Chances Are (7 page)

“I like Claire.”

“Obviously you didn’t like her enough to keep your hands off her husband.”

“If I remember right, he couldn’t keep his hands off me.”

Maddy’s flush intensified. She could feel it creeping over her cheeks, down her throat, blossoming across her chest. “Listen, I’m sorry I said that. Why don’t we just change the subject?”

“You know I’m not the first woman to have an affair with a married man.”

Maddy knew the world wasn’t a black-and-white enterprise. She was thirty-three years old. She had a child but not a husband. She had at least a nodding acquaintance with shades of gray. “Intellectually, I get it. Emotionally, it’s another story.”

“Billy and I were engaged once.”

Good thing Maddy wasn’t behind the wheel. She would have rocketed the car onto the shoulder in shock. “You’re joking.”

“It was right after I graduated high school. You were spending the summer at your dad’s place in Oregon, while I was going up to New York to apprentice at Sassoon. Billy was a rookie at the fire department, so he couldn’t follow me. He was afraid I’d have my head turned by one of those rich Wall Street types, so he staked his claim before I left.” There was a softness to Gina’s voice, a wistful quality she didn’t often reveal.

“That means you were seeing him while you were still in school.”

“On the sly,” Gina acknowledged with a look in Maddy’s direction. “I was marginal jail bait, after all.”

“But you told me that it happened much later, after he and Claire were already married. You should have told me the truth when it was going on.”

“Little Miss Innocent? You would’ve been the first to have me arrested.”

“I would not.” She grinned. “I would’ve had him arrested.”

“Do you remember what you were like back then, Maddy? If you hadn’t had a mouth on you, I would’ve figured you as a candidate for the convent.”

“Somehow I don’t think Rosie would’ve agreed with you. She considered me quite the rebel.”

“I love Aunt Rose, but she didn’t know squat about rebels. She probably said a rosary every day thanking God I wasn’t her kid.”

When Gina was right, she was right. “So who did know about it?”

“His grandmother Irene. Denise. Aidan. We were planning to keep it secret until Christmas when he gave me a ring.”

“And—?”

“And I made a big mistake.”

“Oh God, one of those Wall Street types?”

Gina nodded. “Greg had the Beemer, the weekend place in the Hamptons, the Armani suits, the whole nine yards. This Jersey girl’s head did a one hundred and eighty. It only lasted long enough to break Billy’s heart.”

Billy drove up one weekend to surprise Gina and ended up being on the wrong end of the surprise when he caught Gina and Mr. Wall Street leaving her apartment hand in hand.

“Next time I saw Billy, he had a wife and a baby on the way.”

“I never suspected.”

“Nobody did,” Gina said. “Claire’s fiancé was killed in a car crash and before his body was cold, Claire and Billy showed up married and pregnant. I was old news by then.”

“I’d forgotten all about Charles,” Maddy said.

“The rest of the town didn’t. Why do you think Billy’s Grandma Irene hated Claire so much?”

“I never really thought about it.”

“She knew the marriage was all wrong for both of them. She knew Claire’s heart still belonged to Charles and Billy’s heart—” She stopped abruptly. “You get the picture.”

Maddy sighed. “I’m beginning to.”

The story was a simple one, the kind that happened every day in a thousand different towns just like theirs. They had never really gotten over each other and, small towns being what they were, proximity worked its dangerous magic, and before either one of them could think of a good reason to back away from each other, they were lovers again.

“Being married to other people should’ve been a good reason,” Maddy observed.

“It wasn’t,” Gina said.

“What about the kids?”

“People in love are selfish as hell, Maddy.”

Maddy felt the way she had when she was a little girl, listening to her mother and aunts gossip about a neighbor. She grasped the intent of the words, but she didn’t really understand.

“I always believed love made you more open and generous.”

“Yeah, and the tooth fairy left a fifty under Toni’s pillow when she was fitted for her new dentures.”

They glided to a stop at the traffic light near the fancy town houses where Rose had lived before she moved into The Candlelight seven years ago.

“You hate me,” Gina said. “I shouldn’t have told you the whole story. I’m a good liar. You never would have known the difference.”

“I love you,” Maddy corrected her, “but I’d be the one lying if I said I liked the story.”

