Chances Are

by Barbara Bretton

  Chapter Four

  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.

  After Billy’s death, the place had been a refuge for her. The familiar rituals of opening up the bar every morning, greeting Tommy or Owen as she headed into the kitchen to start cooking for the lunch crowd—all of it sustained her. Aidan joined her in a partnership after he was back on his feet, and they had even managed to turn a small profit now and then.

  But three years had passed since then. She was stronger now. She didn’t see ghosts around every corner the way she had in those early months. Aidan had taken much of the daily grind off her shoulders and enabled her to cut back on her hours. They had hit a rough patch at O’Malley’s, but the addition of an outdoor patio and a more upscale menu—both Rose DiFalco’s
suggestions—had greatly improved their bottom line.

  Aidan had taken a second mortgage on his house, something Claire had strenuously objected to, but it looked like his gamble just might pay off. Sure, some of the old-timers worried it was going to turn into a singles bar with No Smoking signs and flowering plants, but so far they were holding the line between the generations.

  O’Malley’s was still O’Malley’s but better, and she was glad of it. She loved Aidan. He had been to hell and back and deserved this happiness and more. She loved the regulars who had gathered around her like a human shield after Billy died and kept her from splitting apart from the sheer force of her grief. But it wasn’t enough. Lately she had been finding it harder and harder to push herself through the front door and into the familiar yeasty, smoky haze of beer and cigarettes and settle into the comfortable old role of Feisty Claire, brave widow and mother of five.

  She felt restless and edgy all the time these days, like a permanent case of PMS without the chocolate cure. The things that didn’t get on her nerves bored her to tears. If anyone had ever told her that she would be a candidate for a midlife crisis, she would have laughed them right out of the room, but more and more she was beginning to wonder if anything short of a visit to see Dr. Phil was going to get her back on track. She yearned for something new, something different, something she had never seen or heard or experienced before, but damned if she knew what that something might be.

  But she knew what it wasn’t. The whole damn town was drowning in memories since the arrival of the NJTV reporter who was assigned to gather interviews about the history of Paradise Point. You couldn’t take a step without tripping over a mossy story about the old days and the way it used to be. (The way it probably never was.) Endless tales about Billy and Aidan’s grandmother Irene O’Malley and her husband Michael, ancient history about the bar’s glory days when it was a restaurant worthy of a special trip down to the shore.

  Irene’s death last December had been reported in a surprising number of newspapers up and down the state. A centenarian with a sharp mind and amazingly accurate command of details, both social and political, was a rare find, and both historians and gerontology students had made it their business to interview Irene frequently during the last ten years of her life. One of those lengthy obituaries had snagged the interest of the state’s public television programmers, and suddenly Paradise Point was at the center of production on a series featuring the rise, fall, and reemergence of Paradise Point.

  The town library was stacked floor to ceiling with donations of scrapbooks, photo albums, old letters, and diaries found stashed away in attics and closets all around town. Locals compared notes every morning at Julie’s Coffee Shop, trying to dazzle each other with outrageous tales about politics, family squabbles, hurricanes, nor’easters, and blizzards.

  And the accident that took Billy’s life and the lives of five other firefighters.

  She couldn’t escape it if she tried. The collapse of that warehouse roof three years ago had changed the town, brought them all closer together as they struggled to understand why God had let this tragedy happen. Paradise Point was a typical small town in that most of the residents were second, third, and fourth generation, living in houses their grandparents had owned, going to the same school their parents had gone to, shopping the same markets, driving the same streets. Their lives were intertwined in ways Houdini couldn’t unravel, and when Billy and his coworkers died, the whole town grieved.

  Claire had watched it all through a bloodred haze of rage. Her anger burned through sorrow, through loss, ignited everything and everyone it came in contact with. She hated the pious prayers, the sympathy cards with the faded lilies and a cross, the pans of mac and cheese, pots of spaghetti sauce, the flowers that stank of death.

  She hated the fact that after a marriage filled with second chances they had finally run out of time. She despised the fact that they thought they knew him, thought they understood who he really was, when they hadn’t a clue. Her flawed, imperfect hero, the husband she had never managed to love the way she wanted to be loved herself.

  A tiny cough erupted behind her, and Claire almost vaulted over the steering wheel in surprise. She had all but forgotten Hannah was strapped in the backseat, waiting to be delivered home. She turned around in her seat at the stoplight and smiled at the little girl, struck again by the resemblance to a young Kelly. Where had those precious years gone? Four of her brood were out there in the world, either in school or working, and this time next year Kelly would join them.

  “Hannah, you’re so good back there I almost forgot about you.”

