Shore Lights

by Barbara Bretton

  “She’s stronger than she looks,” Rose said.

  “Hold this.” Maddy thrust the shopping bag toward Tom.

  “What is it?”

  “A very long story,” Maddy said as she reached for her daughter. If Hannah recognized her she gave no indication. She recoiled from Maddy’s touch, murmuring something under her breath, words and phrases that made no sense at all to anyone in the room. Maddy’s fear escalated.

  “I should have told you I gave Kelly the teapot,” Rose said. “I wasn’t thinking clearly this morning.”

  Maddy shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, Mom. None of us was thinking clearly.” She pulled Hannah’s struggling body against hers and held tight.

  Tom reached into the bag and pulled out the samovar.

  “Put it back!” Rose snapped. “It’s a present for . . .” Her gaze angled toward Hannah who was squirming in Maddy’s arms.

  “She knows,” Maddy said over her daughter’s shoulder. “She took Kelly up to your room to show it to her last night.”

  “It looks like Aladdin’s lamp,” Tom said. “Bet she loves it.”

  Show it to her, Kelly had said. She loves it so much.

  “Come over here,” she said to Tom. “Hold the samovar up so Hannah can see it.”

  He did as she told him. No questions asked.

  “You have to hurry up and get better, Hannah,” Maddy crooned to her daughter. She felt light as parchment in her arms. She could almost feel her spirit oozing out through her pores and floating away. “We’ll have a tea party with your beautiful magic lamp . . . you can invite Aladdin and Jasmine . . . I’ll even let you wear your Jasmine pajamas to bed every night next week . . . just open your eyes, Hannah . . . come back to us . . . please come back . . .”

  Please, God, don’t take her from me . . . please!

  “Maddy.” Tom’s voice was low, urgent. “She’s opening her eyes again . . . I think she’s coming out of it!”

  Rose’s sob filled the room. Bill coughed loudly and looked down at his boots.

  Maddy’s heart beat so quickly she had trouble catching her breath.

  She laid Hannah down against the pillows and took her daughter’s hands in hers.

  “Come on, honey, you’re almost . . . just open your eyes . . . that’s a girl . . . open your eyes and everything’s going to be all right . . .”

  “. . . take care . . .” Hannah said softly. “. . . take care of my blue-eyed boy.”

  “Blue-eyed boy?” Bill mumbled. “What blue-eyed boy?”

  “Must be one of her dolls,” Rose said.

  A doll, the postman, Brad Pitt. Maddy didn’t care. All she cared about was that her daughter was coming back to her. Hannah’s eyes fluttered open. Her gaze drifted from the ceiling to the IV pole to the samovar gleaming at the foot of the bed. She lifted her eyes to Maddy and for a second Maddy saw the woman inside her little girl, and a shiver of recognition rippled through her body and was gone before she could acknowledge it.

  Maddy’s father stepped out into the hallway to get a nurse, and when he told the crowd of friends and relatives the good news you could hear the cheers from Paradise Point to Philadelphia.

  Aidan cried when he heard. And he wasn’t alone. Kelly, Seth, Rose DiFalco, her sisters, their children, their children’s children, Maddy’s father, Tommy from the bar, Jack Bernstein, the good folks who frequented O’Malley’s, Tom and Lisa—they all cried. Sprawled on leatherette sofas, taking turns in the one comfortable chair, alternating runs to the local Wawa for coffee and bottled water and bagels with cream cheese, the crowd of friends and family had stayed there through the night. They had come together to send Irene on her way with all flags flying and they stayed to make sure Hannah didn’t leave them before her time.

  He had the feeling Grandma Irene would have liked the way things turned out.

  Her last words had freed him. Did she know? He hoped so. He wished he’d had one minute longer with her so he could thank her. Love had changed everything.

  The Loewensteins and the Armaghs dropped by with the keys to the Candlelight. Rose, detail-conscious, devoted-to-her-work Rose DiFalco, had completely forgotten about her home and her guests. The crowd roared with laughter at Rose’s reaction to finding out her paid guests had scrubbed the kitchen, the bathrooms, done three loads of wash and walked Priscilla before locking up.

