Chances Are (28 page)

There was only one thing wrong with the picture. Peter Lassiter and his tattooed assistant Crystal were standing in the bedroom doorway watching the whole thing.

“Do you need something?” Rose asked with perhaps a shade less friendliness than she usually displayed to her paying customers. “This is my bedroom suite.” Didn’t their mothers teach them to knock?

Crystal drifted into the room as if in a trance. “Ohhh,” she breathed, running her hand down a column of silk draped across the slipper chair in the corner. “This is like something out of a fairy tale.”

Maddy, glowing with happiness, beamed a smile. “If you think that’s something, come over here and take a look at the lace Lucy brought with her.”

Suddenly Crystal seemed every bit as young and innocent as Hannah. Her face lost that look of urban ennui and became the face of an average young woman who still believed in happy endings. Even Peter dropped his cool, professional demeanor and told a charming story about his own wedding that made the females in the room sigh out loud.

They were joined by the sound guy, one of the cameramen, and before Rose knew what was happening, her cozy family moment was being captured on film and audio for posterity, not to mention the entire NJTV viewership. Maddy, her charmingly self-conscious daughter, seemed to bloom under the shower of attention. She struck poses for a surprisingly demanding Lucy, who managed to drape one-dimensional fabric with so much style and flair that even Hannah could easily imagine the finished product.

“What does this remind you of, Rosie?” Lucy asked around a mouthful of dressmaker’s pins.

“The night before my wedding,” Rose said. “We ran out of those tiny little pearl buttons, and you had us draping silk over buttons we snipped from three pairs of pajamas.”

“You covered buttons?” Crystal asked from the center of the bed where she sat cross-legged next to Hannah and Priscilla. Her ever-present notebook was open on her lap.

“Forty of them,” Rose said with a groan.

“Don’t tell me Toni and Connie helped,” Maddy said, anchoring a swath of ivory lace against her chest with her right hand while Lucy measured the length of her left arm. “I can’t imagine them doing anything that might ruin their manicures.”

“Oh, they weren’t quite so high maintenance yet,” Lucy said with a laugh. “That was still a few years off.”

Crystal was busy scribbling her notes. “How did you cover the pajama buttons?”

Lucy explained the process while Rose felt herself pulled back through the decades. She had waited a long time to marry. Until Bill Bainbridge walked into her life, no man had ever seemed worth the changes that marriage would bring to her world. They were going to be happy forever. They were going to join their very different, very demanding lives, and make it work. No sacrifice would be too great. No need would ever go unfulfilled. Like two starry-eyed teenagers, they had believed love would overcome any obstacle life—and life styles—threw their way.

She looked down at her hands, the hands of a much older and wiser woman, and waited for the sting of regret to subside. They had tried so hard to make it work, for their own sake as well as Maddy’s, but the differences between them had been more than even love could handle. It had taken twenty-five years for them to find their way back to each other, and she couldn’t hope but pray life would treat Maddy and Aidan with more kindness. Happiness shouldn’t have to wait that long.

 
“OKAY,” HER AUNT Lucy said as she added one more pin to the bodice. “Now climb up on the footstool—careful! careful! —and slowly . . . slooowly . . . turn around so I can see what—”

“Aidan!” Maddy shrieked, clutching the pin-prickly satin to her chest. “How long have you been there?”

He was standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, grinning like a canary-eating cat. “Long enough,” he said. “I followed the laughter.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

The grin widened. “I was enjoying the view.”

She felt herself blush from the soles of her feet to the top of her head. She had been so lost in the excitement that she had forgotten she was standing there almost naked, swathed in fabric like a dressmaker’s dummy, in front of God and PBS.

“Isn’t this bad luck?” Crystal asked. “I mean, you’re not supposed to see the bride in her dress before the wedding day, right?”

“This isn’t my dress,” Maddy said as she hurried toward the doorway. “This is just the suggestion of my dress.”

“I don’t know.” Crystal didn’t sound convinced. “It’s going to be your dress pretty soon, isn’t it?”