“This is real life, cookie,” Gina said as the light changed to green. “If you’re looking for happily ever after, stick to romance novels, because happy endings are in short supply for the DiFalcos.”

A prickle of alarm nipped at the back of Maddy’s neck. “Is there something you’re trying to tell me? Believe me, I know Aidan has some baggage.” He had been widowed for almost sixteen years when he met Maddy. A lot of women had passed through his life. Maddy saw a fair number of them every day when she waited at the corner for the school bus.

She told herself that if he could welcome Hannah’s father Tom into their extended family, she could accept the existence of ex-lovers, but there were times when her imagination went into overdrive, and she found herself speculating about every woman she bumped into.

“No, I’m not trying to tell you anything.” Gina waved at Jim McDougall as he roared by in his pickup truck. “Just reminding you that weddings are wonderful, but marriage is something else again. Make sure you go into it with your eyes wide open.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I’ve seen the way you look at him, Maddy. You’re head over heels for the guy, and that’s terrific, but he’s not a saint. You don’t want any surprises.”

“What do you mean by surprises?”

“I don’t know,” Gina said. “It’s just with those journalists nosing around into everyone’s business, you never know what they might turn up.”

“What are they going to turn up that I don’t already know?” Maddy countered. “Aidan had a sex life before I met him. That isn’t news. Just as long as his sex life stops with me.”

Gina burst into laughter. “Better rephrase that, cookie. I can’t imagine Aidan’s sex life stopping until he’s six feet under. Better keep the reporter away from him, or the documentary will end up X-rated.”

“Thanks for the advice.” Just what the bride-to-be needed: relationship tips from a woman who had two divorces under her belt by the time she turned thirty. Gina meant well, but her heavy-handed warning had unsettled Maddy. “I think this whole town’s gone nuts since they started filming those interviews.”

“Listen, Mad, I’m sorry,” Gina said as she pulled behind Lucy’s car in The Candlelight parking lot. “Maybe it was all of those wedding dresses that got to me. Forget I said anything. Aidan’s a good guy, and he loves you. You’re going to have a great life together. Sooner or later one of us has to.”

KELLY ASKED TO be dropped off at O’Malley’s Grill where she had left her car that morning. Claire noted Owen’s truck parked in the back next to Aidan’s empty spot. Mel Perry’s Saturn was angled to the left of the side door perilously close to the fender of his nemesis Fred DeTrano’s gleaming Caddy. Some of the firefighters who had worked with Billy and Aidan were there, too, and she was glad she had an excuse to wave good-bye to her niece and keep going. She loved those guys, but there were times when the reverence they showed her as Billy’s widow felt like a dead weight on her shoulders.

“Thanks for the lift, Aunt Claire,” she said as she gathered up her stuff.

“Did you think I was going to have you hitch your way home from Short Hills?”

Kelly grinned and winked at Hannah, who was strapped securely in the backseat. “See you, guys.”

“Kel, wait a second.”

Kelly, who was ready to close the car door behind her, stopped and leaned back inside. “I know, I know. Remember to tell Tommy to fill out the work sheet before he closes out the register tonight.”

She would skin the old goat alive if he forgot, but that wasn’t what she wanted to say. “Tell me the truth, Kel: are you feeling okay?”

Kelly flashed one of her big, beautiful smiles, the kind that made her dimples even more pronounced. “I’m great.”

Claire cupped her chin with her hand, remembering when those dimples had graced the face of a little girl. “Enough with the dieting, kiddo. You’re perfect right now. Don’t let all those damned fashion magazines tell you how to look.”

“You sound like Daddy.”

“Listen to him. He’s a man. He knows what he’s talking about.”

“Yes, Aunt Claire,” she said, with another wink for Hannah. “Anything you say, Aunt Claire.”

“Go on with you,” Claire said, laughing despite her concern. “And while you’re at it, tell Tommy to fill out that work sheet or else.”

Hannah, who had chattered nonstop all the way from Short Hills, fell silent the second Kelly closed the door behind her. Claire swiveled around in her seat and smiled at the little girl. Hannah looked very much like Kelly had at that age. Same coloring. Same bright smile. The sight of the two girls whispering to each other during lunch had brought back a flurry of bittersweet memories of the early years when the kids were young and her biggest problem was what to make for supper. Kelly had been like one of her own. Younger than Kathleen, Courtney, and Willow, but older than Maire and Billy Jr., Aidan’s daughter fit in perfectly. Kelly always had a place at Claire and Billy’s dinner table, a bed to call her own when Aidan pulled nights at the firehouse.

