Shore Lights (15 page)

Rose's hand was a blur as she buffed a small portion of the samovar with lightning quick strokes of the cloth. “You always spent summers with your father. I knew one day you would make the Northwest your home.”

“But you thought I would come back one day, didn't you?” She had to have believed that. Why else would she have let Maddy slip away from her so easily and with so little fuss?

“I hoped so,” Rose said, fingers wrapped tightly around the handle of the kettle, “but I didn't think it would take fifteen years.”

“Neither did I,” said Maddy as she reached for another apple.
I still can't believe I came back at all
.

 
Shore View Home for Adults

“Mrs. O'Malley.” The nurse's soft voice startled Irene as she struggled up from a dream. She dreamed a lot these days, wonderful dreams about her childhood when the world was golden and sweet as summer wine. “Jessica is here to talk to you.”

“Jessica?” Oh, how she hated the crackly, dead-leaves sound of her voice. An old lady's voice. The voice of a crone or a witch from one of the folk tales from long ago. “I don't know any Jessica.” The name felt foreign to her tongue, to her brain. Were any of her great-grandchildren named Jessica? She didn't think so.

Sometimes it was so hard to remember.

“Hi, Mrs. O'Malley.” The girl smelled like green grass as she approached the side of Irene's bed. Her hair was sleek and blond, tucked neatly behind her small ears. “Thanks for letting me stop by and ask you a few questions.”

“You're welcome,” Irene said. She liked this girl who looked and sounded like Aidan's daughter. The one who had brought her the picture. What a happy baby, so tiny and—but she wasn't a baby any longer, was she? She was a beautiful young girl whose name would come back to Irene in a second. She knew it would. The child was part of her family, after all.

The two young women who stood at the side of her bed exchanged looks. They thought Irene didn't see them, but she did. Old age was a secret society, invisible to all but the few who knew how to say goodbye and keep on living.

“Jessica is from Seton Hall.” The nurse's smile was bright. She was a good woman who couldn't be blamed for wanting to be somewhere else. “She's majoring in gerontology with a specialty in the mobility problems of advanced old age.”

“I'm thrilled that you're willing to give me some of your time, Mrs. O'Malley,” the girl said. “I've never interviewed anyone as old as—” Her face turned bright red, and she busied herself by searching for something in the huge brown tote bag slung across her chest.

It was no secret to anyone, much less Irene, that she was the oldest resident of the Shore View Home for Adults. That alone wasn't enough to generate much notice, but the fact that she was also the only woman in the state who was old enough to have welcomed in the last century and remained sharp enough to remember it garnered her a certain notoriety. Sometimes it seemed to Irene that every medical student, journalism major, and just plain nosey individual between Manhattan and Philly had found his or her way to her bedside, eyes shining with youthful enthusiasm, notebooks bulging with questions, preconceptions firmly locked in place.

So many questions! They were so young and they knew so little about the world. The simple fact of her years embarrassed them, made them fumble for kinder ways to speak the truth of it. She had been that way once, averting her eyes from age and infirmity, secure in the knowledge that it would never happen to her while she remained safely tucked away in a world that was never meant to last.

They set up their tape recorders on the little table next to her bed, an electronic net to catch her memories before they (or she) slipped away. They fumbled with microphones and batteries, with electrical cords and balky cassettes, while Irene wondered when pencil and paper had gone out of style. They were so intent upon asking their questions, so intent upon dazzling her with their insight and their understanding, that her answers flew right over their shiny, well-shampooed heads.

“I'll be back in thirty minutes,” the nurse said, lingering in the doorway. “We don't want to tire out Mrs. O'Malley.”

“Mrs. O'Malley will take care of Mrs. O'Malley,” Irene said firmly. Even those who should know better still believed that old and helpless went hand-in-hand.

