Shore Lights

by Barbara Bretton

  Kelly was young enough to believe it all meant something, that the forces of Destiny or whatever they were calling it these days were pointing him toward a certain path and that he should pay attention. He was old enough to know he didn’t need to. Life kept coming at you just the same.

  “SHE’S LUCKY.” DR. Harris made a notation on Irene’s chart, then looked up at Aidan. “It looks like she didn’t break any bones. At her age that’s nothing short of a miracle.”

  “But you still think the X rays are a good idea.”

  “Absolutely. There could be a hairline fracture we’re not aware of.”

  “She’s pretty frail,” Aidan said. “How do you think she’ll handle the ambulance ride?”

  “She’s tougher than you think.” Dr. Harris allowed herself the faintest hint of a smile.

  “If she was that tough, she wouldn’t be going to the hospital.”

  “Touché, Mr. O’Malley. What I mean is, she’s a survivor and she’ll continue to survive until she decides it’s no longer worth the fight.”

  He couldn’t help smiling at the serious-faced young woman who stood before him in her white lab coat and no-nonsense shoes. “Does the AMA know about your radical views?”

  She didn’t so much as blink. “There’s more to death than dying,” she said, and he was surprised when she didn’t add “Grasshopper.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “She won’t know you’re there. We gave her some meds to keep her comfortable.”

  He nodded. “Will she be at Good Sam overnight?”

  “Depends on what they find, how long it takes, how she handles the trip.”

  “In other words, you don’t know.”

  “I don’t know.”

  He thanked Dr. Harris, then navigated the corridors until he found Irene’s room at the end of the dogleg. The door was wide open, and he could hear voices talking quietly within.

  “Only family,” said a nurse he didn’t recognize.

  “I am family,” he said, stepping into the room. “Her grandson.”

  The nurse looked doubtful, but the aide standing next to her nodded. “Her grandson,” she said. “I saw him around the other day.”

  Irene looked younger somehow. Asleep her face lost the tightly controlled look of a woman used to guarding her secrets. The worry lines softened. The downward curve of her mouth seemed less severe. Her soft white hair fanned out on the pale blue pillow, and for a moment he thought she was smiling at him.

  Of course she wasn’t. She was floating out there in a Valium-induced haze.

  Claire was right. His being there was of no consequence to Irene. He had done what he needed to do, signed the permission papers, and now they were free to take her off to Good Sam for tests or treatment or whatever else her situation warranted.

  He could have phoned it in or faxed it.

  He looked down at his grandmother, his link to almost everyone he had ever loved and lost, and for the first time he felt pity.

  She would never know how much she missed.

  He wished he could say the same.

  THE NURSE AND her assistant exchanged glances when the grandson left the room.

  “Not much on sentiment, was he?” the nurse said with a roll of her eyes. She had seen all kinds come through Shore View. There weren’t many who could find something to love in a very elderly relative. Most of them paid the bills, easing their troubled consciences with the fact that Granny was getting three squares a day (even if the three squares were fed directly into her gut) and somebody else was changing her diaper.

  “Listen.” The assistant motioned for her to be quiet. “I think she said something.”

  The nurse chuckled. “Honey, she’s zonked on Valium. She won’t be saying anything until tomorrow the earliest.”

  “No, really.” She bent her head closer to the old lady, almost pressing her ear up against the wrinkled mouth. “Ay-dah. She said it again. Ay-dah.”

  “Ada?” The nurse wrinkled her nose. “Nobody by that name around here.” She reached for the blankets. “Let’s get her ready. The drivers will be here any minute, and Harris will have my head on a platter if we don’t have the patient ready to go.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  MADDY STAGGERED THROUGH the kitchen doorway and pretended to collapse onto a chair opposite her aunt and her mother.

  “I hope that soup is ready soon,” she said, “because Mrs. Loewenstein is bored and wants to know if we get the Playboy channel.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Rose warned her sister as Lucy started to laugh. “If they’re looking for romance, that means we’re doing our job.”

