Chances Are (39 page)

“He asks a lot of questions.”

“Like I said, he’s eight. They eat, and they ask questions.”

“Your father’s here?”

She grimaced and ran a hand across her face in a concealing gesture he remembered very well. “Broken ankle,” she said. “He tripped over one of our cats and took a header in the hallway.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Bitching up a storm, so I don’t think it’s too serious.”

“I was about to split a bag of Goldfish with your kid. Want some?”

“No thanks. I’d better get back upstairs and see what’s going on.”

“Claire, I—”

“Don’t.” She raised her hand between them. “There’s no point. I know how you feel. I even understand it. Why don’t we just leave it at that?”

“He’s a great kid.”
You made the right choice, Claire. There was nothing I could offer you that would have equaled a son like that.

“I know.” She softened a little. “He’s the one I was—”

“—pregnant with the last time we saw each other.” He had never seen a woman look more tired, or more lovely, in his life. He had spent eight years hating the existence of a child he had never met, only to have it all turned inside out over Oreos and Goldfish. “He looks a lot like his father.”

She was instantly on alert. “How do you know that?”

He told her about the afternoon in the firehouse.

“You probably heard a lot of stories while you were there.”

“Nothing you hadn’t told me already.”

“I doubt that.” The look in her eyes was unreadable. “It’s been a long time, and a lot has happened since then.”

He wanted to say something profound, something so wise and comforting that it would erase the mistakes, the longing, the years that had separated them, but all he could do was reach for her hand. She had long, strong fingers. Her nails were short and unpolished. The cold metal of her wedding ring bit into his palm.

She gave nothing. No encouragement. No censure. Anger he could have dealt with. Tears he could understand. But indifference—there was nothing a man could do if a woman just didn’t give a damn.

They were standing only inches apart, and he caught the faint scent of perfume on her skin, felt the heat of her anger.

“You deserve an apology. I acted like a shit the last time I saw you.”

“I should have told you I was pregnant. I was afraid if I—”

“Nothing would have kept me away, Claire.”

“That would have.”

The fight went out of him. She was right. The sight of her big with Billy O’Malley’s child had put an end to his dreams of a future for them. She was carrying the future in her belly, and it didn’t belong to him.

He nodded, and she closed her eyes for an instant.

“See?” Her glance drifted toward the cafeteria entrance and skimmed the knitting nurse. “I wanted those last few hours with you so badly that I didn’t care how it made you feel.” The old Claire would have wept with remorse or breathed fire. The one who stood in front of him had her emotions under lock and key. “I just want you to know that I’m sorry.”

“It didn’t go the way either one of us expected.”

Wishful thinking, or was that a flash of something close to fire sparking behind the cool facade?

“What did you expect?” she asked him. “We never really got that far.”

Not even close. Eight years ago on that sun-swept Boardwalk in Atlantic City, he had responded to the sight of her with an eruption of outrage and betrayal that still shocked him with its ferocity. He had no right to those emotions, but that hadn’t stopped him from spilling anger like gasoline on a fire neither one of them had known how to control.

A pair of doctors drifted into the cafeteria and shot a quick look in their direction. Claire pulled her hand away.

“I have to go,” she said. “I want to stop in and see how Barney’s doing.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Not a great idea. You’re not on my father’s top-ten list,” she said. “Or my daughter’s, either.”

“I saw her yesterday at O’Malley’s,” he said. “She looks just like you.”

Her expression softened, and again he saw through the wall of self-defense she had constructed and caught a glimpse of the woman he remembered.

“She warned me about you.”

“She remembers me? She was just a kid.”

“Kids remember more than we give them credit for.”

“What did she say?”

“She’s afraid you’ll hurt me again.” She didn’t break the look passing between them. “I told her it was the other way around.”

“She didn’t believe you.”

“No, she didn’t. She’s had too much experience with the other side of that coin.”

A trio of nonknitting nurses joined the one with the bawdy laugh, followed quickly by a pair of doctors who nodded at them.

