Chances Are

by Barbara Bretton

  “Thanks, pal,” Maddy said. “I’ll remember that. As it is, the house is sprouting bridal magazines, swatches of dress material, and if I hear one more word about caterers I swear I’ll—”

  “You’ve got the castle, the glass slipper, and Prince Charming, Cinderella. So what if there’s a camera crew hiding behind the altar. You’re not getting any sympathy here. You and Aidan might be South Jersey’s Trista and Ryan.”

  “Bite your tongue.”

  “You love him, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And you want to marry him.”

  “I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t.”

  “So what’s the problem? If there’s one thing DiFalcos do well, it’s plan a wedding. Why not sit back and enjoy it?”

  “You think I’m being an ingrate, don’t you?”

  “Yep,” said Gina as a carload of DiFalco sisters roared past them. “Rosie can be a pain in the ass, but she loves you. Besides, you’re the only one of us who just might get it right the first time. You can’t blame her for wanting to make your wedding day something to remember.”

  “I think I’ll remember it just fine without fifty pounds of chopped liver and a champagne fountain.”

  “I don’t know how to break it to you, but this isn’t about you.”

  “That’s exactly what Rose said.”

  “Thanks,” Gina said with an alarming roll of her eyes. “I can feel the varicose veins forming even as I speak. Still, you know I’m right.”

  “She’s not talking about a wedding, Gee. She’s talking about a circus.”

  “It’s one day. Put up with it.”

  “I don’t think I’m the big wedding type.”

  “Please don’t tell me you were serious about eloping to Vegas.” Gina shuddered. “That’s too bleak a prospect, even for me.”

  “It could be fun. Especially if Fat Elvis performed the ceremony.”

  “There’s a charming thought for you.”

  “The kids might like it.”

  “The kids aren’t supposed to go on the honeymoon with you.”

  “Does that mean you’re up for baby-sitting? You know how much Joey adores Hannah.”

  Gina ignored the question as she eased her way around a slow-moving Cruiser. “You won’t get the big wedding checks from the aunts if you don’t give them a sit-down prime rib dinner and a dance band.”

  “How big are those checks?” She pretended to rub her hands together in anticipation.

  “Big enough to make up for a few snarky remarks.”

  “So you think I should sell out for a few lira.”

  “You might not believe me now, but by the time the day arrives, you’ll understand. Fat Elvis might be fun, but he isn’t family, and weddings are all about family.”

  “I’ve never heard you talk this way before. You sound downright DiFalco.”

  “Quote me, and I’ll deny every single word. I have my reputation to consider.”

  “Rose and I might end up killing each other before I walk down the aisle.” The thought of the PBS crew capturing it all on film was enough to make her queasy.

  “Trust me, you’ll bond.”

  “In prison,” Maddy said, and they burst into laughter.

  They fell silent for a few miles. Neither one of them had the chance to drive in silence very often. Gina had three children under ten, a trio of turbocharged live wires much like their mother. They were spending the afternoon at Upsweep, Gina’s hair salon, being cared for in the mini-day care center Gina had established for employees and patrons in the rear section of the shop.

  This was the first time Gina had left her youngest’s side since he was released from the hospital three weeks ago. He had taken sick at his father’s house up near Princeton, and Gina had parked her other two kids on her sister Denise’s doorstep and raced up north to be with Joey.

  “So how’s Joey doing? I was kind of hoping you would bring him with you today.”

  Gina laughed. “Oh, there’s a great idea: Joe and Hannah running wild in Saks.”

  “It does strike terror in the heart,” Maddy agreed. “So how is he doing?” Gina had been uncharacteristically preoccupied since bringing Joey home, and details on the toddler’s condition had been in short supply.

  “We go back up to Princeton to see the doctor next week,” Gina said, her gaze firmly on the road.

  “Princeton? I thought you liked Dr. Jeanne.”

  “You’ll have to ask the ex,” Gina said. “He changed jobs, and the new HMO is being anal about where we go.”