  No response, just a thumb quickly inserted into a mouth that looked dangerously ready to cry.

  “How would you like to go see the end of Billy’s soccer game?”

  Still no response. The thumb, however, was getting a workout.

  She wasn’t the mother of five for nothing. When it came to kids, you had to push your agenda with the zeal of a politician seeking reelection, or you’d end up living out the rest of your days at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

  “Did Billy tell you that Opal had kittens?”

  Hannah nodded, eyes widening with interest.

  “Would you like to see them?”

  The thumb was ejected from her mouth with a pop. “Can I have one?”

  Big mistake. Never mention puppies, kittens, or bunnies to a five-year-old. She regrouped. “They’re too young to leave Opal yet, Hannah.”

  “Can I have one when they’re big enough?”

  “We’ll have to ask your mom about that.”

  “She’ll say yes.”

  “Well, your Grandma Rose has to agree, too.”

  Hannah’s expression reminded Claire of how her kids looked when she served Brussels sprouts. “My grandpa has lots of cats,” Hannah said. “Horses, too. He’ll let me have a kitten even if Gramma Rose won’t. I know he will.”

  So even Hannah had her issues with Rose. Oh, this had juicy possibilities. She could dine out on the gossip for six weeks and not even begin to wear out her welcome.

  The thought of some of her own darker moments seeing the light of day brought her back to her senses. She couldn’t do it. She wanted to, she was dying to find out everything, but she flat out couldn’t ask. The thought of Denise or Pat grilling Billy Jr. for the scoop on the O’Malleys made her head spin. There were few things lower on the food chain than a thirty-nine-year-old woman who would pump a five-year-old child for gossip. No matter how juicy it might be.

  “I have an idea,” Claire said, as she made a left onto Main Street. “Why don’t I take you home now?” Better to run from temptation than try to stare it down. She had learned that a long time ago.

  “Okay,” said Hannah. “I saw Grandpa Bill sleeping in Grandma’s bed last week.”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Claire said.

  “Grandpa Bill slept over with Grandma,” Hannah repeated in a louder voice. “I saw them kissing in the kitchen.”

  “No, Hannah, I didn’t mean I didn’t hear you, I meant—” She forced herself to stop. Another five seconds, and she’d pull over to the curb and order the poor kid to spill her guts or Santa would skip Paradise Point this year.

  Clearly it was time to get a life. She needed a new one, a better one, because the one she currently had belonged to somebody else, a woman who no longer existed.

  CLEARLY THE GODS believed Rose had suffered enough during lunch with her sisters and they enabled her to escape Bernino’s before any of the aging DiFalco girls had the chance to ask for a ride home.

  The car started on the first try. The lights were green from Bernino’s to the parkway.

  Even better, Olivia Westmore answered her cell phone on the first ring.

  “I’m on my way home,” Rose said. “Meet me at The Candlelight in an hour.”

  “I’m at work,” Olivia protested. “I can’t close up because you feel like gossiping.”

  “Be there,” Rose
said. “I promise it’ll be worth your while.” Fifty-eight minutes later she pulled into the parking lot behind The Candlelight and laughed when she saw Olivia perched on the back steps. She wore one of her trademark floaty skirts, the kind that automatically settled themselves into graceful lines around her legs. She had kicked off her Jimmy Choos and they sat at attention on the top step, gleaming expensively in the late afternoon sunshine. She was the picture of languid grace, a woman who clearly never had to work a day in her life.

  All wrong, of course. Olivia owned Le Papier, the fancy stationery store in the heart of town that had suddenly become a shopping mecca for the men of Paradise Point. It had taken the women a little bit longer to warm up to the siren in their midst, but the quality of her wares—and her good nature—finally won them over, too.

  “This better be good,” Olivia said as Rose walked toward her. “I left Sunny in charge and she still doesn’t know vellum from construction paper.”

  “I’m so sorry, Liv, but I’m afraid I told them.”

  “Told them what?”

  “That you’re opening a tea shop.”

  “Is that all? And here I thought you told them about the night Simon and I—”

  “Never,” Rose said. “You swore me to secrecy.”

  “The tea shop is no secret. I filed the papers with the township. They’re public record.”

  “But you haven’t made an announcement. I shouldn’t have said anything, but Toni and Connie were being such bitches that I couldn’t hold back.”

  “Okay, so you told them. How did it go over?”

  “Everyone who matters thought it was a brilliant idea.”

  “And Toni and Connie hated it.”

  “They despised it.”

  Olivia threw back her head and laughed. “That means it’s going to be a smash hit!”