Chances Are

by Barbara Bretton

  Claire’s look said it all.

  “That went well,” Maddy said to Gina after the school bus left and the other mothers scattered. “I think I managed to confirm every awful thing she ever thought about me.” Flighty. Unreliable. A terrible candidate for wife and mother.

  “Forget it,” Gina said. “I’ve got real problems.”

  “Please don’t tell me you did something even dumber than that tattoo.”

  Gina could do innocent indignation better than anyone. “That photographer is coming to Upsweep later to take my picture for the book, and I look like the Before poster child.”

  “I think he’s coming to The Candlelight tomorrow.”

  “Hey,” Gina said, “this is about me, remember? I look like hell. I’m not supposed to look like hell. I own a salon. This is going to be terrible for business.”

  “I don’t think they’re looking at this as a promo opportunity for Upsweep, Gee.”

  Gina bent down and retrieved Joey’s stuffed dinosaur for the stroller-bound toddler. “You know what, cuz? I liked you a hell of a lot more before you got yourself engaged.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Don’t mind me,” Gina said as she straightened back up. “I’m in a lousy mood.”

  “Still hungover?”

  “Do you ever have the feeling something awful is about to happen, but you don’t know what it is and you don’t know how to stop it?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.” That horrible someone-walked-over-my-grave feeling ran up her spine.

  “I know, I know. I sound like my mother, don’t I? Next thing you know, I’ll be telling you somebody gave me the evil eye.”

  Maddy crossed herself. “Now you have me acting like my mother. Don’t say things like that, Gee. Don’t even think them.”

  “I almost went to Mass with Lucy this morning,” Gina said. “That’s how strong this feeling is.”

  Maddy, who had gone to Mass with Lucy that morning, said nothing at all.

  CORIN FOLLOWED OLIVIA over to Cuppa a little after eight to shoot a roll of his sister at the incredibly kitschy cottage she was turning into an English tea shop. It wasn’t exactly his cup of tea, so to speak, but he had no doubt that her instincts were right on the money, and she would have another huge success on her hands. She walked him through the place, pointing out architectural details that he might otherwise have gone to his grave without recognizing, and he dutifully took a few shots of wainscoting. Whatever the hell that was.

  He also managed to grab a few candid shots of Olivia as she scrutinized the new wallpaper and checked out the window treatments.

  “Enough,” she said, laughing as he circled her like a paparazzo. “That’s my bad side.”

  “You don’t have a bad side, Livvy. Never had, never will.”

  “Good genes, brother mine. We were both born lucky.”

  They locked eyes, and the irony of the statement hit them both at the same time. Great parents. Great childhood. Great genes. Yet there they were, charging fearlessly into early middle age with no kids, no spouses, not even a cat to give a shit if they came home early, late, or not at all.

  Somewhere along the way they had stopped being lucky, but he would be damned if he could figure out when or why.

  He was saved from a morose trip down angst lane by the noisy arrival of Lassiter and his crew.

  “I’m finished here,” he said, grabbing for his camera bag. “I’ll get out of your way.”

  “Don’t leave on our account,” Lassiter said after a jovial good morning. “A few stills of the process in motion might be a good addition.”

  Corin checked his watch. He was due at Upsweep in a half hour, but that was only two blocks away. What the hell, he thought and popped off the lens cap.

  “Act natural,” he ordered everyone to great laughter. They had been saying that to the citizens of Paradise Point for the last month with varying degrees of success.

  Crystal was setting up her recording equipment on one of the enormous work surfaces in what would be the kitchen in another day or two. He liked the way the morning sunshine glittered off her quintet of eyebrow piercings. He crouched down a few feet away from her and started snapping as she fiddled with dials, ran a mike check, and pretended she wasn’t being photographed.

  “Forget I’m here,” he said as he aimed the camera up her nose. “I’m part of the scenery.”

  “I hate being photographed,” she said. “I end up looking like a baked potato.”