  She told them they were welcome back any time, on the house—and next time they wouldn’t have to do the cleaning up afterward.

  No doubt about it: A new world was forming right before his eyes.

  Maddy saw it, too. She saw that this was where she belonged. In this town. With these people. As part of a loving, brawling, imperfect family who loved her and loved her daughter, too. As part of a circle of strangers who had become friends overnight because they freely gave the one gift that mattered: their hearts.

  Hannah was chattering up a storm, once again the happy outgoing little girl she had been before grown-up problems had turned her life upside down. Love could work miracles. All Maddy had to do was look around her for proof.

  “Nothing wrong with her imagination,” Rose said dryly as Hannah launched into the third retelling of her story about an old lady who told her to go home where she belonged. “That child’s going to be a writer one day, you mark my words.”

  Hannah looked at the samovar that now rested on the nightstand and almost yawned. “I don’t like Aladdin anymore,” she announced. “I want Barbie’s Dream House.”

  Which was when Maddy knew everything was going to be all right.

  She slipped from the room with the laughter and high spirits still ringing in her ears. Relief had drained her. Joy had just about knocked her flat.

  She sank onto the lumpy sofa in the visitors’ lounge and closed her eyes.

  Aidan was seated next to her when she opened them. She liked the feel of his arm around her shoulders, the touch of his fingers against her upper arm. His warmth. His strength. His loving heart. She rested her head against his chest. The beat of his heart, the smell of his skin, everything.

  “I owe you breakfast,” she said, stifling a yawn.

  “There’s a bagel over there on the table,” he said, his voice a pleasant rumble beneath her ear. “How does that sound?”

  “I mean a real breakfast.” Another stifled yawn. “Eggs, coffee, the whole nine yards.”

  Neither one of them moved. There was so much ahead of them, so many things that needed doing. A memorial service to plan. A little girl to take home where she belonged.

  A future to explore.

  “I’m not in any rush,” Aidan said. “How about you?”

  Maddy smiled into his sweater. “No rush at all,” she answered.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  O’Malley’s—three days later

  IRENE O’MALLEY WAS laid to rest on Tuesday morning in the small cemetery behind Our Lady of Lourdes and it seemed to Aidan that all of Paradise Point showed up to say goodbye.

  That night the doors to O’Malley’s were thrown open and the drinks were on the house.

  “Don’t let anyone say we don’t give our own a big send-off,” Aidan said as he pulled another couple of drafts and slid them down the length of the bar toward Mel Perry and his wife.

  “She was one in a million,” Rose DiFalco said, sipping her margarita. “We’ll never see another like her.”

  “The best,” her sister Lucy said. “She blazed the trail for the rest of us.”

  “Salt of the earth,” Jack Bernstein’s father said over the rim of his Guinness. “Her word was her bond. You don’t find that anymore.”

  Aidan winked at Kelly, who was sitting at a table with Seth, Gina, and Tommy Kennedy’s oldest granddaughter. The stories about Grandma Irene had been flowing more freely than the Guinness. He had heard from people in five states, old friends and colleagues who had read about Irene’s passing and felt moved to offer their prayers and, almost to a person, an anecdote about Irene’s generosity
. He wished he had a tape recorder to capture the stories. The side of his grandmother he had first glimpsed the other night at the Candlelight through the eyes of Rose and Lucy and their guests was becoming more real with every memory shared.

  Kelly stood up and walked over to the bar. “Gotta go,” she said. “I’m baby-sitting.”

  “Hannah?”

  “Just for an hour. Maddy said she has something for you that she wants to deliver in person.”

  The possibilities were enough to drive a man to his knees but he wasn’t about to speculate on them with his daughter.

  “Take the truck,” he said, tossing her the keys. “There’s still a lot of snow out there.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  She leaned across the bar and hugged him and his heart melted. This time next year she would be up in New York City, a student at Columbia, taking her first giant steps into a future that didn’t include him.

