Chances Are

by Barbara Bretton

  “Why do you think your mother and I had so many kids,” he said, folding down the corner of a page. “No more trunks to unload, lawns to mow, or sidewalks to shovel.”

  She couldn’t help laughing. “It didn’t work for me either, Pop. Finish your sandwich first. The cat litter can wait.”

  “Guess who’s home for the weekend?”

  She quickly ran through the possibilities. “It can’t be Kathleen. I didn’t see her car.”

  “She bummed a ride with one of her friends.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Sacked out in her old room.” Her father took a gulp of Pepsi.

  “Is she all right? Why did she come down for the weekend? She isn’t—”

  “She’s fine,” he said. “She needed a quiet place to finish writing her school paper.”

  Claire’s knees went weak with relief, and she sank down onto a chair opposite her father.

  “You’ve got to lighten up,” he said, observing her trembling hands. “She’s doing great now.”

  “I know, but—”

  “She’s all grown, Claire. You’ve done everything you can do. Now it’s up to her.”

  “You weren’t here when she was in trouble, Pop. You don’t know what it was like.”

  “I’m old, but I’m not stupid. You think I don’t know what addiction’s all about?”

  If you weren’t there for the visits to the ER, the near misses, the screaming fights, the terror of almost losing your firstborn, you didn’t have a clue. But there was no point to saying any of it. He loved Kathleen, and his belief in her had never wavered, not even when Claire and Billy had feared the worst. What were facts and figures compared with that kind of unconditional support?

  “You’re right,” she said, patting him on the arm. “I worry too much.”

  “So what else is new?” He pushed half of his sandwich toward her. “I’m saving room for those brownies you made last night.”

  She reached for the sandwich and took a bite. “I thought you were laying off desserts for a while.”

  “Next week.” He finished off his Pepsi. “So how did it go this morning at Olivia’s place?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “You and Rosie’s girl had a problem?”

  “Can you believe she tried to undermine my position at Cuppa by trying to take over some of the baking?”

  “She’s a lousy cook?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “And besides, that’s not the point.”

  “So what is? You want to bust your behind working two jobs for one salary?”

  “It’s only temporary. We’ll be hiring somebody to help out with the baking once we get up and running.” Olivia didn’t want to miss the high tourist season, which meant an accelerated and possibly somewhat rocky start-up. She knew that when she agreed to come aboard. “Since when are any of your kids afraid of hard work?”

  “Work smart,” he said, “not hard. You don’t have to do it all yourself, Claire. Do what all the big shots do: learn to delegate. That’s the ticket.”

  “You really have to stop watching The Apprentice, Pop. We’re talking tea and cookies, not multimillion dollar mergers.”

  “Listen to your old man on this. You gotta give a little to get a lot, kiddo. That’s the real secret to getting along in this world.”

  “A DISASTER?” ROSE asked as she scoured the commode.

  “How so?”

  Maddy looked up from the tub she had been scrubbing. “I took off from Julie’s like I had a rocket in my pocket. You’re looking at a gold-medal-winning escape artist.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”

  “It was worse. The second they started arguing, all I could think about was how fast I could get out of there.” She dried off the soap holder and placed a wrapped and fragrant bar of French-milled soap on the ledge. “I’m a coward.”

  “You did what any sane woman would do in a similar situation. You excused yourself from a family argument.”

  “I bailed out on Kelly.”

  “Is that how it seemed to you?” Rose wiped down the lid with disinfectant.

  “Every time she looks to me for advice, I start looking for ways to change the subject. What’s wrong with me?” She arranged minibottles of shampoo and conditioner in the amenities basket, then piled it high with beribboned packets of sweet herbal bath salts. “I’m thirty-three years old. I’m a mother. Why do I want to run every time Kelly looks like she’s about to confide in me?” Worse yet, was she going to feel the same way when Hannah was seventeen and in trouble?

  “You’re a lot like I was.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m serious.” She motioned for Maddy to add one more packet of bath salts. “I can’t count the times I did the same thing when you were growing up.”

  “Maybe in an alternate universe,” Maddy said with a laugh. “The Rose DiFalco I grew up with had the answer for everything, including the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa.”

  “I did a pretty good job of faking it, didn’t I? Half the time I felt like I was only a half step ahead of you and losing ground fast.”

  Maddy wiped the mirror clean with long, vertical strokes. “There’s no softness in Claire. She wants Kelly to adhere to some arbitrary rules that were set up a long time ago. Her words were whizzing right over the girl’s head, and she didn’t even know it.”

  “It’s hard to let go, honey, no matter how many times you’ve done it.”

  “So why do I feel so guilty? None of this has anything to do with me. What difference is it to me if Claire and Kelly have a spat?”

  Rose sat back on her heels and brushed a lock of hair off her forehead. “If you really feel that way, maybe it’s time you did some thinking about your future with Aidan.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

  “You’re not just marrying a man, honey, you’re marrying a family, same as Aidan is. He has every right to expect the same commitment to his daughter that you expect him to feel for yours.”

  “I’m very fond of Kelly.”

  “She has enough friends. She needs a mother.”

  “We’ve been down this road, Ma. She has Claire.”