  “Baked potatoes are good,” he said, trying to put her at ease. “But you’re no plain old baked potato . . . no, don’t look at me . . . just do what you’re doing . . . you’re baked potato with cheddar cheese and bacon bits and green onions and maybe some really hot salsa—”

  She started to laugh, and the sun zeroed in on the stud fastened through her tongue.

  “You must drive the metal detectors nuts at the airport,” he said as he paused to change rolls.

  “I’m an agent for social change,” she said, clicking the stud against her bottom teeth. “The day will come when body piercings are as common as makeup and hair color.”

  He decided to leave that one alone. “So what did the PTB think about your hook for the documentary?”

  “Shh!” She placed her index finger to her lips. “I haven’t had a chance to transcribe the tape yet, but it’s going to blow them away!”

  “The guys at 60 Minutes are getting pretty long in the tooth. You should walk your skills up to Fifty-second Street and see if there’s an opening.”

  “Yeah, I can just see me sitting next to Mike Wallace.” Crystal pulled her notepad from her backpack and uncapped her pen with her teeth. “That would be one for the Emmy reel.”

  “Listen, kid, if you managed to score a story in the middle of a Jersey Shore karaoke bar, you could blast the rest of ’em off the screen.”

  “I’m going to try to transcribe it tonight. I have the tape all set up and ready to go as soon as I get back to the rooms.” She winked at him. “Get a good picture of Gina Barone. It might come in very handy.”

  “MISS O’MALLEY, WOULD you care to rejoin the rest of us and answer the question?”

  Kelly struggled to swim up to the surface of consciousness. “I-I’m sorry, Mr. Alfredi. Would you repeat the question?”

  He dismissed her with a look and turned toward Carol Mortensen. “Miss Mortensen, please enlighten the rest of us with an answer.”

  “Yalta, Mr. Alfredi.”

  “Thank you, Miss Mortensen. Perhaps Miss O’Malley is proficient enough at Jeopardy that she can reconstruct the original question using that answer as her clue.”

  The class laughed. She didn’t even blame them. She might have laughed, too, if the situation had been reversed. She hoped she wouldn’t have, but lately she was beginning to think just about anything was possible.

  Seth was waiting for her in the hallway, and her heart twisted into a sailor’s knot at the sight of his familiar, beloved face. She wished she didn’t have to smile and lie to that face, but she was in so deep now there was no turning back.

  “What was that all about?” he asked as they walked to the cafeteria for lunch.

  “I fell asleep,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I was up until four working on that paper, and when he started droning on about Stalin and FDR, I drifted off.” Which was another total lie. She had stayed up all night staring at the six photos Rose DiFalco had given to her. Sandy O’Malley had lived nineteen years, and a handful of photos, her husband’s memories, and a daughter named Kelly were all that remained to prove she had walked the earth.

  Seth lowered his voice to a whisper. “Maybe you should run that test again.”

  “Oh, shut up!” she snapped, pulling her hand away from his. “I told you the results on Saturday. What more do you want from me?”

  She wished he would get mad, maybe tell her to go to hell, or call her a bitch and leave her standing there alone in
the entrance to the cafeteria. That was what she deserved for lying to him.

  But he didn’t do any of those things, which was why she loved him so much. Instead, he looked at her closely for what seemed like forever, then he fell back into step with her, and they walked into the cafeteria together like it was just another day.

  GINA BARONE LOVED the camera, and unless Corin badly missed his guess, the camera loved her right back. She reigned over staff and clientele at Upsweep like a benevolent despot in leather. She flirted, she cajoled, she laughed, and when she thought nobody was looking, she looked sad enough to break a man’s heart.

  Most of all, though, Gina Barone loved to talk. By the time he had been in the shop an hour, he knew the social and sexual histories of just about everyone in town.

  “Glad I don’t live here,” he said as he snapped a shot of Gina as she mainlined espresso between customers. “A man’s gotta have a few secrets.”

  “Oh, honey,” Gina said with a dangerously sexy laugh, “secrets are highly overrated.”