  He watched as Seth got her coat and held it for her while she slipped her arms into the sleeves. Kelly looked up at him like the guy had hung the moon. Part of him hated the kid’s guts and would gladly ship him off to a South Pacific atoll for the rest of his life. The other part grudgingly admitted his little girl had chosen well.

  “No, it doesn’t get any easier,” Rose DiFalco said as he turned back to the bar.

  “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

  “Maddy’s thirty-two and she can still give me sleepless nights.”

  She gave him one of those mother looks he had come to recognize and he was smart enough to keep his big mouth shut. It was still early in the game. You didn’t declare yourself to the mother before you’d taken the daughter out on the first date. Not even if the sound of the daughter’s voice made you feel like you were seventeen again and discovering it all for the first time.

  He poured the DiFalco girls another margarita each then pulled himself a Guinness.

  “To Hannah,” he said, raising his glass.

  “To Hannah,” Rose said.

  Lucy touched her glass to theirs. “To life!” she said. “Accept no substitute.”

  The Candlelight

  “I won’t be more than an hour,” Maddy said as she threw on her coat and grabbed for the shopping bag and her purse. “If Hannah needs anything—”

  “Don’t worry,” Kelly said, laughing. “Believe me, I know the number for the bar.”

  “Not that I think you’ll have any problems,” Maddy said, lingering at the door, “but just in case—”

  “Ms. Bainbridge, the snow’s blowing into the house.”

  Maddy glanced over her shoulder. At least a quarter-inch of the white stuff covered the tops of her boots. “Okay, well then I’d better get going.” She looked from Kelly to Seth. “There’s plenty of food in the fridge. Rose went a little crazy for Hannah’s welcome home dinner. Help yourselves. You’d be doing us a favor.”

  Kelly pointed down at the snow trailing across Rose’s expensive runner. “Ms. DiFalco will have a cow.”

  “You’re right. She will have a cow.” She checked for her wallet, her keys, her composure. “I’m out of here. Remember if you—”

  “Call you at O’Malley’s. I know!”

  Maddy slid her way down the steps and across the yard to her car. Kelly and Seth must think she was totally nuts. Maybe she was. The thought of seeing Aidan, even for a few minutes, made her feel downright giddy with happiness.

  “Get a grip,” she told herself as she started the car. “You’re a grown woman. Start acting like one!”

  This wasn’t even their first date. That wouldn’t happen until the weekend. All she was doing was driving over to O’Malley’s to raise a glass to Irene and return the samovar to its rightful place of honor over the bar, where it belonged. Hannah’s interest in it had been short-lived and who could blame her? The final results weren’t in yet, but the hospital lab was reasonably sure there had been some kind of chemical reaction between the chlorinated tap water and the sea-damaged metal finish inside the samovar. Hannah’s pretend tea had triggered a dramatic allergic reaction in the little girl that unfortunately had presented atypical symptoms that led them down the wrong path. If Kelly hadn’t mentioned that Hannah drank water from the samovar they might never have made a connection at all.

  Maddy thought the doctors had seemed a little too eager to jump on this explanation, especially in light of the fact that Hannah had already regained consciousness long before the first test results on the samovar came back, but she wasn’t quibbling. Let them call Hannah’s recovery the result of medical sleuthing but she knew better and so did everyone who had been in the little girl’s room when it happened. Even Rose agreed that something else had been at work that night, something more powerful than medicine, more enduring than magic. Love had brought them all together in that room and it was love that had brought Hannah back to them. Nothing would ever convince Maddy otherwise.

  She glanced over at the samovar on the seat next to her. There was little doubt in her mind that this was the same teapot that had graced the original O’Malley’s more than fifty years ago. She had closely examined the scan Aidan had sent her, comparing every leaf and vine with the samovar she had won at the on-line auction and, as far as she could tell, it was a perfect match.

