A victory, Maddy thought. A small one, maybe even an unfair one, but a victory just the same. Fifteen years ago it would have been cause for celebration, but today it just made her feel like crying.
Chapter Six
KELLY O’MALLEY BELIEVED things happened for a reason. Like when you were thinking very hard about a friend you hadn’t seen in a long time and the phone rings and it’s that very friend calling just to say hello. Some people might call that a coincidence, but Kelly knew better. There was a reason for everything, a pattern that you couldn’t always see the first time you looked, but it was there.
Like the other day when she answered the phone at the bar and it was Grandma Irene asking for that photo of her and Grandpa Michael taken at the old restaurant just before the hurricane. It was one of those old black-and-white photos, kind of stiff-looking and unnatural the way old family photos always were, but it still brought tears to Kelly’s eyes. They looked so young and happy as they stood in the lobby of the old restaurant, surrounded by Irene’s collection of teapots. Beautiful English teapots, delicate French teapots, sturdy American pots with utilitarian handles and spouts, and one spectacular samovar that looked straight out of a tale from the Arabian Nights.
She’d taken the photo from the drawer under the cash register, then headed right over to the nursing home to deliver it. Irene had been sleeping when she got there, but she’d left the photo with one of the nurses, then forgotten all about it until she was browsing through the auction site yesterday afternoon and discovered a teapot that looked an awful lot like Grandma Irene’s samovar. The most perfect Christmas present Kelly could possibly find for her great-grandmother.
It was meant to be. How else could you explain it?
Just like today when her weekly meeting with the staff of The Chanticleer, the Paradise Point High School newspaper, was postponed until tomorrow. Seth didn’t have to clock in for work at the Super Fresh until six o’clock, which gave them three hours, three blissful miraculous hours of their very own.
Meant to be.
She left her car in the school parking lot and climbed into Seth’s brother’s Honda and flew toward the lake where they parked at the edge of the woods, behind a stand of trees, safe from the prying eyes of family and friends who had known them all their lives.
Maybe even longer.
The lake nestled in a clearing, deep in the woods. In the summer months families with toddlers in tow vied with young lovers, retired couples, and students for a piece of emerald grass to call their own. But now, in December, with the trees stripped of their leaves and the sun moving lower in the sky they were alone, clinging to each other in a combination of terror and bliss.
“You’re worried.” Seth’s breath was warm against her cheek.
“No, I’m not.” Kelly snuggled closer to Seth. “I’m over it.”
“So what if your aunt saw us. We didn’t skip a class, Kel. The school canceled the newspaper meeting. We didn’t.”
“I know, I know.” He smelled so wonderful. Did he have any idea what the smell of his skin did to her brain? She felt buoyant, weightless, as if the slightest gust of wind might send her sailing up over the lake, over the trees, through the cream-colored clouds, headed straight for the stars.
“Are you sure?” His words tickled against the curve of her throat. “Really sure?”
She kissed his neck, the sharp line of his jaw, and giggled at the faint scratch of stubble. “I’m sure,” she whispered. “I love you, Seth. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
“This isn’t how I wanted our first time to be.” His fingers swiftly unbuttoned her jeans and worked them down her hips. “You should have candles and flowers and—”
“I have you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” One day in the big unknowable future they would have flowers and candles every night, but right now they had something more important. Something rare and beautiful.
Opportunity.
“You’re shaking,” Seth said. “You don’t have to be scared.”
“I’m not scared,” she said, nestling closer beneath their warm shelter of blankets. She wasn’t scared at all. Her father had tried to explain it to her a few years ago, but he’d turned a brilliant shade of crimson, then asked Aunt Claire to clarify a few issues. She knew that it would hurt, maybe a little, maybe a lot. And she knew she wanted Seth so much she couldn’t sleep at night and she couldn’t eat and she couldn’t imagine waiting one more second to take that giant step into the future they were planning together.
“I love you, Kelly,” he said as he gently rolled her over onto her back. “We can stop if you want to. . . . I want you to be happy. . . .”