  The sentence resonated with him. She had been disarmingly honest about her many and varied romantic adventures, and those adventures seemed to be part of what drew the women of Paradise Point to her shop. Gina was her very own reality show, and she was in no danger of being voted off the island any time soon. Not if the crowd of women waiting in the lounge for hair treatments or massages or manicures was any indication. They had reveled over her tale of the tattoo parlor visit after a pitcher of margaritas down the shore. He had already heard Crystal’s version of the outing, and Gina pretty much corroborated the whole thing with the exception of the mystery tape Crystal had alluded to. It wasn’t hard to imagine Gina talking first and thinking a year or two later.

  Gina’s talking points bounced all over the place. She changed gears with the ease of a Ferrari, shifting from talk of Manolo Blahnik stilettos to Pilates classes to the sale on roasters at Super Fresh without missing a beat. She kept her customers chuckling during bizarre beauty rites that would have terrified the bravest warriors. Watching her work with squeeze bottles of color, folding strands of unsuspecting hair into aluminum foil packets, seeing her wield her shears with the artistry and precision of a da Vinci—he was impressed as hell, and he let her know it.

  “So put your dermis where your mouth is,” she said with a sly wink. “You look like you could use a facial and some moisturizer.”

  He laughed out loud. “And some highlights?”

  “Low lights,” she corrected him. “Although I’m not altogether sure I’d touch that gorgeous gray of yours.”

  “Look who’s awake and looking for his mommy.” Amber, one of the nail technicians, stood in the doorway. She held the hand of a toddler with thick dark hair and dark blue eyes. Something tugged at Corin, a feeling of familiarity that came and went in the space of a breath.

  “Mr. Joey!” Gina opened her arms, and the little boy flew across the room and into her embrace. “Boy, did we miss you!” She met Corin’s eyes over the child’s silky head. “Nap time just finished. He likes to make an entrance.”

  Everything about her changed with the little boy’s appearance in the doorway. She glowed the way women glowed in an Impressionist painting, that golden inner light that existed only in the imaginations of men and lunatics. Clearly that little boy held the key to her heart in his chubby hands.

  “Joey, this is Corin. Why don’t you shake hands with him, and maybe he’ll take your picture.”

  Corin bent down to eye level and held out his right hand. “Good to meet you, Joey.”

  Joey considered him for a moment, then gave him a surprisingly strong handshake for somebody who weighed maybe thirty pounds. His attention was focused on the Hasselblad hanging around Corin’s neck, and he made a quick grab for it.

  “I should’ve warned you,” Gina said as she scooped the kid up into her arms. “My boy has the quickest hands in South Jersey.”

  Joey was the baby of the family, and he knew how to work it. There wasn’t a female in the place who wasn’t crazy about him, and if he hung around much longer, the kid would have Corin in his back pocket, too.

  “. . . he’s had a tough few months,” Gina was saying as he clicked back into the conversation, “but I think we’re finally out of the woods.” She pretended to knock wood against her left temple, which made the little boy laugh.

  “You’d never know he had any problems,” Corin said.

  She gave his arm a squeeze. “Your mouth to God’s ear and back again.”

  Joey had the same all-American-boy quality he had spotted in Claire’s youngest, the kind of face you saw in 1950s commercials for peanut butter or breakfast cereal, right down to the freckles that peppered the bridge of his nose.

  “How about I take a picture of the two of you?” he asked, popping off the lens cap once again. “I like the way the light’s coming through that window.”

  Gina made a joke about bad hair days, but she seemed pleased, so he sat the two of them down near the window and snapped a quick series of shots that felt right to him. Better than right. The viewfinder found something in Gina, a depth of sadness, a measure of kindness, that were easily lost in the heat and volume of her personality.

  Okay, so maybe he was a sucker for mother-and-child shots. They could be corny as hell, sentimental to the point of triggering the viewer’s gag reflex, but when they worked, they could crack the ice around anyone’s heart.

  He just might have his cover shot for the book.

  “I WISH YOU had told me sooner that you were planning to be gone this afternoon, Madelyn.” Rose was using what Maddy thought of as her I Am Queen voice.

