Siena could hardly believe the change in Aunt Goldie. She was running the Two Lakes Grove Hotel, dating a carpenter or something, and had been eating bread, along with other carbs. Shocking!
For the last eight months, Siena had tried so hard to shoulder everything. She wanted her mom to be okay and not to have to worry about the business. But she’d failed. Vivian Blackwood Designs was on the skids. No one was buying her mom’s once-red-hot fashions.
Aunt Goldie had been her sounding board. She’d been the one person Siena could be honest with about her worries and fears.
It was Aunt Goldie to the rescue. Even though her mom didn’t know that. On Siena’s most recent call with Aunt Goldie, three other women joined in. Women Siena had heard stories about but never met.
Libby Quinn, J.J. Tucker, and Hope Venerable. There was a picture in her mother’s office of the five women sitting on a raft, floating in a lake. They were all young, early teens, her mother said, and they were sunburned. Sunburn was something Siena had never been, thanks to her mother’s religious anointing of sunscreen every time Siena went outdoors.
“You’ll thank me one day, see these freckles on my décolletage? They’re not freckles. They’re dark dots of doom, waiting to get me. I’ve saved you from that fate.” Her mom had been joking, but she’d been right about doom, shockingly right.
Aunt Goldie offered a break from all of it, and maybe more, maybe a way out of the mess the business was currently in, thanks to Siena.
“I’ve set up a room for you and for your mom, the best two, for as long as it takes to get you settled,” Aunt Goldie explained.
Settled, that wasn’t really the right word. All of this would be unsettling to her mom. Siena was making a bold move. But she was doing it for her mother. She was doing it because the old ideas weren’t working.
Thanks to Siena’s idea and Aunt Goldie’s push, Vivian Blackwood Designs was going to open its first retail location.
Her mother was a creative force. Siena knew that. But she needed something new. She needed a challenge to bring her back to the land of the living. Department stores were too generic, and it was hard for her mom’s designs to stand out. They needed the spotlight. Shopping for a Vivian Blackwood Designs piece needs to be an experience. They’d never had a boutique. They’d never curated their own store. Siena could make this work. She could revive the business. She had to.
Siena had taken charge of her mother’s medical care during her cancer. She’d also been dealing with her mother’s business affairs so she could focus on getting well. This was the next step. The treatments were done. The cancer was gone. It was time to shake things up.
Her mother wasn’t going to stagnate if Siena had anything to say about it. Nope.
Aunt Goldie told her the Sandbar Sisters needed Viv.
Siena thought Viv needed them, to be honest. Her mother needed a new life, fun,something, to shake her out of the awfulness of the last year.
Siena would save the business by opening a store in Irish Hills, and she’d give her mom the gift of reconnecting with old friends.
Siena, for her part, needed that too. Siena had felt the weight of it all lately, more than she could have imagined after that first appointment. She was only twenty-three, but she felt a decade older than any of her peers.
Enter the Sandbar Sisters. They were the tonic Siena and Viv needed. When Aunt Goldie heard Siena’s worries and her struggles, she convinced Siena that this was the right plan.
“I’m getting Mom packed up by the end of the week, and we’ll be there for the holiday weekend. I can’t wait to see the famous Irish Hills!”
“You’re going to love it and brace yourself. You’ve got three times the aunts once you get here,” Goldie said. The other women chimed in and talked over each other. And then Siena heard one say, no, it’s four times.
“Four times the aunts?” Siena asked.
“Yep, forgot about Aunt Emma. She’s more the great aunt, but yeah, we’re going to spoil you and your mother. Safe travels!”
“Aunt Goldie, I appreciate this. She needs it. It’s all I can think of to do.
“We’ll be there for her and you, I promise.”
Aunt Goldie was a ray of sunshine in their lives. They needed that. Her mom needed it.
“It sounds great. Thank you, and see you soon.”
Siena liked the sound of sharing some of the responsibility for her mom’s happiness. For the last year, it seemed like she’d held the weight of the world. Siena had happily taken control and done everything she could to get her mother through cancer. But now, she needed to get her mother to Irish Hills. In Irish Hills, there was help, a sisterhood for her mom, and salvation for the business.
Siena hadn’t shared much about it with her mother. She’d spring the details on her once they got there. What Siena had done was drastic, but they needed drastic.
Siena stood up and headed for her mother’s old studio. It was looking depressing. Her mother was spending a lot of time in there, but she didn’t emerge with ideas or sketches. No new designs were in the pipeline. Her mother just stared a lot.
Siena swallowed and squared her shoulders. It was time to get this show on the road and level with her mother.
