Chances Are (36 page)

You wait and you worry and you wonder if your kids are going to make it through their adolescence, and then you hold your breath while they crash through their teens, and just when you’re ready to throw in the towel and admit defeat, they surprise you by growing up to be someone very special.

But why you had to find this out five minutes before a nice guy named David Fenelli knocked on your door was a question for the ages.

“We’ll sit down tomorrow, Kath, and I’ll tell you the story, but the short version is that I hurt him very much. I didn’t mean to. I had left your father for what I assumed would be for good, but when he showed up that day and I saw how much he wanted us to come home, I found I couldn’t do it.”

“Because you loved Dad more than you loved Olivia’s brother?”

“Because I loved our family.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“You’re asking a black-and-white question, Kathleen. Marriage is shades of gray.”

“You loved Dad. You wouldn’t have gone back with him if you didn’t.”

“Your father loved our family as much as I did. We were committed to the five of you.”

“Which means you must have loved each other.”

“What a question, Kath. Where did that come from?”

“Because I have the right to know.” Her voice broke on the last word. “Because I
need
to know.”

“Oh God, don’t go telling me you’ve been talking to Lassiter and his crew.” Suddenly everyone in town had been bitten by the need to tell all, damn the consequences.

“So what if I did. Why shouldn’t I talk to them?”

“You know how I feel about people poking around in other people’s business.”

“You’re afraid someone will talk about Dad and his . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence, which was probably for the best.

“That was nobody’s business but your father’s and mine.”

“And ours,” Kathleen said quietly. “Oh don’t look at me like that, Mom. It was hardly a secret.”

“I know it wasn’t a secret,” Claire said, “but—”

“But what? You want me to go on pretending he wasn’t out sleeping with other women because that makes everything sound better?”

“That’s family business, and it should stay within the family.”

Kathleen laughed out loud. “I think you’re twenty years too late for that, Mom. You don’t really believe nobody will bring up his extracurricular activities, do you?”

She had been hoping exactly that. “I don’t see why anyone would be interested.”

“Neither do I,” Kathleen admitted, “but this is a small town. Small towns love gossip, and television feeds off the stuff.”

“Even PBS,” Claire noted wryly.

“Does it still hurt?”

Claire didn’t pretend to misunderstand the question. “Sometimes,” she said honestly, “but much less than it used to.”

“I would have left him the first time,” Kathleen said with the certainty of the young. “The minute he stepped out of line, he would’ve been history.”

Her beautiful young warrior child hadn’t a clue. “I hope you never have to make that decision.”

“None of it makes sense to me. I mean, when you love each other, you’re supposed to be happy. I don’t remember many times when you and Dad seemed really happy.”

“You’re right,” she said. “We didn’t seem to do happy as well as other families, did we?”

“Do you ever wish you’d stayed down in Florida with that guy?”

“I made my choice, and I didn’t look back,” she said, and it was almost true. She didn’t look back because she couldn’t. It hurt too much. “Besides, how could I ever regret a decision that brought Billy Jr. to us?”

They had been happy, really happy, for a while, and the memory of those months had sustained her through some tough times.

Kathleen’s eyes never left hers. She needed to know that despite everything there had been love, but Claire couldn’t seem to find the right words to make her daughter understand what she didn’t really understand herself. There had been love. Maybe not the kind of love either she or Billy had dreamed about, that once-in-a-lifetime kind of magic, but there had been love and always would be.

“Did you love each other?” she asked again, a note of need in her voice that hadn’t been there before.

He had given them a home, and she had given him a family, and in the end they had each chosen to protect what they had built together. If that wasn’t love, what was?

“Of course we did,” she said as she held her daughter close. “We might not have been Ozzie and Harriet, but we loved each other.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I knew it.” Kathleen’s smile was just a tiny bit smug. “I just wanted to make sure you knew it, too.”

Her daughter’s relief almost broke Claire’s heart.

“Son of a bitch!” Mike Meehan bellowed from somewhere down the hallway. “This damn cat’s going to end up killing someone.”

