Shore Lights

by Barbara Bretton

  “Stand there,” he said in his most gently paternal tone of voice. “I’ll pick them up.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Already done.” He handed her the keys, the notebook, the tape recorder, and her wallet, then swept the photocopies up in one motion. He straightened the edges, and was about to hand the packet over when he realized what he was looking at.

  “Jesus,” he breathed. “That’s O’Malley’s.” He grinned at the 1950 Packard angled near the entrance. His father used to tell stories about that car and a few unplanned rides down to Wildwood on hot summer nights. “Where’d you get these?”

  “They’re photocopies,” she said. “I went to the main library in Newark and did some research.”

  “You’re researching my grandmother?”

  “It’s for school,” she said, shifting her gaze toward the exit as if calculating the distance between where she was and where she wanted to be. “I’m studying gerontology and—”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I forgot how many students like to come down here and talk with her.”

  “She’s great!” Jessica’s face broke into a wide smile. “I mean, she’s the oldest person I’ve ever met, and she can still remember how it felt to be young.”

  “Did she tell you about the time they served baked clams to Ike and Mamie?”

  Jessica’s smile faltered. “Who?”

  He felt the breath of fogeydom whispering in his ear. “Eisenhower and his wife stopped at O’Malley’s after the war,” he said. “Before he ran for office. Irene had a signed photo from both of them, but she lost it in the hurricane.”

  “She told me all about the hurricane.” She flipped quickly through the photocopies and plucked one from the stack. “She said this was probably the last picture taken with her husband before—” She paused, blushing. “Well, you know.”

  It wasn’t exactly a shiver that ran up Aidan’s spine when he saw the picture beneath that one. This ran deeper and felt a hell of a lot more unsettling, like the electrical charge your skin registers moments before a lightning strike. He reached for the photocopy, and for a second he swore he could smell the storm, hear its raging power.

  “Jesus,” he breathed. “I’ve never seen this one before.” Grandma Irene, glamorous in a fancy full-skirted dress and a big picture hat, posed in the entryway of the original O’Malley’s while Grandpa Mike pointed proudly toward the sign. They looked so young, so filled with excitement, that a lump formed in Aidan’s throat and refused to be dislodged. And there was his father, behind the wheel of a 1950 Packard, squinting into the sun and grinning like he believed the world was his for the taking.

  “I’d give it to you, but I really need it for my paper and I’m not gonna have time to go back over to Newark before—”

  He barely heard her. Tucked beneath the glamorous photo of Irene and Michael and his father was another photocopy, this time of an old article from the Jersey Shore Times.

  LOCAL EATERY SERVES GOOD FOOD AND GREAT DECOR

  A few column inches were devoted to mouthwatering descriptions of Irene’s famous Baked Clams Oregonata and Mike’s Lobster Thermidor, then a few inches more to the satiny mahogany tables and chairs, the stained-glass lamps at every table, and Irene’s eclectic collection of teapots that swung from the rafters overhead and overflowed the many shelves lining the walls.

  But it was the close-up photo of one teapot in particular that caught his attention. He read the caption:

  The Russian samovar was a Christmas gift from Michael O’Malley to his wife, Irene.

  “Jesus,” he said again. “I don’t believe this.”

  He looked at the girl, who had backed away a few steps, just in case he was dangerous. “Okay if I make a copy?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “sure. Whatever.” Obvious relief coupled with another quick glance toward the exit.

  “A minute,” he said. “That’s all it’ll take.”

  He was a man of his word. Less than two minutes later Jessica was racing for the exit while he stared down at the grainy photocopy of a photocopy of a fifty-year-old newspaper clipping and wondered if maybe he should’ve tried a little harder to win that auction.

  ROSE BANISHED MADDY to the office. “I’ll tell you when you can come back,” she said firmly as she pointed toward the door.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Maddy grumbled as she aimed a glare in the direction of that godforsaken rust bucket of a teapot. “I should e-mail FireGuy and see if he’s still interested.” She could recoup some of her money and take it to Toys “R” Us, where she should have gone in the first place.