“That’s my father’s oncologist,” she said, pointing toward the younger of the pair.

“I shot a roll of film watching the other one prep for the delivery room,” he said.

“I’d better go,” she repeated. “I have to phone my sisters, try to track down my brother—”

“I’ll be at the lighthouse Monday afternoon around three o’clock. The Coast Guard is going to let me spend an hour photographing it from the inside. I want you to join me.”

She opened her mouth to tell him all the reasons why she wouldn’t show up, but he stopped her before she started.

“Don’t say anything. It’s up to you. Either way, I’ll be there at three.”

She looked at him for a long moment, and again he saw through the layers of defenses, through the pain, through the years that separated them, and for an instant he saw the woman he fell in love with. She could say what she wanted, but that woman still existed.

And if she didn’t, maybe he would get to know the woman who did.

“NOT YOU, GRAMMA,” Hannah said when Rose stood up and declared it was time for the child’s bedtime bath. “I want Kelly.”

Rose turned to her. “It’s a dirty job,” she said with a wink. “Feel like tackling it?”

Kelly pushed away from the table and stretched. “Only if there are bubbles involved.”

“Can Barbie take a bath, too?” Hannah asked.

“Only if she takes off her astronaut outfit before she gets into the tub,” Rose warned her granddaughter. “The last time Barbie took a bath, the plumber found a picture hat and a winter coat stuck in the pipes.”

“We’ll be careful,” Kelly promised.

Rose stood up and took off her glasses. “Poor Priscilla. She’s probably ready to burst. I think I’ll take a break from scrapbooking while you two are upstairs and take our girl for a walk.”

Rose went off in search of Maddy and Hannah’s toy poodle puppy while Hannah raced Kelly upstairs to one of the luxurious family bathrooms that would bring out the inner mermaid in even the most die-hard landlubber.

Hannah was a talker, and she chatted happily while Kelly ran the bath, adjusted the temperature, then added the kid-friendly bubbles and waited for them to froth up into a fragrant white mountain. Finally the little girl, Barbie, and an aging Jasmine action figure from Disney’s Aladdin were settled in the tub. Kelly pulled the dressing table chair closer and sat down to supervise.

The room was steamy and fragrant from the gardenia-scented bubbles, and the combination of the warmth and the soothingly sweet sound of Hannah’s happy chatter soon had Kelly drifting. The frothy bubble bath was strangely fitting, because all evening she had felt like she was in a bubble herself, safe and protected. That was part of The Candlelight’s charm. Warmth and comfort were programmed into every overstuffed chair, every crackling fireplace, every slice of chocolate mousse cake. The second she crossed the threshold that afternoon, everything else had dropped away, and she had felt less alone, less frightened of what lay ahead. Nothing beyond The Candlelight seemed real. Not that manic run to the mall. Not the big fat plus sign that confirmed her fears. Not lying to Seth and telling him they were in the clear, that there was no problem, no baby, no end to their dreams.

It was easy to just let go and drift, to pretend that she was exactly the same girl she had been this time last month or the month before and that her future was still golden.

And it would be golden again. She would do what she had to do and then pick up right where she had left off before this detour.

She loved her father, and she loved her Aunt Claire, but there was something special about being part of this family of women who had already welcomed her into their midst. Rose no longer scared her into silence. Sitting around that wonderful table piled high with their combined memories, Kelly had experienced a feeling of kinship that startled her. Rose’s sister Lucy treated her like one of her own nieces. Hannah charmed her out of her shoes. Even the colorful cousins felt like extended family.

Only Maddy seemed to remain just out of reach. Oh, she was warm and friendly and funny, but that was as far as it went with them. Sometimes Kelly had the feeling that they were standing on opposite sides of a very wide river, waiting for someone to come along and build a bridge between them. She had held her breath this morning when Maddy caught her buying the testing kit, sure that Maddy would confront her the way her Aunt Claire or any of her friends’ mothers would have done. But not Maddy. She had chatted on just like Hannah in the bathtub, like nothing unusual was going on.