  “Claire isn’t her mother.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “You can only turn her away so many times, Madelyn. God willing, you and Aidan have a long life together ahead of you, and Kelly is going to be part of it. The decisions you make now are going to influence the future in ways you can’t even begin to imagine.”

  “Geez, Ma, we’re beginning to sound like a Lifetime movie. All we need is for your long-lost secret child to show up at the door.”

  “Excuse me.” Crystal rapped on the doorframe, and both women burst into gales of laughter. “Was it something I said?”

  That, of course, generated more laughter.

  “Your timing was perfect,” Maddy said when she regained at least a little bit of her composure. “We had just conjured up my mother’s long-lost secret child.”

  The poor girl looked totally confused. “Whatever. I just wanted to tell you we’re leaving now.”

  “I thought you were going to film check-in.” Rose was the only woman Maddy had ever seen who could look elegant policing a bathroom.

  “We’ll be back. Beep Peter’s cell when the bus rolls in, and we’ll come right over.”

  “We’re not going to hold things up,” Rose warned her. “If you’re here, you’re here. I don’t inconvenience my guests for anyone.”

  “Gotcha, Mrs. D. You do what you have to do. We’ll work around you.” Suddenly she seemed to take in the scene in front of her: scrub brushes, pails filled with soapy water, toilet brush, and industrial-strength, environmentally friendly cleaning products, all wielded by two women on their knees. “Wow! You mean you guys clean your own bathrooms?”

  “Who on earth did she think did the cleaning around here anyway?” Rose demanded after Crystal disappeared. “House elves?”

  �
�Let’s face it, Ma: you don’t exactly look like a charwoman.” She gestured toward her own grubby jeans and faded T-shirt from a long-ago Rolling Stones concert at the Meadowlands. “Whereas your daughter . . .”

  “Please don’t tell me that’s the same shirt you wore in high school.”

  “You won’t hear it from me.”

  “You always did get emotionally attached to your clothing.”

  “Remember my favorite pair of Jordache jeans?”

  “The ones you insisted had to be dry-cleaned.”

  “At thirteen it made sense to me.”

  “Remember that when Hannah turns thirteen, and you can’t pry her favorite pair out of her hands.”

  They fell into companionable silence, punctuated only by the swish of water over tile or the soft sound of fresh, fluffy towels sliding into position in the built-in cabinet.

  “We make a great team,” Rose said as they lugged cleaning paraphernalia downstairs to the utility room.

  “We do, don’t we?” The realization caught Maddy by surprise. “When did that happen?”

  “About two decades later than I had hoped,” Rose said with her characteristic honesty.

  “It better not take Claire and me that long at Cuppa. As it is, our acting skills are going to be stretched to the max tomorrow.” Maddy’s optimism for the success of their business relationship was fading fast. “At least conflict is good for the ratings.”

  “Conflict might be good for ratings,” her mother said, “but it doesn’t wear well on a daily basis.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” The first thirty-something years of Maddy’s life as a daughter were proof of that.

  “Lucy called while you were out,” Rose said as they settled down in the kitchen over a pitcher of iced tea. “She asked if you could postpone the fitting until next week. Her arthritis is acting up, and her hands won’t behave.”

  “No problem,” Maddy said. “I’ll call her, and we’ll reschedule.”

  “And you’d better check your messages. Fred from the radio station was trying to find you. He said he called your cell, but there was no answer.”

  Maddy made a small gesture of resigned embarrassment. “Guess I forgot to recharge it again.”

  “Madelyn, what on earth is the point to having a cell phone if you don’t keep the battery charged?”

  “I like the way it looks dangling uselessly from my belt loop.”

  “Go check your voice mail.”

  “Later.”

  “He called a few hours ago.”

  “Ma, enough. I’ll check for messages in a little while, okay?”

  “You’re being irresponsible.”

  “Why? Because I don’t think a cell phone has to be an electronic leash?” She conveniently chose to ignore the many times that electronic leash had made life a whole lot easier when it was tugging at someone else.

  “You’re just like your father. God forbid he should check for messages when he’s out driving around like a teenager with a brand-new license. The two of you are like peas in a pod.”

  Maddy kissed her mother on the cheek. “Thanks,” she said. “That’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.”

  Rose tried to look stern, but the twinkle in her eye—a twinkle that just might have been there many other times when Maddy was too busy or too angry to notice—gave her away.

  “I think so, too,” she said. “Now check for your messages, and let’s get back to work.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  CORIN FLYNN HAD faced down snipers in Sarajevo, survived the rocky mountains of Afghanistan, and the terror-filled streets of Baghdad, without flinching. He had known fear, known it intimately, and he knew how to use that fear to propel himself deeper into situations a sane man would run from. Fear was a good thing, a motivator. Fear taught you to trust your gut instincts, even though reason was pulling you in the opposite direction.

  But nothing he had ever experienced staring up at a Kalashnikov held by a terrified sixteen-year-old boy with nothing left to lose came close to what he felt when he pulled into the Joyce Kilmer Rest Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike and finally lost his nerve.

  He broke into a cold sweat eight miles away from Newark Liberty Airport as the land gradually lost its urban-industrial edge and grew greener, more suburban.