  “Just sit tight,” Rose cautioned as she smeared another layer of gunk along the spout and along the curve of the handle. “Don’t e-mail that FireGuy until I finish.” She met Maddy’s eyes. “Promise?”

  Maddy felt herself fall backward through the years until she was eight years old and swearing on a stack of Bibles that she would do her homework before she went back to the newest Judy Blume from the library. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Her mother winced.“‘Cross my heart’ is more than enough for me.”

  A wave of emotion crashed into Maddy with the same force as the memory of her eight-year-old self. Her mother looked different. Less prickly, more approachable. Or could it be she was looking at her with new eyes?

  “I really appreciate what you’re doing, Ma. I know you have a lot to do and—”

  “Scat,” said Rose, all business. “Work on the Web site. I want to get that up and running by the New Year and tie it in with the print ads you were going to reserve.”

  The print ads. Maddy had completely forgotten about the print ads. Lately she felt as if she had left her brain back in Seattle with her old refrigerator. She took a deep breath. “I’m not moving along as fast as I’d like,” she said, walking a tightrope stretched across the chasm of full disclosure. “I don’t really think I can get everything in place in less than three weeks.” Not with Christmas and Hannah and the ever-present Priscilla and the fact that she still felt like home would always be the place she left behind.

  “You will,” Rose said, applying herself to the task at hand. “I’m sure of it.”

  Maddy wondered what her mother had been smoking. Nobody in their right mind would believe Maddy had a snowball’s chance in hell of finishing up the Web site and lining up a print-ad campaign in less than three weeks. It would take nothing less than an act of God to make all the puzzle pieces fall into place quickly enough for her to meet her mother’s target date. She didn’t know half as much about Flash and Bryce as she had led Rose to believe. She knew her way around the various versions of PhotoShop, but her abilities had always been more recreational than vocational.

  Which was really the story of her life.

  She walked slowly back to the office with Priscilla at her heels. When she was a little girl, she had dreamed about a career in show business. No matter that she couldn’t sing or dance or play a musical instrument. She longed for a life in the spotlight, surrounded by people who didn’t think or dress or play like anyone she knew.

  Dreams didn’t play well with Rose, and she demanded that Maddy secure a degree in accounting before she wasted any time pursuing a career in show business. Maddy was good with numbers. She understood the way they played off each other, the ever-shifting relationships they formed and re-formed. She sailed through college and graduated with highest honors, and those dreams of show business took a backseat to a junior executive program with a booming Seattle-based dot-com.

  She had met Tom Lawlor at a conference of local businesspeople, and the attraction between them, while unlikely, had been undeniable. He was the owner and CEO of a highly successful electronics company, a key player from the early days of Apple and Microsoft who had been in the right place at the right time with the right product.

  The difference in their ages was never more apparent than when it came to talk of career aspirations. Tom had achieved everything he
had ever hoped for, and he was eager to put aside the eighteen-hour days, the sleepless nights, and the resident ulcers that went hand-in-hand with running a business. He wanted to kick back and enjoy the fruits of his forty years of labor, and he wanted Maddy to share it all with him.

  “Quit that job and I’ll take care of you,” he had said to her a few weeks before he sold his company. “We’ll sail to Hawaii and then see where the wind takes us.” Tahiti. Bali. The Mediterranean. Anywhere her heart desired. Anything she wanted.

  “What in hell are you waiting for?” her cousin Denise had e-mailed her. “Ditch the job already, Maddy! Let the future worry about itself.”

  He had said he loved her, that he needed her, that their five years together were only the beginning, that he wanted to show her the world, see it through her eyes, live out the rest of his life with her by his side, just the two of them.