“Is Fritzie okay?” Claire called out. “She’s old. We have to watch out for her.”

“I’m old, too,” her father yelled back. “I don’t see anybody worrying about me.”

Claire and Kathleen exchanged looks as they tried very hard not to burst into laughter.

“How long you gonna make this poor guy wait?”

God forbid her father should actually walk down the hallway to deliver a message.

“He’ll be able to use a senior discount by the time you get your shoes on.”

“You should’ve said David was here,” Claire bellowed back. “I’ll be right there.”

“Uh-oh,” Kathleen said, pointing toward her mother’s bare feet. “Speaking of shoes . . .”

Claire looked down at her big feet and the little shoes.

“Better get the ice,” she said.

And then, just like before, just like they had been doing it all their lives, they started to laugh.

 
THE TWELVE SENIOR citizens from Long Island were a lively group who weren’t content to nod off around a roaring fire after dinner. Instead, they climbed into their van for the trip up to the bright lights of Atlantic City.

“And where are those PBS cameras when we really need them?” Rose murmured as she and Kelly waved good-bye to the group as they headed north to that mecca of slot machines on the Jersey Shore. “The last time I heard so many kind words about my cooking, I was talking to myself.”

Kelly covered her mouth with her hand and yawned. “Sorry,” she said with an apologetic grin. “You should ask them to write some of that down for you, Mrs. DiFalco. It would make great ad copy.”

Rose gave her one of those looks that used to make Kelly’s knees knock before she got to know that Maddy’s mother was really a softie. “We’re going to be family,” she said, placing a beautifully manicured hand on Kelly’s forearm. “I think we can dispense with the formalities, don’t you?” Her smile was warm and genuine. “I don’t suppose either one of us would feel comfortable with Grandma, but I think we could manage if you called me Rose, don’t you?”

Kelly nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “I’d like that.”

Rose draped a companionable arm across her shoulders as they headed back into the house. “You did a wonderful job with Mr. Benedetto and his missing medicine.”

“No big deal,” Kelly said. “All I had to do was make a few phone calls.”

“And drive over to the pharmacy.”

“Hannah loved the ride. She said everything is more exciting after dark.” She liked keeping busy. It gave her less time to think.

Rose rolled her eyes. “Words to strike terror in a grandmother’s heart. Maddy was the same way at her age, a born night owl.”

“Not me,” said Kelly.

“Nor I,” Rose said. “I may burn the midnight oil, but I’m a lark through and through.”

They scanned the kitchen for anything that might need doing, but it was as clean and neat as a picture in a magazine.

“Gramma!” Hannah, Priscilla in tow, appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “I thought we were going to play scrapbook.”

“We are.” Rose’s voice always took on a certain indulgent tone when she spoke to her granddaughter. “Kelly and I were just making sure the kitchen was shipshape.”

Hannah pulled on the sleeve of Rose’s soft blue sweater. “
Now,
Gramma! I wanna see pictures of Mommy when she was little.”

“You’re welcome to join us,” Rose said, ruffling Hannah’s bangs with an affectionate hand. “I found boxes of old photos in the attic when I started searching around for items to share with Peter Lassiter. I set aside some wonderful snapshots of Irene and Michael and your father’s parents for you.”

The family parlor in the rear of the house was Kelly’s favorite room. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with books on every subject imaginable from art to zoology and everything in between. The lower shelves were stocked with picture books for Hannah, pop-up books, books with sound effects, all of the wonderful old kids’ classics Kelly had known and loved when she was Hannah’s age. An enormous flat-screen television was hidden inside an enormous antique oak break-front that had been reworked to serve as an entertainment center. The big, cushy leather couches were strewn with dozens of needlework pillows and draped with hand-knit cashmere and mohair throws in jewel tones that took her breath away.