She opened her arms to him and whispered, “Then come here and I will be.”
THE FIRST LUNCH wave blew through the door of O’Malley’s a few minutes before noon. Real estate agents, storefront lawyers, med students from the hospital up the road flooded the place weekdays for a burger or bowl of chili that trashed the diet but didn’t break the budget. The first wave gulped down their food, exchanged a few war stories, then cleared out in time to make room for the second wave.
The second wave included fishermen, shift workers, and guests from the local B&Bs who were looking for a bit more local color than the polished and perfumed old Victorians could provide.
But it was the third wave that formed the heart and soul of O’Malley’s Bar and Grill. The retired cops, off-duty firefighters, old anglers, housepainters, and the just plain lonely who showed up midafternoon for the comfort of a bowl of chili and the warmth of friends.
“Best damn chili in the state.” Frank Soriano leaned back and patted his substantial gut. “You should can this stuff and sell it. I’m tellin’ you, you’d rake in the bucks.”
Aidan grinned and removed the empty bowl. “Time for another brew?”
“Why not? The wife’s visiting her mother. What she don’t know won’t hurt me, right?”
Next to him, Ed DiMaio snorted into his bowl of fish chowder. It was well known around Paradise Point that Mary Soriano wore the pants in the family. She kept a sharp eye on Frank’s intake of beer, beef, and butter, the three things he loved most in the world.
“Where’s Claire?” Bud Morgan called out from a table near the dartboard. “She’s been riding my ass about the Giants game tonight. I want her to put some money where her mouth is.”
“Dentist,” Aidan said, sliding a beer toward Frank. “She’ll be back any time.”
Bud let out a good-natured groan. “You think I got nothin’ better to do than sit around this dump?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Frank said.
The place erupted in laughter as Frank and Ed exchanged high fives without missing a bite.
“Y’know,” said Mel Perry from the far end of the bar, “it kills me to say it, but I think Soriano’s got something there. That chili you make is great stuff. It could blow the top of your head off. Why don’t I hook you up with my kid the lawyer and maybe she can help get you started.”
Aidan refilled a half-dozen nut dishes with salted peanuts, then reached for a bag of chips. “Next thing I know you’ll have me on that cable food channel.” He ripped open the bag and dumped the contents into a napkin-lined basket.
“Yeah,” said Mel, sounding pleased with himself. “You could be the next Emerald.”
Aidan’s easy smile tightened. He reached for another bag of chips.
“Why don’t you call them up?” Mel suggested. “Tell them you were a fireman. He’s always cooking for fire-houses, same as you. Nobody’d even notice your scars.”
Silence dropped like a bag of rocks. The only sound was the clink of Ed’s spoon against his empty bowl.
They’re old men. They still see you the way you were. Don’t ream them for taking the ball you tossed and running with it.
Across the room Mel took a swig of Heineken and popped a chip into his mouth. “Nobody’s perfect. That Emerald’s no Robert Redford.”<
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“Shut the fuck up,” Bud growled. “Can’t you see you’re making it worse?”
“How the hell am I making it worse? I think he could parlay that chili of his into something big. I said he could maybe be on TV. Is that a fucking crime?”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Bud sounded close to a meltdown. “You’d do anything to get some work for that ambulance-chaser kid of yours.”
Snap! Crackle! Pop! A symphony of arthritic knees sounded as Mel and Bud jumped to their feet.
“Say that again,” Mel dared, “and I’ll stuff those dentures up your wrinkled old—”
“Hey, guys!” Claire and Billy Jr. breezed through the front door on a gust of winter wind. It took her maybe all of three seconds to assess the situation. “To the office with you,” she said to Billy as she pointed him toward the hall. “I’ll bring you milk and cookies in a few minutes.” She glanced around the room. “Maybe I should bring out some milk and cookies for the rest of you children.”
“Damn, you’re good,” Aidan said as he followed her into the kitchen. “I was afraid we were going to need a defibrillator out there.”