  She asked her cousins for advice. Old classmates. The Russian family down the hall with the Pomeranian. But she never asked her mother because she knew what Rose would say. Rose had encouraged her to get her degree in accounting so she would have something to fall back on if her theatrical aspirations didn’t work out. From there it was an easy step to managing the finances of a little Seattle software company whose IPO had made instant millionaires of a dozen guys in sweatshirts and jeans. She had found them too late for the IPO, but even if it wasn’t the job of her dreams, it enabled her to hold her own in Tom’s world and that was important to her.

  Now his world was changing and he wanted her to change with him, toss aside the last five years of hard work, the 401(k), the stock options, and literally sail off into the sunset with him. Ditch the furniture from IKEA, the homey bed with the old-fashioned quilt, the Mustang that wasn’t quite paid off, and step out of her life and into his. She was enough of her mother’s daughter to know how risky a prospect that was (and how much she might lose), but her wildly romantic heart, a gift straight from her father, was impossible to ignore.

  So she said yes. Yes, she would go away with him. Yes, she would say goodbye to her job and her apartment and her friends. Yes, she was scared out of her mind, and yes, she wondered if maybe she was making a terrible mistake and yes oh yes she wanted to talk to her mother about it, wanted to spill it all in her mother’s lap and let her sort it out, but her mother was living her life on the other side of the country, and besides, she knew what her mother would say and none of that really mattered because she loved him and he was leaving and what else could she do?

  Two days before they were set to begin their adventure, she went to the doctor for a routine checkup, which turned out to be anything but routine when she discovered she was two months pregnant with Hannah, and everything she thought she had known about the two of them, about what they wanted from life, about what they meant to each other, collapsed like a castle made of sand.

  The DiFalco luck, she thought as she took her seat in front of the computer. You could run from it, but you couldn’t hide.

  God knows, she’d spent the last fifteen years trying.

  A MIRACLE, THAT’S what it was. A flat-out, downright miracle.

  Rose stepped back and tilted her head to the right. No matter what angle she tried, the samovar took her breath away. Her shoulders ached and her wrists and fingers throbbed from the effort, but there was no denying the results were worth it.

  Hannah’s Christmas present positively glowed. The elegant curves and angles caught the light and reflected it back with the softness and luster that develops with time. Maddy had been right. You couldn’t find something like this on the shelves at Toys “R” Us.

  She tossed the soiled rags into the trash bin outside, then scrubbed her hands at the utility sink. Thank God for rubber gloves, she thought as she stepped back into the kitchen. Her mother’s homemade concoctions were downright lethal to the skin.

  “Maddy!” She called down the back hallway. “Come take a look.”

  She was buffing up a tiny portion of the spout with the sleeve of her sweater when her daughter and Priscilla appeared in the doorway. She stepped aside and gestured toward the samovar.

  “So what do you think?”

  “That’s not the same teapot!” Maddy raced to the counter and examined it from all sides. She picked it up, turned it upside down, then held it to her ear and shook it. “Tell me this isn’t the same teapot!”

  “You can thank Grandma Fay for it,” Rose said, inordinately pleased by the obvious joy in her daughter’s eyes. “Those secret formulas of hers never fail.”

  Maddy ran her finger along one of the curves and started to laugh. “Eye of newt and wing of bat?”

  “And a touch of mandrake root for good measure.”

  “Hannah’s going to be so happy, Mom.”

  Rose nodded. “I know.”

  They were quiet for a moment.

  “I suppose I’d better find some place to hide it so Hannah doesn’t ruin her surprise.”

  “There’s room at the back of my closet upstairs.”

  “Isn’t that where Grandma Fay used to hide her bingo money?”

  “And her Lucky Strikes. I found six cartons behind her shoe trees after she died.”

  “Thank you.” There was a different tone to Maddy’s voice, a quality Rose didn’t think she had ever heard before. “Thank you so much. I was ready to give it to FireGuy before you took over.”

  “You don’t have to thank me,” Rose said. “She’s my granddaughter.”