Best of all was the huge old library table set up near the bay window that overlooked the garden. Made of rosewood, it was scarred from decades of use, but those years of living had also given the wood a patina that made Kelly want to rest her head on its surface and listen to its secrets. Rose called it their “workbench,” and it usually was home to any number of crafts projects in progress. It wasn’t unusual to find Hannah’s finger paints and Barbies sharing table space with Maddy’s knitting and Rose’s jigsaw puzzles or watercolor supplies.

Tonight, however, the table had been cleared of Barbies and knitting needles to make room for at least two dozen boxes of photos, a three-foot-high stack of scrapbooks, and enough decorative paper, shears, fancy glues, stickers, archival quality papers, and pens to stock a branch of Staples.

“Wow!” she said, turning to Rose. “And you’re going to put every single photo into a scrapbook?”

“Not even I’m that ambitious,” Rose said with a laugh. “We’d end up needing a room at the Library of Congress to hold our family history.” She explained that the first step was to sort through the boxes and cull duplicates, underexposures, and the downright unacceptable. From there she would begin a more rigorous winnowing process with an eye toward a cohesive theme or chronology in each scrapbook.

Hannah climbed up onto one of the chairs and reached for a stack of paper and a fistful of brightly colored markers. She uncapped the top of a cherry-red pen and was soon lost in her own world. Rose motioned for Kelly to take a seat, then withdrew a manila envelope from the top drawer of the secretary in the corner.

“There are some wonderful shots of your grandparents here,” Rose said as she handed her the envelope, “and a few of your dad and your uncle Billy when they were kids.”

“This is
so
cool!” Kelly said as she spilled the mix of black-and-white and color prints on the table in front of her. Familiar, well-loved faces smiled up at her across the years. She laughed at the sight of her father and her uncle Billy dressed in cowboy outfits one long-ago Halloween and blinked away tears at one of Irene cradling a newborn Kelly in her arms in front of O’Malley’s. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her great-grandmother Irene so happy.

“Oh God!” Kelly breathed. “Is that my mom standing next to Grandma Irene?”

“That’s a great shot,” Rose said, peering over her shoulder. “I think that was the day your parents brought you home to Paradise Point for your christening.” She leaned closer. “Flip it over, Kelly. There might be a date on it.”

Scribbled in pencil were the words
“Kelly’s Baptism—July 5, 1986,”
and
“Irene O’Malley/Kelly Ann O’Malley/Sandy O’Malley (Aidan and Sandy’s first)”
across the back in Rose’s distinctive script.

Her throat tightened as she saw another newborn and another christening—

She couldn’t think about it. She
wouldn’t
think about it. Someday the time would be right, but not now. Definitely not now.

“You look very much like your mother,” Rose said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “She was a beautiful girl.”

Kelly tried to say thank you, but she couldn’t seem to make the words come out, no matter how hard she tried. It seemed like she couldn’t do anything at all, much less make sense of her own life. Her mother wasn’t real to her. She existed only in other people’s memories, in flat, one-dimensional photographs and a handful of old greeting cards tucked away in her father’s top drawer. Whatever it was that had made her Sandy O’Malley had died with her, and no snapshot could ever bring it back.

Very little escaped Rose’s notice, but she didn’t remark on the tears streaming down Kelly’s cheeks. Instead, she took the top box from the corner stack and slid it toward Kelly.

“I only went through a portion of this box. I thought you might like to go through the rest. My mother loved taking snapshots,” she said with a small chuckle. “I think she documented just about every family in town.”

Kelly pointed toward the bottom left-hand corner of the box. “Someone scribbled
‘O’Malleys’
right there.”

Rose gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze. “Maybe she had a feeling those pictures would be important someday.”

Hannah looked up from her artwork. “Why are you crying?” she asked Kelly. “Are you sad?”

“Kelly was looking at a picture of her mother and Grandma Irene,” Rose said with enormous tact. “She misses her grandma very much.”

Hannah thought about that for a moment. “Kelly can borrow you sometimes, Grandma. I won’t mind.”

“Anytime she wants,” Rose said with a wink for Kelly. “She’s part of the family, right?”