Shore Lights

by Barbara Bretton

  Rose looked up from her magazine. “So early?”

  “I’ve been waiting for a response on a Web site question from one of my old friends back in Seattle. He doesn’t usually get around to answering his e-mails until around ten or eleven our time.”

  “It’s only ten-thirty,” Rose said with a quick glance at the neat little tank watch on her left wrist. “Have a little more hot chocolate before you go.”

  “You realize the food here is too delicious,” Maddy said as she settled down again with a fresh cup of cocoa. “I think I’ve gained five pounds since we moved back.”

  “You could use it,” Rose said.

  Maddy grabbed the sides of her chair to keep from falling to the floor in shock. “I thought you said I was getting fat.”

  “I never said that!”

  “When I wore that dark gold outfit to the township meeting,” she reminded her mother, “you said I looked hippy.”

  “That’s right,” Rose agreed. “You did look hippy in it. But I didn’t say you were hippy.”

  “I don’t see the difference.”

  Rose removed her reading glasses and massaged the bridge of her small, straight nose. “You have a lovely figure. That outfit didn’t do you justice.”

  “Why didn’t you just say that?”

  “I thought I did.”

  “Maybe you did, but that’s not the way it sounded to me.”

  “I know,” Rose said with a touch of a smile. “That’s our problem in a nutshell, isn’t it? Neither one of us hears exactly what the other is saying.”

  Maddy took a sip of cocoa, letting the deep rich aroma of chocolate fill her senses before she spoke. “Today was wonderful,” she said. “The Armaghs and Loewensteins notwithstanding.”

  The lines of tension on Rose’s face visibly relaxed, and it occurred to Maddy that she had as much power over Rose’s moods as Rose had over hers. The realization made her feel sad.

  “We did laugh a lot today, didn’t we?” Rose said. “You seemed to feel like one of the team.”

  “I did,” Maddy admitted. “For the first time I began to see where I might fit in around here.”

  They were silent for a few moments. The only sounds in the room were the crackling of the logs in the fireplace, the whistle of wind beyond the windows, and Priscilla’s soft snore.

  “I have ideas,” Rose said after a while. “They’re not quite ready to present to you, but after Christmas, they should be.”

  “I’m intrigued,” Maddy said. “Any hints?”

  Rose shook her head. “Not right now. But when the time comes, I want you to be honest.”

  “That’s never been a problem between us, has it,” Maddy said, then laughed. Their relationship had been built upon blunt observations and painful truth-telling, and look where it had gotten them. Thirty-two years locked in the mother-daughter dance, and they were still learning how to speak to each other, still struggling to understand how to listen.

  Maddy finished her cocoa, then stood up once more. “I’ll shut down the office,” she said, gathering up her cup and spoon and latest mystery novel.

  “I thought you were waiting for some e-mail.”

  “I’ll use my laptop. All I want to do is crawl between the covers and listen to the wind.”

  “That’s what you used to do when you were little,” Rose said, a faraway look in her eyes. “Bill and I—” She stopped and returned her gaze to her magazine. “No matter.”

  “Don’t stop!” Maddy sat on the arm of her chair and looked at her closely. “You and Daddy what?”

  “I was going to say that your father and I used to stand in the doorway and listen to you talk to the wind.”

  Maddy grinned. “I talked to the wind?”

  “All the time,” Rose said, smiling at the memory. “You were crazy about kites. You used to tell stories about how one day the wind was going to lift you and your kite high up into the air and take you away on an adventure.”

  “I sound like Hannah.”

  “I know.”

  Maddy gathered up her nerve and pushed forward. “Is that why you don’t think I should encourage Hannah’s imagination?” Because she’ll end up an unemployed single mother just like me?

  “I never said you shouldn’t encourage Hannah’s imagination.”

  “Of course you did.” Maddy stood up, wishing she had ended this conversation five minutes earlier, when things were still going well. “Remember what you said about the samovar? You felt I was encouraging Hannah to live in a dream world.”

