He answered on the first ring and they had made their arrangements before Hannah finished washing her hands. He would pick her up at the Candlelight in fifteen minutes. Her father would probably blow a fuse when she told him she wouldn’t be driving home with him, but it would be too late for her to call Seth and cancel.
One of the few good things about loving a guy who didn’t have a cell phone.
“So where is this special toy you’ve been telling me about?’ she asked when Hannah came out of the bathroom. “I hope it’s Barbie. I loved Barbie when I was your age.” In fact she probably still had some of the Barbie doll clothes Aunt Claire had made for her up in the attic. They would make a nice surprise for Hannah, if she could find them.
“It’s not Barbie,” Hannah said, slipping her hand into Kelly’s. “It’s a secret.”
“A secret?” She chuckled. “I had lots of secrets when I was your age.”
“But this is a real secret,” Hannah said in that serious little voice of hers. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“Not anyone at all?”
“No.” Hannah looked up at her. “Promise?”
“Okay,” said Kelly. “I promise.”
Hannah pushed open the door to the last room on the left and pulled Kelly inside.
Kelly gasped when she saw the acres of silk and satin on the walls, draped over the bed, the plush chaise longue, the soft throws, the outrageously fluffy pillows, the scented candles, the beautiful oil paintings, the sense of absolute contentment that seemed to radiate from every corner of the room.
“Wow!” Kelly managed, as she drank it all in. “This isn’t your room, is it, Hannah?” If it was, she wanted to be adopted and fast.
“Nope. It’s Grandma Rose’s.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t be in here,” Kelly said, reluctantly inching toward the door.
“’s okay,” Hannah said, grabbing Kelly’s hand and tugging her back inside. “This is where I keep my toy.”
Had she been such a little drama queen when she was Hannah’s age?
She watched as Hannah slid open the door to Rose’s closet and revealed a rainbow of color organized with the precision of a drill team. Working for Rose was going to be a trip. Growing up without a mother, she had never learned all of these secret female things that her friends seemed to understand without even trying. Aunt Claire had tried her best to fill in the gap, but once the troubles with Kathleen started and then the accident that killed Uncle Billy—well, there wasn’t a whole lot of time or energy left over to teach her niece how to organize her closet.
At least Hannah had Maddy and Rose to help her figure out how to be a girl. Not that her father hadn’t done a terrific job, because he had, but the last few years since the accident had been hard on both of them. She didn’t blame him for it. He didn’t go looking to be in a terrible accident, and he sure didn’t go looking to lose his brother. But that didn’t change the fact that just when Kelly had needed him most, he hadn’t been there for her to turn to, and deep down inside, in a place she never let anyone see, she felt very small.
And very alone.
Hannah carefully pushed aside the bottom of a gorgeous teal silk robe that almost screamed out to be touched. She reached deep into the closet and pulled out a Macy’s shopping bag.
“Hannah,” she warned, “it’s just a few weeks before Christmas. You’d better not go snooping around. You might find one of your presents and ruin your surprise.”
“Santa doesn’t leave presents in Grandma’s closet.”
Oops. Kelly quickly regrouped. “You’re right. Of course he doesn’t.” She bent down near Hannah. “So what have you got?”
“Close your eyes.”
“Hannah, that’s silly.”
“Close your eyes. That’s how my mommy always does it.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll close my eyes.” Kids really took their toys seriously.
“Put out your hands.”
She put out her hands.
“What—?” The weight surprised her. The chill of metal against her skin surprised her even more. But what she saw when she opened her eyes was the biggest surprise of all.
Grandma Irene’s samovar.
Good Samaritan Hospital
The nurse leaned over Irene’s bed and smoothed the sea-foam-green blanket over her chest. “I heard the snowplows a little while ago, Irene. We should be able get you back to Shore View in the morning.”
Please call my grandson. I need to talk to him before it’s too late.
“Is that blanket too scratchy against your skin, Irene? Here. Let me see what I can do.”
The nurse folded back the blanket, then spread a well-washed sheet over Irene. “There,” she said, repositioning the blanket. “That’s better.”
The bed swayed gently beneath Irene as she rode the swells. The sea was calm tonight. The black sky overhead was spangled with stars. She was sailing away from what remained of her world, trusting her future—and her baby’s life—to a man she barely knew.
THEY WERE MARRIED as Nikolai lay dying, married in the burned-out shell of a once great house near St. Petersburg. Irina’s knees sank into the blood-soaked ground as she knelt beside the father of her child and prayed for a miracle.
Her cousin Seriozha, a priest, heard their vows, made before God, and united them moments before Kolya drew in his last breath. Irina had seen terrible things in the weeks before that moment, the murder of her parents and her sisters and brothers, the destruction of her home and the world she knew, but nothing had prepared her for the enormity of this moment. Nothing. She felt as if someone had torn her heart from her chest.
When you steal a woman’s dreams, you have taken everything of value.
