Chances Are (25 page)

“Is that one of your Seinfeldisms?”

“Up is down, black is white, I’m having a big wedding.” She grinned. “That’s Bizarro world.”

“I was surprised to see Kelly here last night,” Rose said as they double-teamed unloading the dishwasher. “Did she say anything to you about the incident Hannah mentioned?”

“We did a little tap-dancing around it,” Maddy said, “but I don’t think we really got anywhere. I remember what it’s like just before graduation. You don’t have time to breathe, much less eat. And Kelly’s ten times the achiever that I ever was.”

Or ever would be, but that was a whole other story. Some women had big dreams. Some women made their big dreams come true. Maddy knew which camp she was in, and to her mother’s eternal dismay, it was a pretty comfortable fit.

“It’s probably just a springtime stomach cold or pregraduation jitters.”

“That’s possible,” Rose said. “Of course you’ve talked to Aidan about it.”

What was it about her mother’s questions that always made her feel so inadequate? For years she had blamed Rose for using the wrong words or the wrong tone of voice or even choosing the wrong moment to ask the question in the first place, but lately she had come to realize a good portion of the problem began and ended on her own psychological doorstep.

Achievers very often raised slacker kids, and while Maddy wouldn’t exactly call herself a slacker, she wasn’t looking to conquer the world. Sometimes she looked at Hannah and wondered if she wasn’t destined to watch her little girl become a Wall Street shark or CEO of a Fortune 500 company with a seven-figure income.

“Please tell me you’ve talked to him about what Hannah said, Maddy. Kelly’s going to be your daughter in just a few months.”

“And she’ll be away at college, Ma, and after that, she’ll probably marry Seth and become senator from the great state of New Jersey. Her days of needing an on-site mother are pretty much over.”

Rose looked at her and laughed. “Tell me that when Hannah is seventeen and ready to leave home. Honey, the days of needing an on-site mother are never over. I still needed Fay right up until the end and . . .” She gestured toward Maddy, who had the decency to turn bright red at being outed. “Even the prodigal daughter comes home sooner or later.”

“This is different,” Maddy insisted. “Kelly and I are friends. We don’t have that parent-child thing going. If she thinks of anyone as her mother, it’s Claire.”

“I think you’re wrong.”

Maddy felt her back stiffen. “I know I’m right.”

“I see the way the girl looks at you, honey. It’s changed over the last few months. She seems to hold you in very high esteem.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.” It made her uneasy to think that Aidan’s daughter would look to her as a positive example when she felt that so much of her life had been spent in varying stages of chaos and bewilderment. “If anything, she’s
my
role model.”

“If you won’t try to get Kelly to open up to you, at least make sure you keep Aidan fully informed. This is the man you’re going to build your life with, honey. Kelly’s his only child. For your sake as well as for hers, don’t keep secrets from him.”

“Speaking of which, she almost passed out on the floor while we were setting up a tray for Lassiter and company.”

Rose spun around to face her. “Did she hurt herself?”

Maddy shook her head. “Thank God I moved fast enough and caught her before her knees gave way completely.”

“Did she lose consciousness?”

“No, but I never saw a human being go so completely white before in my life.”

“Did you call Aidan?”

“No.”

“Maddy—”

“Ma—”

“How would you feel if this was Hannah we were talking about, and somebody else knew an important fact about her health and welfare that you needed to know?”

She tossed a pair of whisks into the drawer with a tad too much force, and they bounced out again and snaked across the floor like hyperactive Slinkys. “Thanks for the advice, but I think I’ve said all I’m going to say. He knows Kelly much better than I do. He lives in the same house with her. If something’s wrong, I’ll bet he’ll be the first to know.”

 
AIDAN LOOKED UP from the vat of dip he was mixing for the lunch crowd’s Buffalo wings in time to see Claire close the kitchen door behind her.

“You look like hell,” he said as she hung her shoulder bag from the peg near the pantry. “Bad night?”

“Thanks, pal.” She shot him a look from dark-circled eyes. “Like you’re a regular Pierce Brosnan yourself.”