  Rose’s expression seemed to close in on itself and the old familiar feeling of dread settled itself in the pit of Maddy’s stomach. They had come so far today—and so unexpectedly. She hated to see it all vanish so soon.

  Rose met her eyes. “I was wrong.”

  “What?”

  “I was wrong. I had no business trying to mold Hannah’s personality into something it isn’t. She’s very much like you. I see it more with every day.”

  Maddy’s own expression must have undergone a metamorphosis, because Rose reached over to touch her hand.

  “That isn’t a criticism,” she said. “I meant it as a compliment.”

  “I was hoping,” Maddy said, “but considering the fact that I’m an out-of-work, thirty-two-year-old single mother with no prospects, I wasn’t too sure.”

  “You’ll find your way,” Rose said. “We all do, sooner or later.”

  “You never seemed to have any trouble.”

  Rose arched a brow but said nothing.

  “I’m serious, Mom. You’ve always been so goal-oriented, so sure of yourself and what you wanted.”

  “Is that how I seemed to you?”

  “Yes,” Maddy said. Why else would you have worked seventy- and eighty-hour weeks instead of spending time with your kid?

  “I had goals,” Rose said slowly, “but they weren’t necessarily the ones I achieved.”

  “You seem happy enough now,” Maddy said, painfully aware that she had never once considered her mother’s happiness—or lack of it—before that very moment. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve changed a lot.” For the better.

  “I am happy now,” Rose said with conviction. “It was a long time coming, but well worth the wait.”

  “I always wondered why you decided to bag your career and start over. I mean, it wasn’t like you had any guarantee that the Candlelight would be even half the success it is.”

  “I know,” Rose said, a half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “That was exactly what I needed at that moment.”

  “But why?” Maddy persisted. “That was right around the time when I was pregnant with Hannah and—”

  Rose raised her hand between them. “Not my finest hour,” she said with a shake of her head.

  Maddy thought about the harsh words that had met her announcement of Hannah’s impending birth and the prolonged and icy silence that had followed. “No,” she said, “it wasn’t.”

  Rose winced. “I suppose I deserved that.”

  Maddy sighed. “And I suppose I’ve waited over four years to say it.”

  “I’d like it very much if we could put that episode behind us and try again.”

  Maddy reached out and took her hand. “Isn’t that exactly what we’ve been doing?”

  AT LEAST ROSE didn’t cry until Maddy left the room.

  “Tell her,” Lucy had been urging her sister. “Tell her before it goes on any longer.” But Rose hadn’t been able to find the opportunity. Too many people. Too much work. Too much distance between them.

  And then tonight, out of nowhere, the perfect opportunity, the once-in-a-lifetime chance to explain away so many things dropped into Rose’s lap, and in that very instant her courage took a hike.

  There was no easy way to say to your daughter, “I had breast cancer.” She needed to tell her. Maddy deserved to know. For many reasons. But she had chosen to fight her battle privately, and now that it seemed she was finally in
the clear, that maybe the rest of her life was going to be much longer than she had dared hope for, her resolve failed her.

  Funny thing. She had had the guts to fight cancer, but when it came to telling her daughter, she found herself weak and spineless. Afraid to open up her heart completely to the child who had always held the key right there in the palm of her hand and never known it was there.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  MADDY HAD TO hand it to her mother: Rose had gone first-class when she decorated the Candlelight. Even the family rooms had been blessed with the same attention to comfort and detail as the guest rooms and public areas. Her bed was an acre of pillowy comfort topped with sheets with a four-digit thread count and a pair of down comforters that could keep a girl warm in the middle of the Arctic. Outside the wind howled and the snow fell and the ocean did whatever it was the ocean did during a blizzard, but inside Maddy felt like the cosseted princess in a fairy story.