Jessica sank down onto the upholstered chair next to Irene's bed. “You don't mind if I tape you, do you?” she asked, holding out a tiny square of metal and plastic for Irene's inspection. “My handwriting sucks and I want to make sure I quote you accurately.”

It didn't matter to Irene. The questions were always the same and her answers never varied. Where were you born? How many siblings did you have? Did you go to school? Did you work? How old were your parents when they died? Children . . . grandchildren . . . great-grandchildren . . . Can you remember, Irene . . . Do you remember . . . Will you tell us . . .

And she told them what they wanted to know, told it to them in the same way she had told everyone else since the night her old life ended and her new life began.

But this time something was different. Maybe it was the questions the girl asked or the sweet lilt of her voice. Maybe it was simply the fact that there was so little time left and so many sins to be accounted for. Whatever it was, for the first time Irene wondered what would happen if she told the truth.

Once upon a time I danced with kings and princes. . . . Once upon a time I loved a boy with eyes as blue as the sky over St. Petersburg . . . and he loved me . . . oh, how he loved me
. . . .

So many lifetimes ago, back when she had believed happiness could be contained in the palm of her hand like one of the Tsar's jeweled Easter eggs.

How many years had she wasted asking God why he had decreed that she would escape the carnage of those terrible days? What had she done to deserve being set adrift, alone in a land she no longer recognized? Her family slaughtered. Her friends destroyed. Running from country to country, begging for shelter, pleading for help, terrified by the danger that lurked everywhere, from everyone.

The Irishman found me sleeping in a doorway near the docks . . . more dead than alive . . . such kindness in his eyes . . . more kindness than I thought one heart could hold . . . more kindness than I could understand
.

She had tried hard to deserve that kindness. When the babies came, she had prayed the sorrow inside her heart would vanish like a bird on the wing, but it never had. The years came and went more swiftly than she could count while she waited for happiness to find her, but it wasn't in God's plan. Sorrow was in her blood and in her bones, and, may the Almighty forgive her, she passed that terrible legacy on to her children and her children's children.

But through it all Michael had protected her secrets. How well he had protected their family and loved them. He kept the world from their door with the same fierceness of the warriors from her long-ago youth.

If only she had been able to love him.

If only she had been able to bestow that one simple gift upon a man who had deserved that and so much more, a man who had deserved a wife whose heart was still hers to give.

From the very beginning Aidan had been special to her. As a tiny baby he had somehow managed to find his way into the one small part of her heart that hadn't already turned to stone.
This one will break the chain of sorrow
, she had thought as she held him in her arms and met his blue-eyed gaze.
This one will finally know happiness
.

But it wasn't to be. The forces she had set into motion all those years ago were too powerful to be denied.

She had always made the selfish choice, right from the very beginning. She was one of life's survivors, and survival often exacts a terrible cost. She had buried her two sons knowing life's joys had eluded each one of them, and now it seemed as if the same fate awaited their last surviving child as well. Maybe that was her punishment then, to live long enough to see her mistakes repeated again and again in an endless chain of sorrow.

To see the sadness in a beloved grandson's eyes and know there was nothing she could do to change it.

To know in her heart that every choice she had made along the way was responsible for his pain.

There was nothing God's hell could show her that could equal that.

 
THEY DIDN'T TELL you about this when you were on the knife-edge between life and death. They talked about how great it would be when you were better, when the hospital and all of its incumbent horrors were a thing of the past, when you were finally able to pick up the pieces of your old life and watch them settle into their new shape.

They didn't tell you there was one more level of hell to get through before you got there, because if they did, you just might cash in your chips and call it a life.

Physical rehabilitation might not be everyone's idea of hell, but it was as close as Aidan cared to get. The first twelve months under Nina Peretti's form of tough love had damn near wiped him out. The man who had been able to bench-press a Buick and not break a sweat had been replaced by a scarred and skinny wreck on crutches.

Nina had performed a miracle.

“Relax,” Nina ordered as she leaned against his right leg. “Let resistance do the work for you.”

