Shore Lights (3 page)

But not Maddy. Not her daydreaming, foolish optimist of a daughter. She hadn't seen it coming, not even when he spelled it out for her in neon letters a foot high. She had still believed they would find a happy ending, believed it right up until the moment Tom and Lisa flew off to Vegas for one of those quickie weddings in a chapel on the Strip.

She longed to gather Maddy and Hannah up in her arms and kiss away their tears, mend their broken hearts until they were better than new.

All of the things she didn't have time to do when Maddy was a little girl.

Instead there she was, a successful sixty-two-year-old businesswoman with the hottest B&B between Rehoboth Beach and Martha's Vineyard, trying to summon up the guts to knock on the door to her own office and see how her daughter was getting on with the Web site. Rose had bearded wild bankers in their lairs, charmed free advertising out of jaded local radio stations, spun pure gold from straw. Spending five stress-free minutes with her only child should be a piece of cake.

So what if she and Maddy had exchanged words last night. It wasn't the first time and God knew it wouldn't be the last. They were mother and daughter, hardwired to get on each other's nerves. Nothing was going to change that fact, but she could make it better. She knew she could.

If she could just bring herself to knock on that door.

 
“OH, NO!” MADDY hit the backspace key three times, then retyped the number. This was no time to screw up, not when the auction was sliding into its final minutes and she was struggling to maintain high bidder status over some surprisingly stiff competition from someone named FireGuy. You wouldn't think there would be so much action over a dented teapot, but she'd had to raise her maximum bid twice in the last hour just to stay in the game.

The computer screen went blank. The hard drive grumbled, then groaned. She held her breath until the screen refreshed itself and her new bid appeared.

“Okay,” she said, grinning at her reflection. “That's more like it.” Now all she had to do was ignore the fact that her mother was lurking in the hallway like your average peeping Tom and keep her mind on making sure that old samovar was waiting for Hannah under the tree on Christmas morning.

Priscilla pawed at the door. She looked up at Maddy with limpid brown eyes, then yipped one of those high-pitched poodle yips capable of breaking juice glasses two towns over.

“Yes, I know she's been standing out there for the last ten minutes, Priscilla, and no, I don't know why.”

The door swung open on cue.

“Very funny,” Rose said, her cheeks stained bright red. “I was polishing the hall table, for your information.”

“I polished it yesterday,” Maddy said, one eye locked onto her computer screen.

“We polish daily around here these days,” her mother said. The usual edge to her words was absent. “The paying customers expect it.”

Maddy forced herself to relax. “I have a lot to learn about being an innkeeper. I bumped into the Loewensteins in the upper hallway last night and almost lost five years of my life.”

“You'll get used to it.” Rose hesitated, then stepped into the room. She smelled like Pledge and Chanel No. 5, a combination that suited her mother down to the ground. “I don't want to interrupt you if you're working on the Web site.”

Maddy reached for the mouse to click over to a different, safer screen, but she wasn't quick enough. Her mother leaned over her shoulder and peered at the image and the accompanying information.

“For Hannah?” Rose asked.

Maddy nodded, wishing she had faster fingers or a less curious mother. Asking for both might have been tempting the gods. “You know how she is about Aladdin. The second I saw this, I thought it would make a perfect magic lamp.”

“I thought you'd finished Christmas shopping for Hannah.”

“I thought so, too, but she came home bubbling about a magic lamp she saw in a coloring book at school and—well, it's Christmas and she's my only child.” She looked up at her mother. “You know how it is.”
Didn't you feel that way when I was little? Didn't you want to gather up the stars and pour them into my Christmas stocking?

“You spoil that child.”

“She deserves a little spoiling. She's had a tough year.”

“That teapot won't change anything.”

Maddy had the mouse in such a death grip that she was surprised it didn't squeak in surrender. “I think I know what's best for my child.” How could one five-foot-tall woman reduce her adult daughter to the emotional level of a sulky teenager just by breathing?

“I thought she had forgotten all about Aladdin.”

“I don't know what gave you that idea.”

“She's too old for this kind of make-believe.”

“I suppose you would have advised Stephen King to get his head out of the clouds, too.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Keep your mouth closed, Maddy. For once in your life, just shut up
.

She peered more closely at the computer screen in front of her and prayed Rose would take the hint. You spend three hours wrestling with cascading style sheets for the Inn's new Web site and there was no sign of the boss lady, but the second you flip to Shoreline Auctions, she appeared like magic right over your shoulder.

Well, there was no hope for it. Hannah, a devoted fan of all things Aladdin, needed a touch of magic, and Maddy was determined to make at least one of her wishes come true. This samovar had seen better days, but, polished and repaired, it would delight her little girl and that was the most important thing. With only five minutes to go until the auction closed, she wasn't about to lose high-bidder status now.

“You're going to give her unreal expectations, Maddy. The sooner Hannah learns she can't have everything she wants, the better off she'll be.”

Ignoring Rose was like ignoring a tsunami when you were trapped one hundred yards from shore in a rowboat.

“It's only a teapot, Ma, not the keys to a Porsche.”

Rose made a sound that fell somewhere between a snort and a sigh. “That child needs a teapot like I need more rooms to clean.”

Rolling her eyes in dismay over her mother's pronouncements had become a reflex action. The figures on the screen changed. Maddy groaned and quickly typed in a new high bid of her own. “That'll teach you to mess with JerseyGirl.”

Rose whipped out her eyeglasses from the pocket of her pale blue sweater, then slipped them on. “Tell me that's not the price.”

“That's not the price.” Unfortunately she wasn't lying. The final price was bound to be higher. She refreshed the screen and watched as the numbers changed one more time. “You're a tough one, FireGuy, but you're not going to win.” She typed in yet another bid and pressed Enter.