“I didn’t sleep.” He tossed in some more blue cheese for good measure. “What’s your excuse?”

“More blue cheese,” she said, eyeballing the vat of dip. “Don’t skimp. It’s bad for business.”

He flung in some more crumbled cheese and stirred the whole mess with a stainless steel spoon longer than his arm. “We have an office party coming in at eleven-thirty. Billing department from Mo’s Sporting Apparel.”

“That’s today?” Claire frowned. “I thought Winnie made it for next week.”

“Looks like you got your signals crossed. They’ll be here in an hour, and we still need to—”

She waved away his words. “Same old, same old. I know what we need to do.”

There was a sharp edge to her words, sharper even than usual.

“You got a problem helping Tommy set the tables?”

She made a sound that might pass for a laugh in another galaxy. “I could set tables in my sleep, Aidan.”

She was going to leave. He knew it in the time it took her to draw her next breath. It was there in her eyes, her posture, every goddamn thing, and it had probably been there for months now. Maybe years. And he never saw it coming until now.

Anger burned through his gut, running alongside bitter disappointment. And yeah, some resentment, too. You didn’t walk out on family.

“Hand me the hot sauce, would you?” he asked. He wasn’t going to make it easy for her to walk out that door.

She swiveled around, grabbed the bottle, then placed it next to the pile of chicken wings waiting to be lowered into the deep fryer.

“You really do make the best wings in the state,” she said.

“Sucking up,” he said. “Not a good sign.”

She leaned against the worktable and crossed her arms over her chest in the stance he had come to recognize as her take-one-step-closer-and-you’re-dead pose.

“You know, don’t you?”

He pushed the vat of dip to one side and began feeding chicken wings one by one into the fryer. “I do now.”

She sounded almost nervous as she began parroting facts and figures about the damn tea shop, outlining her responsibilities, her hours, every goddamn thing Olivia and Rose had told her regurgitated for his approval.

“Hostess and baker?” He met her eyes across the deep fryer. “Sounds like they got themselves a good deal. No wonder they pitched it to you.”

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll be working twice as hard there as you do here, and for what? A paycheck instead of a partnership.”

“But I’ll be doing it because I want to, not because I—” She stopped, and an ugly red stain moved its way up from the base of her throat. “Sorry. You deserve better than that.”

“Won’t get an argument from me.”

“I’m not leaving you in the lurch, if that’s what you’re worried about. I spoke to Peggy Randall. She said she’d be glad to pick up my hours here and more.”

“You plan on selling your half of O’Malley’s to Peggy, too?”

“Do you want me to?” Her voice shook with emotion.

“No,” he said, refusing to be moved by her distress, “but since when does my opinion count for shit in this discussion.”

“I’m not quitting the family, Aidan, We’ll still be partners. I just need to try something new.”

“Sorry,” he said, “but I don’t see the big difference between pulling drafts and pouring tea.”

“I do,” she said. “For one thing, I won’t see Billy every time I walk through the door.”

“No, but you’ll still see him every time you walk through your own front door.”

Her smile faded. “Would it kill you to make this easy on me?”

“Yeah, it fucking well might.” He slammed a few more chicken wings into the hot oil, narrowly escaping a vicious splash. “I think this is going to be O’Malley’s best summer ever. It wouldn’t kill you to stick it out.”

“Oh yeah?” she said, mimicking his tone of voice. “It fucking well might.”

“They let you use that kind of language in a tea shop?”

“I’ll let you know when I get there.”

He lifted the basket of fried chicken wings from the deep fryer and set them to drain. “Is there anything I can say to change your mind?”

“I need to leave, Aidan. I need—” She stopped and shook her head. “Sometimes I think I’m drowning here.” Her voice broke on the last word. “I might fall on my face and come crawling back next month, begging to pull some drafts, but at least I’ll know I tried.” She blinked back tears. “I have to know I tried.”

