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The third day out to sea was Lola’s thirty-ninth birthday. Her eyes popped open right at sun-up when the sky was a delicious cotton candy and the heat wasn’t yet set to scorch. She slipped out from beneath her blanket and let herself look for just a moment at the still-sleeping Tommy in the bed on the other side of the little enclosed arena. His wild black curls spilled out across the pillow, and one of his large hands stretched across his chest. Lola wondered if a man who lived such a carefree life in the world ever bothered to dream. He had already lived so many of her greatest fantasies. He had seen it all.
Outside, Lola slipped into her swimsuit and then stretched out to greet the sun. She felt apprehensive, and she wanted to shake it. She performed a few yoga routines out on the front of the boat, hoping that an easy stretch might clear her head. Still, with every shift of her limbs and every creak of her bones, she was reminded of the gravity of this day.
Lola Sheridan was now thirty-nine years old.
Older than her mother had ever been.
When Tommy woke up, he wandered into the sunlight without a shirt. Inside the kitchenette, the coffee maker had begun to pop and bubble.
“You’re up early,” he said, beaming at her.
Again, her heart jumped. She wondered if she should tell him about her birthday. Then again, it seemed to add strange pressure to the situation. What would he say, anyway? Congratulations? It didn’t matter. Time existed differently out on the water.
Still, she felt morose in ways she hadn’t anticipated, especially as she helped Tommy with the early-morning preparations on the boat. He informed her that they were making good time, that they would probably make it to the Vineyard at the end of the fourth day, tomorrow. Lola instantly felt a pang of regret.
“It’s going to be hard to get off of this boat,” she said truthfully. “I can see why you’re so addicted.”
“It’s nice, pretending the real world doesn’t exist,” Tommy agreed.
Just after mid-day, Lola sat to write in her notebook, while Tommy read a book across from her, occasionally getting up to adjust the sails. He had talked several times about the sheer exhaustion of operating a sailboat alone—that he had hardly gotten more than two or three hours of sleep per night and felt continually hungry and thirsty, but he had said it like he was an explorer and this was just part of the business of discovering a new world.
When Lola turned the page of her notebook, she was surprised to find Tommy and Anna Sheridan’s photo. She blinked down at the gorgeous photo of her young mother, aged thirty-seven, and she placed her hand over her heart. This was the woman who had given birth to her thirty-nine years ago. She hadn’t heard her voice since she was eleven-years-old.
“What’s wrong, Lola?” Tommy said suddenly.
Lola’s eyelashes fluttered up.
“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Slowly, Lola lifted the photo from the notebook and passed it toward him. Tommy gripped the edge with two firm fingers and gasped.
“I’ve never seen this photo before,” he said. “But I remember this day really clearly.”
Lola’s heart swelled with sadness, with fear. Where had the Sheridan sisters been when that photo had been taken? Why hadn’t Anna spent every moment of her dwindling life with them?
Why had she been with Tommy, the ex-stepson of her lover?
“She was so kind to me,” Tommy continued, still gazing at the photo. “I was sixteen here, I guess? Something like that. She talked to me for hours on this day, in particular about getting into college. She made me promise her that I would take the SAT. You know, I actually did take it the next year, early ’93. Didn’t do so bad either. We celebrated the next time I came to the Vineyard. That might have been the last time I ever saw her.”
Lola’s stomach flipped. She couldn’t muster anything to say back.
“I didn’t make it to college, though,” he said. “I knew Anna would have been disappointed.”
Tommy tried to return the photo, but Lola didn’t reach for it. “You should keep it,” she said. “It’s your memory. Not mine.”
Tommy furrowed his brow. He seemed just to have realized there was something a bit off about Lola. Lola wished she could yank herself out of whatever dark shadow had just passed over her.
What was it about birthdays that made them swallow you whole?
Anna had never spoken to Lola about college. Anna hadn’t been around for Lola’s SAT. Lola had taken the SAT during a post-party hangover. Wes had forgotten to pick Lola up from the SAT, which she had taken in Edgartown, and she’d met up with Monica and Hannah afterward and started drinking in the afternoon on the beach.
Anna hadn’t been around because of Stan, the person who had brought Tommy into Lola’s life, in a sense; the person that had turned off the lights on his boat, a misstep that had cost Anna Sheridan her life.
Stan Ellis had ruined everything.
Suddenly, Tommy bucked his head toward the eastern horizon and said, “Oh no. Look.” He slipped the photo into his wallet and then shot toward the sails.
Black and grey and purple clouds billowed in the distance. Lola shivered. The wind shifted and became strange, yanking the sail in several different directions at once. From the look on Tommy’s face, it was obvious that things were about to get turbulent.
“Lola? I need you to stop sitting on your ass and start helping me,” Tommy said.
Lola balked. “Excuse me?” Nobody spoke to her like that. Ever. Especially not on her birthday. Who did he think he was?
Tommy grimaced. “We’re going to capsize if you don’t help me. Do you understand?”