“FireGuy?”

“That's his screen name.”

“What's wrong with his real name? Does he have something to hide?”

“I'm sure his entire life's an open book, Mother, but everyone on-line has a screen name. That's how it's done.”

Rose peered at her over the tops of her glasses. “Do you have one?”

“Of course I have one.”

“I hope it's nothing embarrassing.”

When Rose was in one of these moods, the name Betsy Ross would be embarrassing.

“I don't understand this obsession with on-line auctions,” her mother went on. “You could drive over to Toys “R” Us and buy one of those sweet Barbie teapots for half the price.”

“You're welcome to drive over to Toys “R” Us anytime you feel like it, Mother. I'm perfectly happy with Shoreline Auctions.”

“Nobody should pay that much for a battered teakettle.” Rose's sigh sent middle-aged daughters across the Garden State ducking for cover. “Sometimes I worry about that child.”

“Because she has an imagination?”

“You've filled her head with fairy tales. Where is that going to get her in life? She should be making play dates with her school friends, not dreaming over magic teapots and flying carpets.”

And people wondered why she had left home at seventeen. Maddy bit her tongue so hard she almost drew blood.

“Have you heard a single word I've said?”

“Every last syllable.” Maddy turned from the screen. “Mother, if you make me lose this teakettle to some bozo who'll use it to store fishing lures, I'll be forced to tell everyone in Paradise Point that your naturally red hair quit being natural around 1981.” Rose opened her mouth to protest, but Maddy raised her hand. “I have less than four minutes left in this auction. You can finish the lecture after I nail down the kettle.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Maddy knew it immediately. If she was looking for the pathway toward peaceful coexistence, maybe it was time to stop and ask for directions.

“Mom, I'm sorry. If you'll just—”

But it was too late. Rose wheeled and stalked from the room, and Maddy had no doubt the rest of the clan would know about her latest transgression before it was time to rinse the radicchio for the dinner salads.

She knew she should run after Rose and apologize. Give her a hug and crack some clumsy joke to try and break the tension that had been building between them, but the clock was ticking on the auction, and if she left her desk for even a second, she would lose the kettle, and her only chance to make Hannah smile again would be lost with it.

She had waited fifteen years to mend fences with her mother. Another fifteen minutes wouldn't hurt.

 
Aidan Michael O'Malley slammed his fist down on the shiny surface of the bar and sent the mouse skittering over the edge. He grabbed the gizmo just before it hit the floor and quickly repositioned it on the stack of cocktail napkins that served as a mouse pad. Ninety more seconds until the auction closed. If he didn't type in a new dollar figure right now, as in this second, he'd lose the auction and face the wrath of his daughter.

“You have to win,” Kelly had instructed him that morning as she shrugged her narrow shoulders into her bright red down vest. “This is just like the one in the picture of her and Great-grandpa Michael at the old restaurant.”

He knew the photograph well. It was the last one taken of Irene and Michael O'Malley before the Easter Sunday hurricane of 1952 roared across the inlet, taking everything in its path. The dock. The boats bobbing next to it. The restaurant they had built up from nothing.

And Michael O'Malley himself.

“What do you think?” Kelly asked. “Maybe it'll bring back some happy memories for her on Christmas morning.”

He hadn't the heart to remind her that it had been a long time since Grandma Irene had cared much about dented teapots. Or her family, for that matter. Holidays had become nothing but another way of counting down the years.

It was a feeling he understood too damn well.

“You sure she'd want something like this? Looks like a piece of rust to me.”

Kelly sighed loudly. “Oh, Dad, really. It's perfect. You'll see. All you have to do is log on to the auction site and make sure nobody outbids you.”

“Whoa,” he said. “Let's establish a few limits here.”

Kelly gave him the I-can't-believe-you're-really-my-father look she had perfected over the last seventeen years. “It shouldn't be more than seventy-five dollars,” she said casually. “But you can go up as high as one hundred.”

He widened his eyes. “You have a hundred dollars to spend?”

“I have a lot more than a hundred dollars,” she said, grabbing her books from the kitchen counter. “It's from the money I've been saving for college expenses.”

Other kids begged, borrowed, and stole money from their parents. His kid could open a savings and loan with what she'd put away baby-sitting, waiting tables at the clam bar during the summer, and tutoring. Sometimes he wondered why, in a life that had featured more than its share of shit, he'd been given this gift of pure gold.

Other times he just thanked God.

“Be careful,” he said as she plucked her car keys from the pegboard near the door. “It's icy outside. Maybe I should drive you to school.”

The look on her face was one of complete horror.

“Okay,” he said, laughing. “I rescind the offer. Just take it slow and remember those are all-wheel brakes.”

“You worry too much.” She rose up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. A second later she was gone, leaving behind the faint scent of maple syrup and herbal shampoo in her wake.

You'd be proud of her, Sandy. She's everything you were at that age . . . everything we prayed she would be
.

He had pretty much gotten over the habit of talking to his dead wife years ago, but lately he'd found himself wishing Sandy could come back for an hour—even fifteen minutes—just long enough for her to see the wonder their baby girl had turned out to be. Kelly was bright and pretty and kind-hearted. She was popular at school; the other students as well as the teachers loved her. It hadn't been easy for her growing up without a mother, but you'd never know it by the way she sailed through life with a smile for everyone.

“You've done a great job with her,” his sister-in-law, Claire, said the other day when he told her about the full scholarship. He would have liked to take credit for it, but he knew he had about as much to do with his daughter's success as he had to do with the last presidential election. Kelly was a force unto herself. All he ever had to do was point her in the right direction and trust her to do the rest.