unfortunately, I can hardly keep anything down,” Susan said. She slipped onto the bench beside Lola and unraveled her pretty pink scarf and placed her hand across her bald head. “I wondered if you wanted to go check out wigs with me later today.”
Scott appeared in the screen door next, having already filled up his plate with potatoes. “She has dreams of being a redhead, apparently.”
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t experiment,” Susan said. “All my life, I’ve looked about the same. Now’s the time.” She leaned toward Lola, her eyes twinkling conspiratorially. “I’m thinking, like, Julianne Moore. That kind of red.”
“Oh. Lush,” Lola said. “I fully support this decision.”
Before Lola sped off to go wig shopping with Susan, she turned her eyes toward her father and said, “I think we have something to do together, first.”
“You didn’t forget,” Wes said. He saluted her. “I’ll grab my binoculars.”
It was agreed that Susan and Lola would depart just after one-thirty, which gave them plenty of time to bird watch. Wes pointed out a whole host of dramatically colored birds, all with different sounds and behaviors. Lola was surprised how much pleasure she took in it. Once, she spotted one her father missed, and she ripped her finger through the air and called a bit too loudly, “There it is! Wow. Look at the wingspan!”
If Audrey had seen her, she would have scoffed something like, Who are you, and what have you done with my mother?
Just before Susan and Lola headed off, Christine arrived home from the bistro. She ruffled her long hair and gave them an exasperated smile. “The lunch rush at the beginning was insane, so I told Zach I would help until we found a gap for me to leave.”
Susan explained the plan, and Christine readily agreed to head off with them. There was a wig shop in Edgartown, not too far from Zach’s place. Lola leaped into the driver’s seat, watching as Susan gingerly placed herself in the passenger. Christine leaped into the back, buzzing with adrenaline from her long workday. Still, Lola knew she loved the restaurant rush. It gave her purpose, the same way writing an article did for Lola.
Once at the wig shop, Lola, Christine, and Susan wandered the aisles, hunting for the perfect wig. Of course, they started out jokingly, tapping a purple and then a blue wig onto Susan’s head. She glanced at herself in the mirror and muttered, “Oh my. I look like a weird pop star.”
“I kind of like it,” Christine said. “You look like you’re a woman who knows what she wants.”
“I am a woman who knows what she wants. What I want is to be a hot redhead,” Susan returned, removing the shiny, blue wig.
She tried out several: a golden-red, then a deeper one that seemed closer to her actual hair color. She arched her brow, then tried on a black one, joking that she might enter a “gothic” phase now.
“I’m always deathly pale now, anyway,” she said. “Maybe it’s time.”
Ultimately, she chose the dark red wig, which flowed past her shoulders and looked fresh and bouncy. The owner of the shop showed her how to put it on properly, and she walked out of the place with a fresh ‘do—beaming at her sisters.
“Why haven’t I changed my look all these years?” she asked. “How boring of me.”
Lola and Christine exchanged glances. Both wore grins, but their eyes were somber. Although this activity was masked as fun, it was edged with sadness. They were still only a bit into Susan’s chemotherapy treatment, and there was really no telling what would happen next. All they could do was hope.