Winona Marie Sutton Demirci || 35, mother, widow || Stylist/manager at Dot's Dos
Winnie is not, by strict definitions, a local, she was grandfathered in when she was 10, moving in with an aunt to (as her mother repeatedly put it) "give her the stability children really can't get in a military family".
One could argue that 30 year old serial monogamist hairdressers are much less stable, actually, but the Suttons were reassigned within a week of the decision, so they wouldn't have been around to hear you. And so Dot and Win muddled through, mostly successfully. They watched a lot of Gilmore Girls.
As most children of family businesses do, Win did homework in a corner of the salon as a kid, swept and shampooed to earn extra cash as a teen, and had the only fight she ever would with her parents the day she told them she was going to beauty school, not the Naval Academy. She'd follow in Dot's footsteps, with a job she loved and a string of boyfriends to keep her company, and never need anything else.
The first was cute; older, bright eyes, serious in all the same ways she was, and equally too busy to date. A perfect summer fling, zero risk of falling in love.
Winona Sutton and Ehran Demirci were married two years later on a beautiful day in May, and even the most cynical, thrice divorced weekly roller set clients were happy for her. It only got better when Perihan was born, into a home that adored her and an extended family who doted on her every whim. Things weren't perfect, or always easy with two businesses and a daughter, but they were so obviously, openly happy, the sort of couple who's supposed to get forever.
Ehran was a loving father, an attentive husband, a guiding light to his family, and a pillar of the community. That's what the eulogy said, at the funeral of a man killed far too young, too recklessly, by a drunk driver on his way home from work.
It's been just over a year since that night, she and Peri have celebrated a birthday each without him. Win's relied on her family a lot in that time, and there are still days it doesn't seem like enough, but there's nothing else to do but put her head down and get through it. She's good at that, at least.