Where her own kids had been troubled and occasionally difficult, Kelly was a dream. She sailed through childhood with a sunny smile on her face. When her girls were fire-spewing prepubescent monsters, Kelly barely managed an occasional flicker of flame. When her girls were out there cutting school and cadging cigarettes, Kelly was at band practice or studying for a history quiz.

It was a terrible thing to admit, but she had spent almost seventeen years praying Aidan wouldn’t fall in love and remarry. Claire was the closest thing Kelly had to a mother, and she relished her position in the girl’s life and didn’t want to share her with anyone. Sometimes she even resented Aidan for doing such a wonderful job in bringing her up. He never backed away from the tough questions, the ones about sex and drugs that sent most parents scurrying for cover. He had been there for his daughter every single step of the way. The only time he had faltered was during those awful days after the accident that took Billy’s life. Aidan had been gravely injured and hospitalized for months, and Kelly came to live with Claire and her cousins in a household so overcome with anger and grief that the only thing holding them together was the weight of their loss.

Kelly had stepped into the breach, taking care of details nobody had the heart to face, making sure the household retained a semblance of order in a world fallen into chaos. She had been there for Claire and her cousins as they struggled to accept their loss; she had been there for Aidan when he struggled to accept his new limitations. She maintained her grades and social life and still managed to hold down a part-time job.

Aidan’s rehabilitation had been long and tough, and it had taken a toll on his daughter. Kelly had felt increasingly alienated from the father she adored and turned toward Claire for advice and consolation. Claire’s own daughters had never asked for her opinion of their hairstyles or clothing choices, much less their lives, but Kelly was hungry to know what she thought, and Claire was equally hungry for the chance to share those thoughts.

She wasn’t exactly sure when things began to change, but it was right around the time Maddy became a part of Aidan’s life. There was a natural gravitational pull between Maddy and Kelly that couldn’t be denied, even if it sometimes seemed to Claire that the attraction wasn’t as mutual as Kelly might have hoped.

She told herself that it was a good thing that Kelly was so comfortable with Maddy, especially now that Maddy was going to join the family. Family life was tough enough in the best of times, and blended families had more than their fair share of adjustments to make right from the start. She should be elated that Aidan had fallen in love with such a terrific woman and over the moon that Kelly seemed to agree with his choice.

She wasn’t.

Not even close.

But go figure. Aidan took one look at Maddy and fell in love, and from that moment on, Claire’s life had been thrown into a tailspin.

“You’re in a rut,” Olivia had told her over lunch the other day. “You need to break out and try something new.”

“You mean like tuna on rye instead of a burger?” she had asked.

Of course that wasn’t at all what Olivia had meant. Olivia had been after her for ages to stop living like a married woman and start exploring the world beyond O’Malley’s Bar and Grill, but so far Claire had rebuffed every attempt at matchmaking. Olivia knew her better than Claire cared to be known by anyone but her priest, and she sensed Claire’s growing restlessness long before Claire herself had been able to put a name to it.

She had been parenting children since she was nineteen years old. Lunch money. Ironing shirts as they were running out the door to catch the school bus. Checking homework. Parent/teacher conferences. The gut-wrenching worry every time they were five minutes late. The joy when the one you thought was lost to you forever showed up at your front door. What would she do when it was just her and the dog and maybe her father, all alone in the house with nothing but memories?

Then again, maybe that was the problem. Memories. They were everywhere she looked. In the kitchen. In the bedroom. On the front porch. In front of the firehouse. Behind the wheel of her car. At the corner waiting for the school bus. And especially at O’Malley’s. They had spent their honeymoon sleeping in the back room of the drafty old bar. Billy had loved that place almost as much as he loved the firehouse. He wasn’t much of a businessman, but he had thrown his heart and soul into keeping the doors open and the prices down. She had often suspected that his bitch of a grandmother Irene occasionally kicked in guilt money of her own to keep the wolf from the door, but she had never been able to prove it. Not that it mattered. Somehow they had managed to keep the place going.