  “Romance?” Lucy said through her laughter. “Next thing they’ll be looking for is Viagra. Maybe you should toss some free samples in the gift baskets you have in the guest rooms.”

  Maddy, who was on the brink of wild whoops of laughter herself, struggled to hang on to her composure, but she saw the gleeful twinkle in her mother’s eyes and the way her mouth was twitching and it was all over. She buried her face in her hands and howled with laughter at the thought of the Loewensteins swinging from the chandeliers.

  “It’s a good thing we’re going on hiatus,” Rose said when the worst of their hilarity abated. “Another day like today and I’d be drummed out of the Innkeepers Association.”

  “Wh-what should I tell Mrs. Loewenstein?” Maddy asked, dissolving once more into helpless giggles.

  “You can tell Mrs. Loewenstein that we have some wonderful classic romantic comedies she might enjoy.”

  “She’s not looking for Pillow Talk,” Maddy said. “She wants I Am Curious Gray.”

  Rose looked at her and started to laugh again herself. “You really are going to be a smash on Friday, honey. You’re a natural.” She reached toward Maddy, then pulled her hand back as if afraid she might offend.

  Maddy hesitated. This was all so new for both of them, the moment so fragile, the wounds so deep and wide.

  She slid her hand forward. Just a tiny bit. Just enough so her mother would notice.

  Rose didn’t say anything and she didn’t meet Maddy’s eyes. But she slid her own hand forward another tiny bit herself until her hand covered Maddy’s.

  The moment was over almost before it began, but what a flood of emotion it roused in Maddy. She felt, by turns, overwhelmed, thrilled, puzzled, confused, angry, and knocked flat by the sheer force of the love she had for her mother. Love she hadn’t believed existed except in memory. They had connected, really connected for what felt like the first time. She glanced across the room at her aunt Lucy, who was watching them with her heart on her beautifully tailored sleeve, and she felt another sharp jolt of recognition.

  Maybe she belonged there after all. That was her beach beyond the window, her ocean. That was where she had played as a little girl, where she had spent her teens, dreaming about the day she would be old enough to grab her books, her pictures, her future and get as far away as possible.

  These women were her family. She wondered if she had ever truly understood the meaning of the word before. If something happened to her tomorrow, the years of estrangement, the fights, the differences—all of it would disappear as if it had never happened. Rose would open her arms to Hannah, and her aunts and cousins would gather round and help keep the child from harm.

  She knew this without being told. She knew it in the deepest part of her soul, the part where she was four years old and the world was still a good place, a place where little girls could go to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that the world would still be the same safe place when she woke up the next morning.

  They fed the Loewensteins and the Armaghs a lovely noon lunch. They made them laugh with stories of Grandma Fay and the boarders who had drifted in and out of the old Victorian before Rose waved her magic wand. Rose added more wood to the fireplaces. Lucy found a DVD copy of An Affair to Remember, and Maddy made sure the coffee and hot chocolate pots were warm and filled to the brim.

  Out
side the winds whipped up off the water, blasted the beach, then slammed into the Candlelight. Pellets of ice clattered against the windows while the worst kind of damaging snow piled up against doors and steps and obliterated the roads and sidewalks.

  Inside the air was warm and fragrant with chocolate and fresh bread and pine. The intoxicating sound of Cary Grant’s voice mingled with commentary from the Armaghs. Priscilla slept soundly in her basket near the stove while Rose and Lucy worked on the accompaniments to the evening’s farewell meal. Maddy stood by the window and watched her breath turn frosty against the pane. When she was a little girl she had dreamed of a cozy kitchen with a mother who sang softly while she made cookies, a puppy with a red bow on her collar, a family who would always be there to keep her safe from harm.

  Twenty-five years later, in her mother’s kitchen, she finally had the feeling she might be on the right track.

  ONLY THE STALWARTS showed up at O’Malley’s that afternoon. The usual lunch crowd of doctors and nurses and attorneys wisely decided not to risk the treacherous roads for a bowl of chili and a blast of icy ocean air. By one o’clock the only people in the place were Aidan, Tommy, Claire, and the crew of retirees who would brave an F-5 tornado for O’Malley’s Manhattan clam.