  “That’s not fair. Joey lives down here. You can’t be expected to drive up to—”

  “So what do you want from me?” Gina interrupted. “Maybe you have time to go bare knuckles with an HMO, but I don’t.”

  They dropped back into silence, but it was a much less comfortable silence than before.

  She shouldn’t have pushed Gina about her choice of pediatricians. Her cousin had been under enormous strain since Joey’s sudden hospitalization. You couldn’t blame her for being short on patience. It was a situation Maddy understood quite well.

  In early December Hannah had been briefly hospitalized for a violent allergic reaction to a cleaning fluid used to polish an old samovar, and she had been placed in a room next to Aidan’s one-hundred-year-old grandmother Irene. The DiFalco and O’Malley families had been drawn together in both sorrow and thanksgiving as they said good-bye to the matriarch and celebrated the recovery of the child, and from that point on, Maddy swore she could feel the hand of fate drawing her and Aidan together.

  Nothing in her life had ever been easier or felt more right. The chemistry between them was undeniable, but even more important, there was an emotional connection that seemed to grow deeper every time she saw him. Marriage would only make legal the vows they had already taken in their hearts.

  She wasn’t sure how much of this Hannah understood. She loved her Grandma Rose and Aunt Lucy, and if she wasn’t too sure about her other aunts, they adored her enough to make up the difference. She loved her puppy Priscilla best of all, but Aidan was coming up fast on the outside. Aidan didn’t want to take the place of her father, but when it came to raising daughters, he was a natural, and Hannah seemed to sense that.

  His daughter was living proof. Kelly was everything a parent could want in a child, and Maddy thanked her lucky stars for bringing the perfect stepsister into her little girl’s life. For all the talk you heard about how tough it was to raise a teenager, he had managed to bring up the perfect kid. Kelly was funny, smart, polite, charming, and talented. Her grades were top-notch. She was active in a dozen after-school clubs. She had great friends and a boyfriend even Aidan had to admit was a good kid.

  Maddy should be walking on air. And she was. She really was. For the first time in her entire life, everything she had ever dreamed about was within reach. She was where she was meant to be, when she was meant to be there, with the people who meant the world to her, and with the man she loved.

  Was it possible to let herself believe it might even last?

  She had no troubles, no complaints, no reason for the sense of unease that had been growing ever since the documentary crew came to town and aimed their cameras at Maddy and Aidan and the upcoming wedding. But it was there just the same, and she couldn’t make it go away, no matter how hard she tried.

  She swiveled around in her seat and scanned the highway behind them. “I haven’t seen Claire’s car since we left the restaurant.”

  “I think she took the Parkway,” Gina said. “We’ll probably catch up with her when we get past Freehold.”

  “She is a good driver, isn’t she?”

  “NASCAR thinks so.”

  “Not funny.” Even though it was, in a dark sort of way.

  “She’s gained a few pounds since she quit smoking.”

  “Why are we all so obsessed with weight? I think it looks good on her,” Maddy said. Claire had one of those long, lanky frame
s that easily hid a small weight gain.

  “Mmm,” said Gina. “I keep wishing she’d come into Upsweep so we could do something about that Bonnie Raitt thing she has going on. Redheads do not gray gracefully.”

  “Gina—” Maddy searched for the right way to phrase what she wanted to say. “I—I’d really rather we didn’t talk about Claire.”

  “Why not? She’s about to become your sister-in-law. She’ll be family. We always talk about family. It’s a tradition.”

  “It’s just that things haven’t been all that warm and fuzzy between us since Aidan and I got engaged.”

  “You think that’s what those snarky looks at lunch were all about? You’re telling me she’s jealous?”

  “No! I didn’t—well, maybe. But not of Aidan. I think she’s jealous about Kelly.”

  “Oh boy! Now things are getting juicy. So you think the aging redhead is—”

  “I don’t want to do this, Gina. Let’s change the subject.”

  “Why? Claire’s as good a subject as any.”

  “Do I really have to spell it out?”

  Gina’s smile faded. “That was a long time ago, Maddy. Billy’s dead.”