Seriozha reached across Irina and gently closed Kolya’s eyes. He murmured familiar prayers of comfort and eternal life, but she felt nothing beyond a yawning emptiness that seemed to suck the air from her lungs. “You must go,” he said. “There isn’t much time.” He had escaped the first onslaught against the church and the nobility, but that would soon change, for he had vowed to avenge the murder of their family and her beloved Kolya, whose only sin had been to love her.
“Go,” he said. “There are others like you headed for the sea. Join them. Leave this place behind. It is your only salvation.”
Go where? This was her world. Her life. She knew nothing of the world beyond. There was nothing left but fear.
And the baby inside her belly.
“THERE’S A PROBLEM?” The doctor’s shoes squeaked as he stepped into Irene’s tiny cubicle. “Vital signs seem to be holding steady. She’s not spiking a fever. No pain. So what’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure,” the nurse said. “I think she’s trying to talk.”
There was a prolonged silence. Irene struggled to form the words, but only a whistle of air passed her lips.
“I’m on break,” the doctor said in a clipped tone of voice. “Don’t call me again unless it’s important. I want to get out of here on time tonight.”
His shoes squeaked against the floor tiles as he stormed away.
“Bastard,” the nurse muttered, then laughed softly. “If you can hear me, Irene, I’ll bet you’d agree. Men are all bastards, aren’t they?”
HE WAS THE kindest man she had ever known, and he had deserved so much more than she had been able to give him.
Michael O’Malley fell in love with Irina the first moment he saw her sleeping in a doorway near the docks in Trelleborg, Sweden. She was terrified when he approached, all frail bones in dirty clothing with a belly beginning to grow big with another man’s child. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life, more beautiful than the sea or the stars.
What began as a gesture of kindness from a seaman to a stranger swiftly became much more. Within days he had offered her his name and his love, with the promise that he would care for her child as if it were his own.
“I will never love you,” she told him in a voice as dead as her dr
eams. In that same measured voice she told him her story. All of it. She would never tell it again to anyone. The risks were too great. She had heard tales of reprisals against the Russian nobility that extended far beyond the borders of her homeland. Better to bury the past the same way she had buried everyone and everything she had ever loved.
She would care only for the child.
But Michael O’Malley was an optimist, and he believed that in a world filled with sorrow, love could work miracles. He believed that his love was strong enough for both of them and that sooner or later her heart would open up to its magic. He took her back to Ireland with him, where his beautiful young wife gave birth to a golden-haired son with eyes as blue as the sea.
She loved that boy, and even after a second son was born years later in America, it was the blue-eyed boy who claimed her heart. When that boy died on the beach at Normandy, something in Irene died on that beach with him, and there was nothing Michael O’Malley could do to set things right.
He died eight years later knowing that the wife he worshiped had never loved him in return.
“MICHAEL!”
Kelly was so engrossed in inspecting every inch of the samovar that the sound of Hannah’s voice took a moment to register.
“Oh, Hannah!” She put the teapot down on the floor next to her. “Did you hurt yourself? What’s wrong?”
The child’s tiny face was the picture of profound sorrow. Kelly felt a shiver run up her spine. No four-year-old should look so grief-stricken. In a perfect world she would never have reason.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Hannah. Please!” Should she call downstairs for Maddy or Rose? You could almost feel waves of sorrow spilling over both of them, flooding the room.
Maybe it was the samovar that was upsetting her. Kids could be really weird about the strangest things. Dolls took on lives of their own. Monsters hid under beds and in closets. Who knew what a child’s imagination could make of an exotic teapot with swirls and squiggles and strange markings on the bottom? Maybe she was afraid Aladdin himself would come swirling out of the spout and take her away on his magic carpet.
Reluctantly Kelly slid the samovar back into the shopping bag, then stowed the whole thing in Rose’s closet. Touching that samovar had almost been like touching a bit of her family’s past. So much of their history had been shrouded in half-truths. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know. It’s over. What difference does it make. Only her father shared her need to understand why the O’Malleys were the way they were, and so far he hadn’t had any more luck than she had at uncovering the truth.
It probably sounded crazy—and she wasn’t about to tell anyone, not even Seth—but when Hannah placed the samovar in her hands, she had felt Grandma Irene’s presence in the room with them. If only Hannah hadn’t got so upset. She would have loved to see where that sense of connection led.
Hannah’s tears began to subside, and Kelly felt a surge of relief. She had done some baby-sitting in the past but not enough that she felt confident in her ability to calm a little girl’s fears. Another two seconds and she would have been forced to bring in the reinforcements. On impulse she reached over and hugged the child close.
“Why don’t we go back downstairs,” she suggested. “I’ll bet your Grandma Rose has something wonderful ready for dessert.”
“You promised,” Hannah said. More of the little girl was beginning to peek through the cloud of adult sadness that had descended over her.
“Promised what?”
“You said you wouldn’t tell.”
So it was the samovar that had upset Hannah.
“You promised,” Hannah said again, her blue eyes blazing up at Kelly. “You said it was a secret.”
“You’re right,” Kelly said, relaxing again now that she knew what the problem had been. “It’s our secret.”