“Oh, we don’t believe in that nonsense,” Maddy said as Aidan held out his hand to her. “That’s nothing but a superstition.”

“Crystal’s right,” Lucy said to Maddy’s surprise. “It might be a silly superstition, but it wouldn’t hurt, would it?” She motioned for Aidan to disappear.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Lucia.” Rose sounded mildly exasperated and more than a little amused. “Every single one of us honored that ridiculous superstition, and look what happened. This is a new world we’re living in. Let’s make some new traditions.”

“Whoa!” Crystal fumbled through the bed covers for her pen, then started scribbling in her notebook. “That’s deep.”

Maddy curled into Aidan for a pin-pricked hug. “So what brings you here in the middle of the afternoon?” He smelled of soap and shampoo and liniment, the way he always did after an encounter with Nina and the monster machines of physical therapy.

“I wanted to drop this off,” Aidan said, pulling a brochure from the back pocket of his jeans and handing it to Maddy. “This is where we’re staying in Spring Lake. I circled the suite.”

“A suite?” Maddy’s eyes widened. “Isn’t that kind of pricey?”

“Third floor, tower, with a balcony and fireplace.”

“Any neighbors?”

“Not a single one.”

Maddy lowered her voice. “I wish it were Saturday already.”

He brushed a quick kiss against her temple and breathed, “Me, too.”

“Nobody told me you were going to Spring Lake!” Lucy sighed. “One of my favorite towns.”

“They’re going away on Saturday for a romantic weekend getaway,” Crystal said. “Aidan arranged the whole thing himself.”

Maddy’s jaw dropped in surprise. Was nothing sacred these days?

“You people are scary as hell.” Aidan fixed Crystal with a look. “How do you know what I arranged?”

“We know everything,” Crystal said happily. “It’s our job.”

Maddy looked at Aidan and winked. “And it’s our job to make sure you don’t.”

“JULIE’S TALKING TO herself,” Maddy said from behind her coffee cup.

Claire swiveled around to take a look. “I don’t see anything.”

“Look again. Her lips are moving, and she’s the only one at the register.”

“Big deal.” Claire swiveled back to face Maddy. “I talk to myself all the time. Until my father moved in, it was the only adult conversation I had during the day.”

Maddy burst into laughter. “I haven’t reached that point yet, but there are days when I’m pretty close.”

“Just wait until you have two or three of them home at the same time. It’s an occupational hazard. You either start talking to yourself or end up fantasizing about Big Bird and a hot tub.”

The table was strewn with sheets of scribbled-on notepaper, Maddy’s Day Runner, and a big fat blue vinyl loose-leaf binder stuffed full of recipes. A stack of lists rested to the right of Maddy’s pancakes, while Claire had adorned a half-dozen paper napkins with notes, diagrams, and lists of her own.

All things considered, it had gone far better than Maddy had anticipated, and they had Olivia’s decorator to thank. Their uncomfortable discussion of the upcoming radio interview was forgotten the second they unlocked the door to the old McClanahan place. Maddy had been expecting a roomful of two-by-fours, Sheetrock, and empty paint cans, not the magnificent replica of a cozy English country drawing room complete with chintz-covered overstuffed chairs, mismatched antique end tables, two working fireplaces, and a score of lamps that would do Louis Comfort Tiffany proud.

“I’ll need a whole new wardrobe,” Claire had breathed as they stood in the doorway.

“I’ll need a whole new personality,” Maddy had answered, grateful once again that she would work primarily behind the scenes.

It wasn’t smoke-filled O’Malley’s or the apple pie and a cup of joe atmosphere found at Julie’s Coffee Shop. This was upscale, exclusive, expensive—a lot like Le Papier and The Candlelight, come to think about it. And it had
Success
stamped all over it. Ideas popped between them like corn in a movie theater as they wandered through the small space, inspected the under-construction kitchen, projected themselves two months down the road on opening day. Maddy hated to admit it, but most of the ideas were Claire’s. Good ones, too. She had never really thought of Claire beyond the woman at the bar and Billy’s mother. This side of her came as a complete surprise.