  “I still wish you hadn’t told me,” Maddy said, leaning her head against the passenger window. “Every time I look at Claire, I think of you and—”

  “Would you rather think of me and Aidan?”

  Nothing like the unvarnished truth to snap a woman back to reality. “No, but—”

  “It was either tell you the truth or let you think I was sleeping with the man you were falling in love with. I don’t see where I had a choice.”

  “Do you think she knows?”

  Gina shook her head. “Not about me.”

  “But she knows Billy slept around?”

  “Honey, the entire town knew Billy slept around. It wasn’t exactly a secret.”

  “So how did you manage to keep it quiet about the two of you?”

  “Are you implying I don’t know how to keep my fucking mouth shut?” Gina, angry, was a sight to behold.

  Maddy felt her cheeks redden. “Meaning I know this town. Like you said, there are very few secrets.”

  Gina opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. The sight of her breezy, unflappable cousin brought to her knees by the memory of Billy O’Malley hit Maddy like a blow. Gina had loved Claire’s husband, really loved him in a way she hadn’t loved the fathers of her children, and that knowledge threw everything Maddy had believed about love and fidelity and the bonds of matrimony into chaos.

  “I think it would have worked out,” Gina said at last. “I think we would have ended up together.”

  Maddy had the feeling that even if Billy had lived, Gina would have ended up alone, but she held back the comment. She loved Gina. She didn’t want to hurt her. But there were still parts of this puzzle she found difficult to accept.

  “How can you stand around chatting with Claire, knowing that you wanted to steal her husband?”

  “I like Claire.”

  “Obviously you didn’t like her enough to keep your hands off her husband.”

  “If I remember right, he couldn’t keep his hands off me.”

  Maddy’s flush intensified. She could feel it creeping over her cheeks, down her throat, blossoming across her chest. “Listen, I’m sorry I said that. Why don’t we just change the subject?”

  “You know I’m not the first woman to have an affair with a married man.”

  Maddy knew the world wasn’t a black-and-white enterprise. She was thirty-three years old. She had a child but not a husband. She had at least a nodding acquaintance with shades of gray. “Intellectually, I get it. Emotionally, it’s another story.”

  “Billy and I were engaged once.”

  Good thing Maddy wasn’t behind the wheel. She would have rocketed the car onto the shoulder in shock. “You’re joking.”

  “It was right after I graduated high school. You were spending the summer at your dad’s place in Oregon, while I was going up to New York to apprentice at Sassoon. Billy was a rookie at the fire department, so he couldn’t follow me. He was afraid I’d have my head turned by one of those rich Wall Street types, so he staked his claim before I left.” There was a softness to Gina’s voice, a wistful quality she didn’t often reveal.

  “That means you were seeing him while you were still in school.”

  “On the sly,” Gina acknowledged with a look in Maddy’s direction. “I was marginal jail bait, after all.”

  “But you told me that it happened much later, after he and Claire were already married. You should have told me the truth when it was going on.”

  “Little Miss Innocent? You would’ve been the first to have me arrested.”

  “I would not.” She grinned. “I would’ve had him arrested.”

  “Do you remember what you were like back then, Maddy? If you hadn’t had a mouth on you, I would’ve figured you as a candidate for the convent.”

  “Somehow I don’t think Rosie would’ve agreed with you. She considered me quite the rebel.”

  “I love Aunt Rose, but she didn’t know squat about rebels. She probably said a rosary every day thanking God I wasn’t her kid.”

  When Gina was right, she was right. “So who did know about it?”

  “His grandmother Irene. Denise. Aidan. We were planning to keep it secret until Christmas when he gave me a ring.”

  “And—?”

  “And I made a big mistake.”

  “Oh God, one of those Wall Street types?”

  Gina nodded. “Greg had the Beemer, the weekend place in the Hamptons, the Armani suits, the whole nine yards. This Jersey girl’s head did a one hundred and eighty. It only lasted long enough to break Billy’s heart.”