  The twitch beneath his left eye kicked in south of The Oranges.

  By the time he climbed from behind the wheel of his rented Ford and headed for the low brick building that housed public bathrooms, two fast-food restaurants, and an information center, the adrenaline was flowing so hard and fast he felt like it was morning in Kabul where the sound of machine gun fire and rocket explosions took the place of a snooze alarm.

  A man couldn’t stay angry forever. He knew that. The deep, gut-twisting anger he had felt the last time he saw her had been replaced by an emptiness that nothing could fill. He had traveled the world in search of the one thing that would make him forget her, plugging in danger for love, and still coming up empty. In the last eight years he had gained a reputation for being a risk-taker, the guy with the camera who walked where sane men feared to tread. Somewhere along the way he had acquired a career, a damn good one at that, and made a name for himself, but that emptiness inside just kept on growing bigger.

  He bought a large black coffee from Mickey D’s—more caffeine, yeah that was what he needed—and stepped back outside to breathe in the mingled scents of new trees and old petroleum and found himself thrown back through time to the day he learned there were ways to kill a man that had nothing to do with bullets.

  He finished his coffee, fantasized a cigarette, then tossed the empty cup into a trash bin a few feet away. The sun was beginning to rise over a stand of wobbly pine trees across the highway. With a little luck he’d reach Paradise Point in time for breakfast.

  He had asked Olivia to tell Claire he was coming and why. She had been through hell these last few years, and he wouldn’t do anything to complicate her life any more than her husband’s death already had. He wanted to see her just one more time, hear the sound of her voice. He wanted to make sure that the life she had chosen was still the one she needed to be happy. He would do what he was being paid to do—capture images of a town and its people—and then he would forget Claire O’Malley had ever existed.

  And maybe one day he might even stop loving her.

  MADDY AND HER crew were already at O’Malley’s when Claire arrived. She had set her alarm for five-thirty so she would have time to shower, wash her hair, try to tame it with a whip and chair, and obsess over her pathetic excuse for a grown-up wardrobe.

  “It’s a radio show,” her father had pointed out as she gratefully accepted a cup of coffee from him just before she spun out the door. “You look fine.”

  There were two ways of looking at that statement. You look fine . . . for radio, or You look fine, and yes, I know other adults are actually going to see you. She had the sinking feeling the former came closer to the truth than the latter ever would, but she didn’t have time for an extreme makeover. A swipe of lipstick, a handful of Tic Tacs, and a quick Hail Mary, and she was out the door.

  “Hey, Claire!” Maddy hailed her from across the bar. “Help yourself to some coffee. I’ll be with you in a sec.”

  Help yourself to some coffee? Like Claire wasn’t the one who usually made the coffee 365 days a year at O’Malley’s.

  “She didn’t mean it that way.” Aidan startled her out of her surly train of thought. “You’ve watched her run interviews here before. That’s what she says to all her guests.”

  It was, but Claire refused to be mollified.

  “Got the jitters?”

  She shook her head. “Why should I? It’s just local radio.”

  He gave her a look she didn’t feel like analyzing, then rejoined the crowd of half-asleep regulars at the bar, one of whom was a sparklingly wide-awake Olivia.

  “Took you long enough,” Claire complained when the woman fin
ally joined her in exile halfway between the crowd at the bar and Maddy’s crew near the window. “I was beginning to think there was something going on between you and Mel Perry.”

  “And when there is, you’ll be the first to know, I promise you.” She lowered her voice. “No word from Corin, but Peter says he’s scheduled for a shoot on the dock tomorrow morning so . . .”

  “It doesn’t make any difference to me, Liv. Our moment came and went a long time ago.”

  “Really?” Olivia arched a brow. “I hear you’ve been jumping out of your skin around here every time the door opens.”

  The door squeaked open on cue, but Claire steadfastly kept her gaze locked and loaded on her friend.

  Olivia waggled her fingers over Claire’s left shoulder. “Good morning, Mr. Fenelli. Aren’t you looking well this fine day!”

  Strange how relief and disappointment could feel so much alike. She turned around and smiled as David joined them.

  “Don’t you ever work?” she teased him.

  “One of the bennies of self-employment,” he said. “You can take a morning off to cheer on a friend.”

  He was right. They had become friends somewhere along the way. She wondered when it had happened.

  “Thanks,” she said, aware of Olivia’s curious gaze. “I need all the support I can get.”

  “You’ll knock ’em dead.” He gave her one of those endearingly goofy smiles. “How about I take you to breakfast when you’re through?”

  Olivia gave one of those theatrical coughs favored by sitcom actresses and women who will not be ignored.

  “You, too, Olivia,” David said. “I’d love it if you joined us.”

  “Sure you would,” Olivia drawled as she patted his arm lightly, “but I’m afraid I have to say no. I have a store to run and employees to badger.”

  David was too polite to look relieved as he met Claire’s eyes again. “So how about it?”

  There were a million reasons not to, but a civilized breakfast with an ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill nice guy sounded like exactly what she needed. “Sounds great,” she said, “provided we don’t go to Julie’s.”