  Of course the flip side to all of this luxury was the fact that the princess also doubled as scullery maid, sous chef, and office worker, but it was a small price to pay. In fact, she was beginning to see what her mother liked about innkeeping. There had been something endearingly goofy about the process today, a certain structured sense of chaos that appealed to the part of her that had been buried during her bean-counter years. From the moment you opened your eyes in the morning, you were playing it by ear. Human beings were unpredictable creatures, and it was that unpredictability that made running a B&B more of an adventure than Maddy had anticipated.

  Wait a second! What a perfect topic for the interview on Friday with Jim Kennedy. She had decided to forego her laptop for a good mystery novel and an early lights-out, but she was old enough to know that the brilliant idea you dream up at bedtime is usually the brilliant idea you’ve forgotten by morning. She hated the thought of climbing out of her cozy dream of a bed to fetch the computer resting atop her dresser, but needs must and all that.

  Next time she would remember to stow a notepad and pen in the drawer of her nightstand or keep the laptop on the extra pillow. She hit the On button, waited while Windows loaded, then opened the file marked Ideas.

  And why not do a little multitasking and check for e-mail while she typed?

  WHY THE HELL was he fighting it? He’d practically memorized the Jets Web site and was rereading the Jets archive on the Newsday site, all because he couldn’t get it through his fat skull that she wasn’t going to answer his e-mail.

  You blame her, hotshot? She probably thought he was sleeping with Gina or Denise or maybe both of them, for all the hell he knew. Hey, what could be better than a scarred and crippled bar owner who’s been fucking his way through your family? There weren’t enough cheap breakfasts in the entire state to make up for that.

  So when the new-mail bell chimed, he figured it was another note from Kelly, complaining about the noise level at Claire’s house. When he saw the name JerseyGirl, he broke out in one of those goofy wall-to-wall smiles that make you look like you’re fifteen and still waiting for your voice to change.

  TO: FireGuy@njshore.net

  FROM: JerseyGirl@njshore.net

  DATE: 6 December

  SUBJECT: Great minds

  You’re not going to believe this, but I was just about to send YOU a note about breakfast. It really was fun, wasn’t it? But next time it’s on me.

  Hannah almost uncovered the samovar this afternoon. I’ll spare you the details, but I swear the experience took ten years off my life. I need remedial present-hiding instructions ASAP.

  Isn’t the snow BEAUTIFUL?

  Maddy

  Hard to believe it was possible, but Aidan’s smile grew wider. It was in danger of taking over the kitchen, the pantry, and the back porch. If it grew any bigger, he would need a building permit from the town.

  She said “next time.”

  She’s being polite, moron. There’s not going to be a next time.

  She hadn’t struck him as the polite-to-be-polite type. She was too direct for that, too straightforward.

  Yeah, and you’re a real expert on women. That’s one hell of a track record you’ve got going for you.

  Just shut up and answer her, dammit, before the power goes out.

  IF THE INTERNET had existed when Maddy was a teenager, she never would have left the house. Think of all the embarrassing Friday night dances she could have avoided, the miserable evenings spent praying somebody she wasn’t related to would ask her to dance.

  There she was curled up in her gorgeous Martha-Stewart-Meets-Madame-Pompadour bed, typing witty missives to a dangerously sexy man who hadn’t the faintest idea she was wearing flannel pajamas and woolly socks instead of a few wisps of satin and lace.

  Okay, so maybe it was hard to find a suitably languorous position when you were wedged between a toy poodle and your laptop, but in her mind’s eye she was draped voluptuously across the pillows while kind indirect lighting turned her pale skin to pure alabaster and her—

  Mail!

  TO: JerseyGirl@njshore.net

  FROM: FireGuy@njshore.net

  DATE: 6 December

  SUBJECT: Re: Great minds

  You wouldn’t think the snow was beautiful if you’d been turned around at the bridge. Solid ice. I’m bunking at O’Malley’s tonight. But I know what you mean—I stood out on the dock for a few minutes and I felt like I was in a cathedral.

  At Christmas the one sure thing with kids is that if you hide it, they’ll find it. The only thing to do is ask one of your friends to hide the samovar and don’t let Hannah visit their house until after Christmas.

  I’d be happy to take it off your hands.