  “You guys are freaking nuts,” Tommy said as he doused a half-dozen coffees with a glug of Bailey’s. “Wouldn’t catch me here on a day like this.”

  “Earth to Kennedy,” Soriano said, laughing into his steaming bowl of chowder. “You’re here, buddy.”

  Nothing much bothered Tommy. He shrugged his brawny shoulders and said, “Yeah, but I wouldn’t be if he wasn’t paying me.”

  “I think we should close up,” Claire said to Aidan as she turned away from the front window. “It’s pretty bad out there.”

  “Go home,” he said with a glance toward the window himself. “If it keeps up like this, I just might close up around six.”

  Her face still had a touch of the post-root canal chipmunk to it. He would never tell her because she would probably do him bodily harm, but he found her slightly swollen state endearing. Over the years Claire had built up layer after layer of defenses until it was almost impossible to dig down to the woman Billy had brought home more than twenty years ago. She had been so young—hadn’t they all?—so wide-eyed and filled with dreams of a golden future where good things happened to good people and nobody ever got sick and nobody ever got injured and sure as hell nobody you loved ever died.

  “Leave the car here,” he said, draping a brotherly arm over her shoulder. “I’ll drive you.”

  “Gotta get Billy Jr.,” she said, casting another worried glance toward the window, “and pick up my prescription at Shoprite.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  She eyed him with friendly suspicion. “What’s with you? Why so nice?”

  “You don’t like nice?”

  “Oh, I think I remember it somewhere way back in the mists of time, but it’s been awhile.”

  He opted for the truth even though it would most likely piss her off. “I’m thinking about Irene.”

  She pulled away and glared up at him. “Fuck Irene. What the hell did she ever do to deserve this concern?”

  “This could be it, Claire. She’s over one hundred years old. Sooner or later—”

  “If you ask me, it couldn’t be soon enough.”

  “Goddamnit, Claire, she’s my blood. She’s the last link I have to my family. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you like her. Hell, I don’t like her. But she’s all I have.”

  To his surprise Claire’s blue eyes welled with tears. “What about Kelly? And what about my crew? I suppose you think we’re chopped liver.”

  “You know what I’m talking about. The kids are the future. Irene is the last link with Grandpa Michael and my folks and—”

  “Not Billy,” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t even think of saying Billy.”

  He hadn’t been going to say Billy, but he was glad she stopped him. Claire had no patience with nostalgia. As far as she was concerned she had enough relatives as it was. The thought of pawing through a stack of papers or interviewing a group of old people just to find out that Aunt Sadie went to her reward in August 1872 made her laugh.

  Hell, maybe if he had a sprawling, loud loving family like Claire’s, he wouldn’t be looking for connections that might not even be there. But he didn’t. The past was a murky soup of whispers and silences and grudges held way too long. He grew up learning about families from television. Reruns of Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. Fantasies that Greg would wreck his car and Aidan could step into The Brady Bunch without a ripple.

  Big surprise that he had married young. From the first moment they met, Sandy had been his anchor, the home he had always longed for. She had seen through the tough-guy exterior and straight into his heart in a way that nobody before or since ever had. They had fallen in love in the ninth grade and stayed that way until the day she died, three months short of Kelly’s second birthday.

  At least he had known it once. At least he knew he was capable of love and happiness and all the other things the rest of the O’Malley clan found so damn hard to come by. It helped on days like this when he found himself wanting to know how it was his whole family always ended up on the outside of happiness looking in.

  There had to be a reason, some cataclysmic incident that had sent them all into solitary orbits, but damned if he knew what it was. The only thing he was sure of was that if anyone had the answer, it was Grandma Irene.

  “I’m going,” Claire said as she shrugged into her puffy black storm coat. “And if you were smart, you’ll go, too, before it gets any worse.”

  “Sure you don’t want me to drive you?”