Claire’s gaze was direct. She wasn’t known for her patience. “Mel and Bud looked like they were about to mix it up out there.” She swung open the fridge and pulled out a container of milk. “Football, hockey, or politics?”
“Who knows.” He pulled down Billy Jr.’s favorite glass from the open cabinet over the double sink. “Tomorrow it’ll be something else.”
She narrowed her eyes and peered up at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You aren’t still upset about losing that teapot, are you?”
“Ask me again after I tell Kelly about it.”
He knew he wasn’t the most sensitive of men. Changes in the emotional landscape around him needed to be a 9 on the Richter scale before he took note, but even he couldn’t miss the way Claire’s expression shifted when he mentioned his daughter’s name.
“What?” he asked, dumping some cookies on a plate for Billy Jr. while Claire poured the milk.
“What do you mean, what?” she countered, eyes focused on the milk container and the rapidly filling glass.
“Kelly. You looked funny when I mentioned her. What’s wrong?”
Claire wiped up a spilled drop of milk with a square of paper towel. “I saw her with Seth while I was waiting for the school bus.”
He did a little math. “They cut class?”
“Looks like it.”
“Where were they going?”
“I don’t know. They sailed by in Seth’s brother’s Honda.”
“She was probably on the way to one of her club meetings.”
“Could be,” said Claire.
“You think she skipped class?” She had to be kidding. They all knew Kelly was the type of kid who loved school so much she would sleep there if they let her.
“Who knows,” Claire said, sidestepping his question. “All I know is that I saw her.”
From the look on her face, she obviously wished she had never told him.
“I trust her,” he said, meaning every word. “If she was out there with Seth, there was a good reason.” This was the kid who had lost her mother when she was three years old. This was the kid who had changed his bandages when the sight of the left side of his face had been enough to bring grown men to their knees. His little girl never flinched. She did what needed to be done and did it without fanfare or shouts of “Look at me!”
She had earned his trust. More than that, she deserved it.
“Kelly’s a good kid,” he said to Claire. “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”
“She’s seventeen,” Claire retorted. “There’s plenty to worry about. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”
Kathleen, Claire’s oldest, was nineteen and a sophomore at Rutgers up in New Brunswick. Her early teens had been the stuff of after-school specials and movies of the week on one of those women’s cable channels. Strangely enough, her father’s death two years ago had settled her down. Her grades were improving. She was staying out of trouble. It was more than most of the family had expected. No wonder Claire crossed herself every time Kathleen’s name came up. Claire was a wise woman. She wasn’t taking any chances.
“What time is Bernie coming over?” Claire sat down at the table next to Billy Jr. and rubbed her jaw with her right hand.
“Around six.”
“Is Pete working tonight?”
Aidan snagged a chocolate chip cookie and popped it in his mouth. “He said he’d come in and man the bar while I went over the books.” Pete was a retired firefighter who worked at O’Malley’s a few nights a week.
She rubbed her cheek again, wincing at the touch of her own fingertips. “I took a look at the ledger,” she said. “It wasn’t a pretty sight.”
He threw an arm around her bony shoulders and gave her a quick hug. “We’ll make it work. Things will pick up, Claire. Winters are always tough.”
“Where’re my crayons?” Billy Jr. asked through a mouthful of cookie. “I want to color.”
Claire sighed loudly. “I’m sorry, honey. I forgot to bring the toy bag with me.”
Billy Jr. opened his mouth to protest, but Aidan broke in before his nephew had a chance to let go full throttle. “I have something you’ll like better.”
“I like my crayons,” Billy Jr. said.
“More than a Game Boy?”
“You have a Game Boy?” Only seven and he sounded as suspicious as a forty-year-old.
“It was Kelly’s. She said you could have it if you promise not to beat her Zelda score.”
It was genetic. No O’Malley could resist a challenge. Aidan pulled Kelly’s old Game Boy from the drawer near the back door and flipped the On switch. “Here you go,” he said, handing it to Billy Jr. with a grin. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Billy Jr. settled down to play with the kind of manic concentration usually found in hockey fans and astrophysicists.