  And you’re my daughter, she thought as Maddy went off to hide the samovar. If only one of them knew what that really meant.

  Chapter Eleven

  “HEY, BOSS.” TOMMY rapped on the door, then stepped inside before Aidan had a chance to open his mouth. “You gonna hole up back here all day or are you gonna start the wings?”

  Aidan looked up from the laptop. “Where’s Claire? I thought she was taking the lunch crowd today.”

  Tommy whistled. “Man, I don’t know what’s with you today. Claire’s home. Remember? Bad tooth.”

  Aidan leaned back in his chair and dragged a hand through his hair. “Shit. I forgot all about that.” He glanced at his watch, an old Timex that Kelly had bought for him a hell of a lot of Christmases ago. “I’ll get moving.”

  “About time,” Tommy muttered. “If you ask me, it’s time we got some more help around here.”

  “Can it, Kennedy.” Aidan stood up. “I can’t afford the help I’ve already got.”

  Still muttering, Tommy Kennedy went back out to tend bar and bitch about Aidan’s bad mood to anyone who would listen.

  Aidan couldn’t deny it. He’d been in a foul temper since he got back from the nursing home. He wasn’t exactly sure what started it, but something about the photo of that damn teapot sent his mood spiraling downward, and it hadn’t hit bottom yet. It was more than the fact that he’d let Kelly down. After her brief explosion of tears she’d moved on to her next project without missing a beat, leaving him, as usual, with the feeling that he’d missed a chapter somewhere along the way.

  He switched on the deep fryer, then pulled the highly seasoned wings from the refrigerator while the oil heated to the proper temperature. Claire had washed, dried, then trimmed three bunches of celery yesterday. She wrapped the stalks neatly in a pair of clean dishtowels and stowed them in the veggie bin so all he had to do was whip them out once the wings were cooked and drained. They were a good team most of the time. At least when they weren’t butting heads about the future of O’Malley’s. They were both lead sled dogs, and everyone knew what happened when two lead sled dogs vied for the only lead position.

  The bar had always been Billy’s domain. Even though Claire had done most of the work, it was Billy who had made it come alive. It was Billy they came to chew the fat with, Billy they wanted to make laugh.

  Billy they wanted to take to bed.

  “Goddamn it,” he muttered as he started feeding the wings into the sizzling oil. He didn’t want to think about the women. S
ometimes he looked at Claire’s face, the deep sorrow in her light blue eyes, and the pain in his gut would come close to bringing him down. She knew. She had always known, from the first time Billy strayed. Somehow she had found a way to keep on loving him and to hold on to some of her dignity. He had never been able to figure out how she’d managed that. Her husband was out screwing every available woman between Paradise Point and Cape May while Claire went on believing they were a match made in heaven.

  And maybe they were. Who was he to say? Claire and Billy had kept their marriage together through some pretty tough times, the kind of bad times Aidan wasn’t sure he and Sandy could have survived. Claire said she and Billy had been soul mates and somehow she made everyone else believe it too, as if her love for him was so strong, so all-encompassing that it wiped the slate clean. He left her a small pension and an even smaller insurance policy and O’Malley’s. O’Malley’s had been on the skids for at least ten years at that point, a workingclass, shorefront bar in an increasingly leisure-class town. After the accident, when it became clear firefighting was no longer an option, when it became even more clear that O’Malley’s was about to go under, Aidan presented Claire with a business proposition that would keep a roof over her head and give him a reason to get up in the morning.

  Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t.

  On days like today he wondered why he hadn’t rented a bulldozer and shoved the whole damn thing into the Atlantic.

  “I’ve got the burgers frying up front,” Tommy called from the doorway, “but you better get those wings moving fast. The natives are getting restless.” Wings. The requisite vat of chili with chopped onions and jack cheese on top. A mountain of ribs dripping sauce.

  No wonder their customers were dying off, he thought as he poured the blue cheese dressing into six small dipping bowls. They were killing them.