“You fight dirty,” he said, lowering another batch of wings into the fryer, but he was lying. She didn’t fight dirty. She fought the way she did everything else, with a balls-out, in-your-face passion he admired more than he would ever be able to tell her. Right now, however, that passion was about to screw up his life.

“It’s my only talent.” She pushed her mop of auburn curls off her face. “I’ll still be involved with things around here. We’ll still be partners.”

Yeah, they were partners, but it struck him that a good partner didn’t walk out the door and leave the other partner juggling the workload. His emotions ran the gamut from pissed off to hurt to deeply sympathetic, and damn it, sympathetic was winning out.

He had been where she was. He knew the toll it took on her to walk through those doors every day and immerse herself in Billy’s old domain. Whatever Billy’s faults, Claire had been there beside him every step of the way. Aidan had walked through that door with her on a daily basis since the accident, seen the same ghosts, ducked the same memories. He couldn’t imagine the bar without Claire’s laugh, her running commentary, her frequent flashes of temper, and he was afraid their many regulars wouldn’t be able to either.

For the last seventeen years she had been the one person on earth he could count on. She had opened her heart and her home to Kelly and him without reservation when they needed it, and she had never asked for anything in return.

Until now.

“Give me Peggy’s number. I’ll call her and see what she has to say.” Not particularly gracious, but it was the best he could manage.

She rounded the work counter and kissed him on the left cheek. “Thanks,” she said. “You know I’ll come in if you get in a pinch some night.”

“So what are you standing here for?” he said gruffly. “Don’t you have a new job to go to?”

She grabbed for a fresh apron on top of the stack near the sink. “O’Malleys don’t walk out without giving notice. You’re stuck with me for at least another few weeks.”

He was so filled with conflicting emotions that he turned away and pretended avid interest in a bag of onions on the counter. “Put the blue cheese dip in the fridge and start setting up the tables. Tommy thinks all you need is a cocktail napkin and a bowl of nuts, and you’re good to go.”

“Watch it, O’Malley. I was here a long time before you started pulling drafts. I’m still an equal partner. If you push, I’m gonna push back even harder.”

“If we’re equal, why am I always doing the grunt work? Let’s get moving. We have a crowd of hungry sporting goods accountants to feed.”

They fell back into their normal brother/sister banter, but everything was different between them, and they both knew it. The moment she made her decision, everything changed. She was the bar’s connection to Billy and the old days, more so even than Aidan. Aidan’s working connection with O’Malley’s was only a few years old, while Claire’s went back almost twenty years.

She was the one who greeted the old-timers by name when they walked through the door, the one who sent flowers when somebody died, bought Mass cards, visited hospital rooms, remembered who liked his burgers rare and whose life was in the toilet, and she did it with a smart-ass laugh, a sly wink, the sense that they were all in it together, always had been, always would be.

You could renovate the bar, add outdoor dining, spruce up the menu until it looked like something Emeril or Wolfgang would whip up, but you couldn’t manufacture a soul. A place either had one or it didn’t, and you knew it the second you walked through the door.

Claire was the soul of O’Malley’s Bar and Grill, and when she left to start her new job, she would take the hearts of every regular with her. Aidan’s included. She was the sister he never had. The O’Malley family connection he had always wanted. They didn’t share DNA, but she was blood just the same.

He could’ve fought her on this. For one long moment he had considered calling in lawyers he couldn’t afford and trying to block her from leaving, but when push came to shove, he couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t do it to her. He was making a new life for himself, and Claire deserved the same chance, even if it meant O’Malley’s future hung in the balance. She’d earned it.

She was feisty, opinionated, a little rough around the edges, not always diplomatic, a survivor like everyone else who had ever walked through that door, and one damned tough act to follow.

SETH LOOKED UP from the computer screen when Kelly entered the room later that morning. They had both earned a free period to work on school projects as one of the many bonuses of scholarship and were alone in the newspaper office with a pair of file cabinets, a computer monitor, and their growing fears. “Anything?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“How do you feel?” he asked as she sat down at the worktable next to his.