  The thought that the samovar was about to come full circle sent a ripple of wonder up her spine. She wished Aidan could have presented the samovar to Irene but seeing it displayed in a place of honor at O’Malley’s, where it belonged, would be almost good enough.

  It wasn’t a magic lamp. It wasn’t even a workable teapot any longer. But somehow that samovar had managed to link a part of Irene’s past to Aidan’s present and now it was pointing toward a future that suddenly seemed brighter than Maddy had ever dreamed.

  O’Malley’s

  Aidan sensed Maddy’s presence before he saw her. An awareness that began at the base of his spine and radiated outward like joy.

  “Where ya going?” Barney Kurkowski from the fire station hollered. “The party’s just getting started.”

  Aidan didn’t break stride, just elbowed his way through the throng, and out the back door.

  He didn’t feel the cold. He didn’t feel the ever-present ache in his leg and hip. The snow felt like summer rain. The icy steps meant nothing to him because he was walking on air.

  Her coat was buttoned all wrong. Her scarf was askew. Her knit cap was pulled down over her eyebrows. Her eyelashes were heavy with snow. Maddy was lugging her mammoth purse and a shopping bag that bulged like the samovar that had started it all. Her nose was Rudolph red and her eyes watered like his leaky kitchen faucet. Her breath billowed before her in the cold night air like the sails on a schooner. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life and, just like that, in the space of a heartbeat, he fell the rest of the way into love.

  “IT’S TEN DEGREES out there,” Rose muttered as she and Lucy watched from the bar window. “They’ll catch their death.”

  “They won’t notice a thing,” Lucy said. “They’re in love.”

  “In love?” She looked at her sister and frowned. “They barely know each other.”

  “That’s how it was for you and Bill,” Lucy reminded her. “Why shouldn’t it be the same for your daughter?”

  Rose sighed. “You see how that turned out.”

  “Yes,” said Lucy with a knowing laugh, “I certainly do.”

  Rose had the good grace to blush.

  They heard the sound of voices drifting toward them from the street. Aidan’s low rumble followed by Maddy’s delighted ripple of laughter.

  “We shouldn’t spy on them,” Rose said.

  “We’re not spying,” Lucy said. “We’re family.”

  Maddy and Aidan stood together in a pool of street light. Their embrace was so seamless they cast a single shadow across the snow. He brushed a lock of hair off her forehead. She touched his cheek with her hand. Simple gestures from t
he vocabulary of lovers that still had the power to break your heart if you let them.

  The last few days had been filled with moments of such pure happiness Rose thought her heart would break open and spill diamonds and rubies at her feet. Hannah’s recovery. The miraculous change in her relationship with Maddy.

  Bill Bainbridge.

  Bill would be back for the Christmas holidays. No promises had been made. They were far beyond that. Neither one could say what the future held for them but she knew beyond question that the only man she had ever loved would always be a part of it.

  “You’re crying,” Lucy said as Maddy and Aidan dissolved into a kiss. “And here I thought this was what they call a happy ending.”

  “No,” said Rose as she took her sister’s hand, “I think it’s what they call a great beginning.”

  Author’s Note

  MY MOTHER’S LAST words to me the day before she died were, “I love you.”

  My last words to her were, “I love you, too.”

  I think about that sometimes, about how lucky I am to have that memory to hold on to now that she’s gone. Two thousand one was a difficult year for my family. My father’s six-year battle with cancer was nearing the end when life threw a nasty surprise our way. My mother, my healthy happy mother, was diagnosed out of nowhere with rapidly progressing terminal cancer and our lives changed in an instant. We had forty-six days to say everything that needed to be said, forty-six days to store up enough memories to see us through.

  I was with her when she died. I held her hand and felt the birdlike flutter of distant wings that was her fading pulse beat. Five months later I sat beside my father when it was his turn to say goodbye. A moment before he drew his last breath, his eyes opened and a smile—such a wonderful smile!—lit up his face. His gaze was fixed on a point somewhere over my left shoulder. He opened his arms wide and he cried out, “Visy! Visy!” (his pet name for my mother) and he died before the sound faded from the room.