Which was okay. Really. It wasn’t like Kelly blamed her or anything. Maddy wasn’t her mother. She wasn’t even her stepmother, not yet. She was just a really nice woman who didn’t want to take on the problems of a girl she barely knew. She had her own daughter to worry about, her own mother, a wedding to plan, her radio show, Cuppa, a million other things besides Kelly and her problems. If she didn’t want to get involved, she didn’t have to.

A mother had to listen to her daughter’s problems. A mother had to be there when her children needed her. A mother—

Look at her getting all sentimental and weepy just because she had spent the evening sorting through some faded photographs of people who were dead and gone.

“Are you crying?” Hannah’s voice cut into her thoughts.

“No, I’m not crying. I was resting my eyes.” Wasn’t that what older people always said to cover up everything from tears to catnaps?

“You’re supposed to be watching me.”

“I am watching you.”

“You can’t watch me with your eyes closed.”

“You’re right,” she said, forcing her lids into the upright position. “I’m sorry, Hannah.”

“My mommy wouldn’t close her eyes.”

She was probably right about that, too. There seemed to be a list somewhere out there in the universe of all the things mommies would and wouldn’t do, and every little girl had it memorized.

“Then I promise I won’t take my eyes off you, Hannah.” She made a silly bug-eyed face that propelled the little girl into a fit of bubble-fueled giggles but not before she saw the look of relief in her eyes.

“Okay,” Hannah said, once again restored to her rightful position as empress of all she surveyed. “That’s what my mommy would do.”

A lump formed in the back of her throat, hard and painful. At barely five years of age, Hannah already knew more about the secret world of mothers and daughters than Kelly ever would.

COURTSHIP, OF COURSE, was the easy part. Both Maddy and Aidan knew that the magical spell that had embraced them for the last twenty-four hours in that room overlooking the ocean would vanish in the face of real life. That was a given. But they couldn’t help wishing they could delay the inevitable just a little bit longer.

Checkout time was noon. Maddy was sure she could hear the clock ticking down the minutes as she and Aidan toweled off after one last interlude in that wondrous Jacuzzi.

“We really should get ourselves one of those,” Maddy said as she slipped into her jeans and zipped them up.

“You’ve seen my place. The bathrooms are the size of coat closets.”

“Then let’s move.”

“I thought we decided we were going to live in my house.”

“We also decided we were going to have ten kids and send them all to Princeton.” She wrapped her arms around him and pressed a kiss to his back. “This is called fantasy, O’Malley. Get with it.”

“I don’t need fantasies anymore,” he said. “Not since I found you.”

Pretty speeches didn’t come easily for the man she was going to marry. Those ten words were all of Shakespeare’s love sonnets rolled into one.

“I feel married to you now,” she whispered against his back. “I feel like last night was our wedding night.” The commitment to him, to their future together, was that strong.

He turned around and gathered her into his arms, and she had the sense of being exactly where she was meant to be, the one safe place in a world that shifted and changed beneath your feet. She knew his secrets now. She knew the effort it took for him to do things she took for granted. Anything she thought she’d known about the level of pain he dealt with on a daily basis had fallen far short of the truth. He had been afraid she would find him less of a man when she saw him as he was, but the truth was he was so much more than even she had dreamed.

She could see him with Hannah, helping to guide her toward adolescence, helping them all navigate the choppy waters of her teenage years, and she thanked God that she had found a man who valued the same things she valued, a man whose heart would expand to include everyone she loved. This wasn’t love the way she had envisioned it when she was in her twenties. When she first met Hannah’s father Tom, love had been an adventure. Watching the sunset from the balcony of Tom’s penthouse. Weekend trips to Vancouver. An uncertain future that seemed more like playing house than building a real life together.

What she had found with Aidan went far beyond what she had known with Tom, almost as if the experiences belonged to two different women.