“Easy for you to say,” Aidan rumbled as the familiar pain stretched and tore its way from ankle to groin and back again. “I thought this was supposed to get easier.”

Nina, a tough no-nonsense woman with powerful hands and a soft spot for chocolate kisses, gave one of her ear-splitting barks of laughter. “You never heard me say that, O'Malley. It's going to get a hell of a lot tougher before you can even think about it getting easier.”

Aidan inhaled sharply as she maneuvered his leg into an unnatural position and leaned her weight against it. “Whatever happened to positive reinforcement?”

“We don't have time for positive reinforcement.” She rotated his foot. He was surprised it didn't come off in her hands. “You want results, you work hard. There's no other way.”

He knew it. She knew that he knew it. But after almost two years of two steps forward, three steps back, he was getting tired of the routine. The only thing that kept him showing up at this torture chamber in the basement of the hospital was the glimmer of hope Nina held out that one day maybe he might be able to recover some of what he had lost. So far you couldn't prove it by his progress. The pain was still there and the instability; he still needed the goddamn cane. Three good reasons to push a little harder when reason and logic told him it was useless.

“Hey!” Nina slapped him on the back of his thigh. “You're not paying attention, O'Malley. Time for some circuit work.”

“Swell.” He eased his bad leg off the table and stood up. “And don't forget the whips and chains.”

“Shh,” said Nina, finger to her lips. “I thought the whip was our little secret.”

He liked Nina. They had been through a lot together since the first time he was wheeled through the doors and handed over into her care. The anger had still run hot inside his chest, and it mingled with sorrow and the knowledge that his best hadn't been good enough. Not even close. Billy was still dead and he would carry the scars, both inside and out, for the rest of his life.

Nina heard the things he didn't say. She understood. But where others offered tea and sympathy, Nina demanded action. A full commitment to pain and humiliation and sweat and maybe, if he was lucky, some noticeable gain for his efforts. He asked himself on a daily basis if it was worth it, and each time the answer was the same.

“You're not with me,” Nina said, halfway through the leg presses. “Focus, O'Malley. Concentrate on what you're doing.”

Damn. How the hell did she always manage to know when he was drifting out of the moment? He'd been replaying the scene on the street corner with Maddy Bainbridge, cursing himself for not saying to hell with physical therapy and taking her for coffee. Who would have thought the formidable Rose DiFalco would have such a laid-back daughter? Maddy's hair was long and curly. Blond? Light brown? He wasn't sure. The overall effect had been a shimmer of golden light. Her eyes were a deep, almost shocking blue. She was tall, softly rounded, the kind of woman you didn't find in the pages of fashion magazines devoted to ideals of size-zero perfection.

“Too much!” Nina chided. “Back off a little and start again . . . three sets of ten . . . let's go . . .”

He grunted against the tugging sensation in his quads.

“Keep going . . . you're building muscle . . . equalize the load . . . come on . . . a couple more and you're outta here. . . .”

Pain. Mindblowing endless stretching tearing pain. He could smell his sweat above the smells of floor wax and alcohol and Nina's faint lavender soap. The muscles still remembered. That was the sad part. Down deep, hidden in the sinew, memory twitched along the nerve endings.

Before the accident he would have made it his business to see Maddy Bainbridge again. Women liked him. They always had. And he liked them right back. He didn't make promises he couldn't keep. His first priority was his daughter, and his second was his job as a firefighter. Everything else ran a distant third. Only once since Sandy's death had he believed himself in love, and that had ended badly in a hospital room six weeks after the accident that took his brother's life.

And now here he was with a daughter who'd be leaving for college next year and nothing but painful memories of his last night on the job. He had a bad leg, a bad arm, and a bad attitude to go with it. Gina and Denise had probably already filled Maddy Bainbridge in on all the gory details, and she was most likely saying a prayer of thanks to the patron saint of close calls.