  She slung her bag over her shoulder, grabbed her scarf and her car keys. “For what it’s worth, Aidan,” she said from the doorway, “I’ll say a rosary for Irene. But not for her sake. I’ll say it for yours.”

  THE SCHOOL CALLED Maddy to inform her they were letting the kids out thirty minutes early because of the storm, which sent Maddy tearing out of the house to warm up her Mustang.

  She needn’t have bothered. The Mustang wasn’t going anywhere. She turned the key once, twice, three times and was rewarded with a couple of puny clicks and then total silence. There wasn’t time to call AAA and ask them to send out somebody to help her. Hannah’s school bus would be at the corner in less than fifteen minutes. She could have borrowed either Rose’s car or Lucy’s if it weren’t for the small fact that she had cleverly parked in such a way that the two vehicles were blocked in.

  She whipped out her cell phone and punched in Gina’s code.

  Her cousin answered on the second ring.

  “This better be good,” Gina said in her smoky tones, “because I’m about to skid into a snowdrift.”

  Maddy quickly told her what had happened. “I know it’s a big favor on a day like this, but could you pick up Hannah and bring her home?”

  Gina might not have made the world’s best wife, but she was definitely in the running for best cousin. If you had a problem, Gina was the one you wanted on your side. She was blunt at times, painfully honest, the one most likely to say exactly the things you didn’t want to hear at the exact moment you least wanted to hear them, but when she gave you her word, you really had something.

  “You’re gonna owe me,” Gina said. “Make sure the coffeepot’s on and there’s a plate of Aunt Lucy’s mini chocolate cheesecakes.”

  “Will you settle for freshly made chocolate chunk cookies with macadamia nuts?”

  Gina moaned. “Settle? We’ll be there if I have to pull the car with my teeth.”

  Maddy tossed the cell phone back into her bag, then steeled herself to get out of the car. The snow was heavy and blowing in from the water, which meant huge snowdrifts were forming all over town. God only knew what it would be like come evening. Rose was going to hit the roof. Her mother was a stickler for thinking ahead, trying to imagine all possibilities bef
ore choosing a course of action. You could bet she wouldn’t have parked her old car sideways across the driveway and blocked two other vehicles. And, if for some unthinkable reason she had, her battery wouldn’t have dared to drop dead on her. Some things simply wouldn’t happen.

  Rose looked up from the cookbook she was thumbing through as Maddy stepped into the kitchen. “Do you need me to move my car?” she asked.

  “It’s the other way around,” Maddy said as she slipped out of her coat and tossed it in the mudroom to dry. She braced herself for the eruption and explained about the dead battery and its repercussions.

  “Not to worry,” Rose said. “It isn’t like we’re going anywhere tonight in this weather.”

  “What about Aunt Lucy?” She could hear her aunt laughing with the guests in the front room.

  “She can stay in one of the empty rooms or grab a ride with Gina.”

  That’s it? Maddy looked at her mother closely, searching for signs of hidden anger or impatience, and found nothing but good cheer.

  “Is something wrong?” Rose asked pleasantly.

  “You’re taking this awfully well,” Maddy said. “I thought you’d be annoyed.”

  Rose shook her head. “As long as we can get the Loewensteins and the Armaghs on the road tomorrow, I don’t care if we’re snowed in for a month.”

  Maddy managed to suppress a shudder. A month might be taxing their newfound rapport to the breaking point, but her mother’s easygoing acceptance of the unexpected was still amazing.

  She poured herself some coffee. “We do still have some of those macadamia nut cookies, don’t we? Gina demands them in payment for picking up Hannah at the bus stop.”

  “Gina has the eating habits of a ten-year-old,” Rose said with a shake of her head.

  “Yeah,” said Maddy, thinking of her sexy and curvaceous cousin. “It’s really done her a lot of harm, hasn’t it?”

  Rose took off her reading glasses and placed them on the table next to the stack of cookbooks. “I used to feel the same way about Lucia and Toni. The boys were like bees buzzing around them. I was lucky if one of their castoffs bothered to look my way.”