“I’ll let you play with it again,” Hannah said, putting her hand in Kelly’s as they started downstairs to rejoin the others.
“I’m glad,” Kelly said. She wanted to take some photographs of the markings and see if she could solve the puzzle. Not that it mattered to anyone in her family but her. Still, it would be nice to know that something of her family’s history, besides bitterness and secrets, had managed to find its way home again.
Then again maybe it wasn’t Grandma Irene’s samovar after all. Maybe it was just another fancy teapot that had found its way onto the auction site. Just some strange coincidence that puzzled you for a while, then faded away.
She wasn’t buying that for a minute. She didn’t need an expert to tell her what she knew deep down in her bones. That was the samovar Grandpa Michael had bought for Irene over fifty years ago, the same one that had graced the lobby of the original O’Malley’s, the same one that was featured in newspaper articles and the photo that hung over the cash register at the bar. Somehow it had found its way back to Paradise Point and into the hands of a little girl who seemed to understand, same as Kelly did, that it wasn’t blind luck that had brought them all together.
It was fate.
Chapter Twenty-four
“YOU DON’T HAVE to be out here,” Maddy said to Aidan as Priscilla sniffed delicately at a mound of pristine white snow. “A sane person would be inside by the fire.”
“You looked like you could use some help controlling the beast.”
“I’m not sure Priscilla would appreciate being called a beast.” She smiled as she said it. The thought of a two-pound poodle being considered unmanageable delighted her.
He grinned. “Just an observation.”
It was one of those crystal-clear winter nights whose beauty took your breath away. The sky was a canopy of black silk studded with diamonds, an artist’s rendition of what a winter sky should be. A slender crescent of moon rose high overhead, adding its silvery luster to the world below.
They watched in silence for a while as Priscilla scrabbled around on her canine reconnaissance mission. Her paws crunched their way through the fragile mantle of ice, and she yelped as she sank deep into the snow.
Maddy rescued the puppy, then placed her back on a cleared portion of the driveway. Seconds later the sound of laughter drifted toward them from the front of the house, followed by the roar of a car engine with something to prove.
“He needs a new muffler,” Aidan said as he looked up at the stars. “He’s not going to pass inspection with that load of rust.”
“Kelly’s boyfriend?”
“Feels more like one of the family. He’s at our house more often than I am.”
“I got the feeling you were surprised to see him at the door.”
“‘Surprised’ is one way to put it.”
“He seems like a nice kid.”
“He is a nice kid,” Aidan said. “I just wish—” He caught himself. “Forget it.”
“You wish they weren’t so serious?”
“It shows?”
“A little.” She paused. “Okay, a lot, at least it did this evening.” She tried to project Hannah a dozen years into the future, but only managed to conjure up a four-year-old in a prom dress.
“The whole thing goes by faster than you can imagine,” he said, bending down to pick up a shivering Priscilla. “When I was where you are now, it felt like things would always be the way they were at that moment. I’d always know where she was and who she was with.” He laughed softly at his folly. “I always figured her life would fit neatly into mine for safekeeping. Then it seems like I turned away for a minute and she grew up while I wasn’t looking.”
“You did a great job with Kelly.”
“I only followed her lead.”
“You keep saying she did all the work, but I don’t buy it. Kids like Kelly don’t just happen. I’d say you must’ve done something right along the way.”
“I’ve pretty much been missing in action the last couple of years,” he said with a matter-of-fact honesty that caught her attention. “The fire at the warehouse forced her to grow up a hell of a lot faster than I would
have liked. She took care of the house, of me, kept up with her school-work, and somewhere along the way my little girl turned into a young woman I don’t really know anymore.”
“You know what scares me?” Maddy said. “What if Hannah and I end up the way Rose and I did—” The words caught in her throat. “What if she can’t wait to put three thousand miles between us?”
“You’d do everything you could to bridge that gap.”
“And if I failed?”
“You’d try harder.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It isn’t. And it doesn’t always work. But what choice do you have if you love her?”
She thought of Rose, of the dozens of phone calls last summer and early fall, of the letters and e-mails. She thought of the gates and fences, the high walls and slammed doors she had put in Rose’s way. Nothing had stopped her. Rose had been relentless in her drive to somehow bring them together.
She had been cold with Rose, downright hostile and rude at times, but that only made her mother try harder. Was that love? She wasn’t sure. When she was a little girl, she had believed love was a mother who was there when you got home from school each day, a mother who never missed a school play because she was closing on a condo down in Cape May or showing a town house near Absecon. A child couldn’t possibly understand the responsibilities shouldered by a single mother. Maddy was in the same position now as Rose had been, and slowly she was beginning to recognize all that Rose had accomplished.
But that was years ago when Maddy was little and Rose was struggling to make ends meet. Where was Rose when Maddy was pregnant with Hannah, when things were falling apart with Tom, when her baby was born? Business commitments seemed a sorry excuse for missing one of the biggest events in a woman’s life: the day her daughter gave birth to a daughter of her own.
You were the one who left, Maddy. You were the one who picked up her marbles and walked away.
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