  Billy drove up one weekend to surprise Gina and ended up being on the wrong end of the surprise when he caught Gina and Mr. Wall Street leaving her apartment hand in hand.

  “Next time I saw Billy, he had a wife and a baby on the way.”

  “I never suspected.”

  “Nobody did,” Gina said. “Claire’s fiancé was killed in a car crash and before his body was cold, Claire and Billy showed up married and pregnant. I was old news by then.”

  “I’d forgotten all about Charles,” Maddy said.

  “The rest of the town didn’t. Why do you think Billy’s Grandma Irene hated Claire so much?”

  “I never really thought about it.”

  “She knew the marriage was all wrong for both of them. She knew Claire’s heart still belonged to Charles and Billy’s heart—” She stopped abruptly. “You get the picture.”

  Maddy sighed. “I’m beginning to.”

  The story was a simple one, the kind that happened every day in a thousand different towns just like theirs. They had never really gotten over each other and, small towns being what they were, proximity worked its dangerous magic, and before either one of them could think of a good reason to back away from each other, they were lovers again.

  “Being married to other people should’ve been a good reason,” Maddy observed.

  “It wasn’t,” Gina said.

  “What about the kids?”

  “People in love are selfish as hell, Maddy.”

  Maddy felt the way she had when she was a little girl, listening to her mother and aunts gossip about a neighbor. She grasped the intent of the words, but she didn’t really understand.

  “I always believed love made you more open and generous.”

  “Yeah, and the tooth fairy left a fifty under Toni’s pillow when she was fitted for her new dentures.”

  They glided to a stop at the traffic light near the fancy town houses where Rose had lived before she moved into The Candlelight seven years ago.

  “You hate me,” Gina said. “I shouldn’t have told you the whole story. I’m a good liar. You never would have known the difference.”

  “I love you,” Maddy corrected her, “but I’d be the one lying if I said I liked the story.�
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  “This is real life, cookie,” Gina said as the light changed to green. “If you’re looking for happily ever after, stick to romance novels, because happy endings are in short supply for the DiFalcos.”

  A prickle of alarm nipped at the back of Maddy’s neck. “Is there something you’re trying to tell me? Believe me, I know Aidan has some baggage.” He had been widowed for almost sixteen years when he met Maddy. A lot of women had passed through his life. Maddy saw a fair number of them every day when she waited at the corner for the school bus.

  She told herself that if he could welcome Hannah’s father Tom into their extended family, she could accept the existence of ex-lovers, but there were times when her imagination went into overdrive, and she found herself speculating about every woman she bumped into.

  “No, I’m not trying to tell you anything.” Gina waved at Jim McDougall as he roared by in his pickup truck. “Just reminding you that weddings are wonderful, but marriage is something else again. Make sure you go into it with your eyes wide open.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I’ve seen the way you look at him, Maddy. You’re head over heels for the guy, and that’s terrific, but he’s not a saint. You don’t want any surprises.”

  “What do you mean by surprises?”

  “I don’t know,” Gina said. “It’s just with those journalists nosing around into everyone’s business, you never know what they might turn up.”

  “What are they going to turn up that I don’t already know?” Maddy countered. “Aidan had a sex life before I met him. That isn’t news. Just as long as his sex life stops with me.”

  Gina burst into laughter. “Better rephrase that, cookie. I can’t imagine Aidan’s sex life stopping until he’s six feet under. Better keep the reporter away from him, or the documentary will end up X-rated.”

  “Thanks for the advice.” Just what the bride-to-be needed: relationship tips from a woman who had two divorces under her belt by the time she turned thirty. Gina meant well, but her heavy-handed warning had unsettled Maddy. “I think this whole town’s gone nuts since they started filming those interviews.”

  “Listen, Mad, I’m sorry,” Gina said as she pulled behind Lucy’s car in The Candlelight parking lot. “Maybe it was all of those wedding dresses that got to me. Forget I said anything. Aidan’s a good guy, and he loves you. You’re going to have a great life together. Sooner or later one of us has to.”