  For once Maddy didn’t blame her mother one bit. “I forgot, okay?” she said, feigning daughterly annoyance. “I promised Kelly I’d go shopping with her for a prom dress. We’re going over to Bay Bridge and if we don’t luck out, I might drive up to Short Hills.” Too much information. Any good liar would know you keep your cover story simple.

  “We’re expecting three couples from Virginia this evening. I was counting on you.”

  “Maybe Aunt Lucy could stop by and lend a hand.”

  “Your aunt is almost eighty.” A wry smile broke through the displeasure. “Besides, I believe she has a date tonight.”

  “Ma, I wish I could help you, but I promised Kelly I would help her.”

  “And it has to be today. This is the only opening on your respective calendars.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It has to be today.”

  She could see the wheels spinning as her mother considered the situation. Unfortunately, Rose was no fool. “This isn’t about a prom dress, is it, honey?”

  Tears filled her eyes, but she refused to acknowledge them. “No, it isn’t.”

  Rose touched her arm. “If you need to talk—”

  She shook her head. “We’ll be okay.” She gave her mother a hug. “But thanks for being here for me.”

  “Always,” Rose said, hugging her back. “That’s one thing you can count on.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “I’M OUT OF here.” Claire untied her apron and hung it on the hook behind the door. “I have to go over to the hospital and see if the social worker has been in to see Dad yet.”

  Aidan didn’t look up from the carrots he was chopping for the soup pot simmering on the stove. “You’ll be back after you pick up Billy, right?”

  Her stomach dropped to her feet. “Jesus Mary and Joseph,” she said. “I completely forgot about Billy. He has a dentist appointment at four-thirty.” Or was it five? Her mind was total mush.

  Now, that got Aidan’s attention. “So what’s the big deal? Go to the hospital. Come back and get the kid. It’s not like you haven’t done it before.”

  True enough, except she had planned to go straight to the lighthouse the second she was finished at the hospital.

  “Would you pick him up for me?”

  He gestured toward the bar with his knife. “Tommy’s going home at t
wo-thirty. I’ll be the only one here.”

  “No, you won’t. Owen’s taking over the rest of my shift.”

  “Thought of everything, didn’t you, Red?”

  “I try.” She was beginning to wonder how he was going to get along without her. “Is Kelly working at The Candlelight tonight or the library?”

  “She’s not working at all. Maddy’s taking her shopping for a prom dress.”

  She felt a nasty little pinch of jealousy. “Why didn’t she ask me? I found dresses for four daughters. Hannah’s barely out of training pants.”

  His poker face wasn’t any better than hers. “Look, I’m sorry. She probably knows how busy you are with work and Billy and your father and—”

  “Stick it,” she said as she turned and started for the exit. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Aidan. I know things change. Just do me a favor next time and don’t bullshit me. I can take anything but that.”

  KELLY WAS WAITING for Maddy in the high school parking lot, just as they had planned.

  “Do you have everything?” Maddy asked as the girl fastened her seat belt.

  Kelly nodded. “ID, money, extra sanitary pads.”

  “Okay,” Maddy said. “Then we’re on our way.”

  Maddy told her about Hannah’s latest escapade as they made a left on Main Street then headed toward the intersection with Route 582. She added a few extra details about Priscilla’s part in the drama, hoping to elicit at least a chuckle from the girl, but nothing. She sat there looking out the windshield, hands folded tightly in her lap, face pale and drawn. Even in profile Maddy could see the deep shadows under her eyes.

  “We’re running ahead of schedule,” she said as they stopped for a traffic light. “Would you like to take a walk around the lake or something?”

  “Maybe they can take us early,” Kelly said.

  What she really wanted to do was pull over to the side of the road, lock the doors, and beg Kelly to tell Seth and Aidan about her pregnancy before she took this final and irreversible step. The afternoon suddenly seemed to have a momentum of its own, pulling them deeper into a tangle of lies neither one of them was prepared to handle.