  He wanted to take it off her hands? What did that mean? He had probably only answered her note because he still wanted to wrap his grubby paws around that samovar.

  And look. He didn’t respond to her breakfast invitation. That wasn’t a good sign. She’d bet Gina never had to ask him twice to . . .

  Oh, wait. Gina said they’d never slept together.

  This was getting very confusing.

  WHY THE HELL did he type that stupid line about taking the samovar off her hands? What kind of dumbass wiseguy garbage was that anyway? It made him sound like he was chatting her up in e-mail so he could snag the teapot away from her.

  She was taking a long time to answer. Maybe she’d turned away from the screen in disgust, then logged off.

  No, there she was. JerseyGirl, right there in his in box, waiting to tell him where to get off.

  TO: FireGuy@njshore.net

  FROM: JerseyGirl@njshore.net

  DATE: 6 December

  SUBJECT: Re: Re: Great minds

  LOL! Nice try, but no cigar. It’s stashed in the back of Rose’s closet right now. Believe me, nobody in her right mind would EVER try snooping around in Rose’s closet without a search warrant and an armed guard.

  Where is Kelly while you’re stuck at O’Malley’s? If you don’t want her to be alone, God knows we have plenty of extra rooms. I’d be glad to walk over and get her.

  Let me know, okay?

  Maddy

  She seemed to feel he could fend for himself (which rankled a little), but her concern for Kelly touched him more deeply than he might care to admit under normal, non-blizzard circumstances. So he hadn’t been kidding himself. They had connected that morning in some way that went beyond teapots and breakfast at Julie’s.

  He’d been around too long—and seen too much—to be wrong about that.

  TAP. TAP. TAP. Maddy almost jackknifed off the bed at the sound of the knock at her door.

  “Madelyn, are you awake?”

  Rose’s voice, soft and curious, floated through the closed door.

  Maddy waited for her usual Pavlov’s dog reaction to the sound. Normally her stomach would clench, her shoulders would lift up to ear level, and her adrenaline would surge in a fight-or-flight wave of readiness.

  Nothing. No stomach pains. No adrenaline. Just an odd little ripple
of familial warmth.

  “Come in,” she said, just loud enough to be heard. Hannah was a light sleeper who seemed to hear through walls.

  Rose opened the door and stepped into the room.

  “Did you notice that power outage a few minutes ago?” Rose had washed off her makeup, brushed her hair back into a no-nonsense nighttime look, and changed into a nightgown and robe. She looked twenty years younger than she had any right to look.

  “You couldn’t miss it,” Maddy said. “I think we’d better make sure the flashlights are all working.”

  “Not to worry,” Rose said. She reminded Maddy that there were flashlights with fresh batteries in both night-stands. “And don’t worry about Hannah’s room. The night-lights are battery-operated. I change them the first of every month, so we’re in good shape.”

  Priscilla awoke from her deep sleep, noticed Rose standing near the foot of the bed, and began to thump her tail against the mattress in greeting.

  Rose’s left eyebrow shot up, but her smile was warm as she scratched the puppy under her tiny chin. “You let her sleep in the bed with you.”

  “Of course not,” Maddy said, making her eyes all wide and innocent. “Where would you get that idea?”

  Rose settled lightly on the edge of the mattress as she stroked Priscilla. “There’s a B&B near Kennebunkport in Maine for pet lovers only. Each room comes with a dog or cat of your choice to cuddle with.”

  Maddy laughed. “I like that idea. I don’t know how we functioned before we found Priscilla.”

  “You always wanted a puppy when you were little.”

  “And you always said no.”

  “I wonder why,” Rose mused. “For the life of me I don’t know what my reason was.”

  The chime announcing new mail sounded. Rose tilted her head in the direction of the laptop. “One of your West Coast friends?”

  It would be so easy to say yes and let it go at that. “No,” she said. “It’s from Aidan O’Malley.”

  If Rose was surprised she didn’t let on. “You two seemed to get along quite well today.”