Lola popped into action, following Tommy’s lead to bring up the storm sails, which were much smaller but proportioned for higher winds. The waves thrust toward the boat, and Tommy steered them directly into them, screaming to Lola, “Hang on tight!”
Lola didn’t have to be told twice. She was absolutely petrified. The clouds above were now monstrously dark, thicker than she had ever seen, and the water beneath them had a mind of its own, as though a huge creature lurked beneath them and prepared to bubble to the surface. Lightning rocketed out of the sky and connected with the water, and large, fat raindrops barreled down upon them. All the while, Tommy operated the boat with a cool and concentrated demeanor.
Still, the storm seemed to go on forever. Lola was completely drenched and shivering, still in just a swimsuit stationed on one side of the boat, clinging to a rod for dear life. Every few thoughts involved her mother. Why had her mother allowed them to ride in the dark like that, without lights? Why had the beautiful and whip-smart Anna Sheridan abandoned her family in the night and allow herself to be injured so badly that she’d drowned?
Now, history was on the verge of repeating itself.
Here, on the thirty-ninth birthday of Anna Sheridan look-alike Lola Sheridan’s life, she was inches from being tossed off-board and into the frantic Atlantic waves below.
The only person she had to rely on was Stan Ellis’s ex-stepson.
What the hell had she been thinking?
What would Audrey do without her?
Tommy lurched to the side of the boat and adjusted the sails again. His eyes scanned toward Lola, but his face was volatile and stoic, with nothing of the flirtation they’d once had.
“Did you really think sailing directly into a storm would do us any good?” Lola cried to him suddenly, fully realizing the depths of her anger and fear.
“Yeah. Like I did this on purpose?” Tommy blared.
“Aren’t you supposed to be keeping tabs on the weather?” Lola demanded.
Tommy rolled his eyes and turned back, clearly annoyed. Lola didn’t have time to dwell on his feelings. She kept her eyes on the clouds and willed them, with every beat of her heart, to calm down.
It took maybe another thirty minutes for the storm to subside. When the waves slowed, Lola glanced at her hands. The knuckles were white as bone since she had clung to the rods so hard. Tommy busied himself, changing out the sails with rugged yet sure tugs on various ropes. He did not look at Lola. He seemed enraged.
Suddenly, Lola’s knees gave out from under her. She fell onto the floor and curled up and suddenly burst into tears. She placed her forehead on her knees as her entire body shook. It was only in safety that she realized the depths of her fears. It was only in the haze of the afterthought that she perceived the fact that she might have died, really and truly died, like her mother before her.
When she lifted her head again, she found Tommy seated across from her. He studied her, his face difficult to read. One thing was clear. He hadn’t sat down to attempt to console her. His eyes were hard.
“Lola, we’re out of the storm. Everything is fine now,” he told her.
He sounded like her dad, trying to reason with her when she had been upset during the years after Christine and Susan had left her behind.
“I—I know.” Lola refused to apologize for it. “I just. I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother. About Stan.”
Tommy’s eyes looked increasingly stormy, as though they’d captured a tiny bit of the sky before it had moved south.
“You have to trust that I know what I’m doing,” Tommy affirmed. “I’ve done countless trips like this. I’ve waged war on many, many storms.”
And yet, the first time I saw you sail, you crashed and ended up in the hospital.
Lola knew better than to include this particular thought in the conversation. She didn’t answer. Her tears dried to salt on her cheeks.
Tommy reached into his pocket and drew back out the photo she had given him before the storm. He flapped it around in the now-still air. “Tell me, Lola. Why are you really here with me on this trip?”
Lola flared her nostrils. “I’m pretty sure you were the one that invited me.”
“Yes, I did. But why are you really here? Actually? Are you here because you want to dwell in the past? Are you here because you want me to fulfill some kind of empty feeling you have surrounding your mother?”
“Actually, Tommy, all I’ve done the past twenty years is try to run away from the past,” Lola blurted. “The fact that I’m even facing you—a representation of that past—is pretty remarkable.”
“But that just means I’m a tool for you. Something to make you feel like you’ve grown as a person,” Tommy returned.
“That’s not true,” Lola said. She sputtered, rage replacing all her fear. “In fact, regardless of what I feel or felt about this whole journey, it’s obvious that you’re such a loner that you would never face what might exist here—between us. You just want to keep living whatever shadow of a life you’ve had the past twenty-five years. You don’t want to be anyone for anyone, so you’ll just keep running.”
Tommy sniffed. “Is that how you feel?”
Lola sputtered. “I don’t know, Tommy. I just know I can’t look at you right now.”
“So much for facing your past,” Tommy blared.
“God. Why won’t you shut up,” Lola muttered as she sauntered back into the sleeping area. She fell across the mattress and burrowed her face in her pillow. Devastation flowed through her. She couldn’t believe how stupid she had been. She’d actually built up some romantic ideas around Tommy Gasbarro. She had actually thought going on this trip would be the soul-search she’d needed to enter her thirty-ninth year.
Instead, she had just been reminded that she could never escape the past, that her own mortality was always much closer than she thought, and that Tommy Gasbarro was no future. Not for her and not for anyone else. He would make sure of that.