“Isn’t it time for the daily chili delivery?” Claire said in her usual brusquely cheerful manner. “I want to get out of here by six so I can go home and bake cookies for Billy’s class tomorrow.”
“I’ll be back in plenty of time.”
“I didn’t mean to rattle your cage about Kelly.”
“You didn’t rattle my cage. You told me you saw her on Main Street when she should have been in school. You did what a godmother’s supposed to do.” Claire saw Kelly through a different lens, one that had been shaped by her problems with Kathleen. But Kelly wasn’t Kathleen, not by any stretch of the imagination.
“She might be smart, but she’s still just seventeen,” Claire said, “and seventeen is a dangerous age.”
He remembered seventeen. The wild highs and butt-dragging lows. The nuclear-powered hormones. The explosion when desire and opportunity finally come together in a mind-blowing moment of—
Shit.
He tried to push aside the faint buzz of apprehension moving up his spine, but the memory of seventeen wouldn’t let him. It sat on his shoulder as he climbed into the Jeep, and it whispered in his ear as he backed out of the driveway and headed west toward the firehouse. Seventeen lived in the now. Seventeen didn’t understand that actions had consequences.
Seventeen didn’t know that even love had its price.
BARNEY KURKOWSKI WAS waiting in the parking lot behind the firehouse. He looked as if he was thinking about bench-pressing a Buick.
“Whaddya got for me today?” Barney asked as Aidan unlatched the back window of the truck and lowered the tailgate. “New York strip steaks and a couple of kegs of Heineken?”
Aidan grunted as he pulled the two-gallon drums of chili out and handed them to the older firefighter. “Better quit smoking that strange tobacco, pal.” He grabbed for the two enormous foil-wrapped platters that were piled high with ribs and kicked the tailgate closed with his right knee. Pain shot from knee to thigh
to groin. It registered on some distant part of his brain, the part he hadn’t yet figured out a way to subdue, but he kept his focus outward. Sometimes that was the best you could do.
Barney watched him closely through tired brown eyes that had seen things even Aidan couldn’t imagine. Barney had taken him under his wing when Aidan first joined the company eighteen years ago, and it was Barney who had stayed with him on that long screaming ride through the hot summer night to the hospital.
And it was Barney who had helped carry his brother’s casket out of Our Lady of Lourdes after the funeral when Aidan was still suspended between two levels of hell.
Neither man spoke of that time again, but it was there between them in every word they didn’t say, an unbreakable bond.
They crossed the asphalt to the kitchen door. Barney slowed automatically to keep pace with Aidan’s off-center gait.
“Coming in?” Barney asked casually.
“Not this time.” Aidan placed the trays down on the top step. He hadn’t been in there since the day of the warehouse fire. “Claire needs to leave early tonight, so I want to get back.”
“Better motor then.” Barney’s tone was still casual. “Don’t want to keep her waiting.”
“Irish stew Wednesday,” Aidan said as he turned to leave, “and a tray of baked mac and cheese.”
“Keep ’em coming,” Barney said. “Fenelli has a long way to go until he can hold a spatula to you, O’Malley.”
“Save the butt kissing for the Rotary Club,” Aidan said with a grin. “I’m still billing your ass for home delivery.”
“Punk kid.”
“Old fart.”
“See you Wednesday.”
“You got it.”
He wondered if everyone saw the ghosts he saw around the firehouse. All the men who had come and gone over the years, the ones who died saving others, the ones who had been lucky enough to die in their own beds. He saw his brother Billy’s Camaro angled in the last spot on the right, tailpipe hanging on by a thread. Aidan was the one who was good with cars, but not even he had been able to keep Billy’s wheels in good repair. Billy drove the way he lived: balls-out, overdrive all the way. In the first months after the accident there had been times when Aidan would wake up from a deep sleep and for a second he was sure it was all a joke, that Billy was holed up in one of those motels on the outskirts of Atlantic City, laughing his ass off at the primo gag he’d pulled.
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