Chances Are Page 23

  “I’m a pretty decent baker,” Maddy said in a gesture of solidarity. “I can help with some of the baking.”

  “I can count,” Claire shot back, “if you need some help crunching numbers.”

  “Hey,” Maddy said, raising her hands in the air between them. “I’m trying to help.”

  “I don’t need any help, thanks.”

  Maybe we could serve soup if you accepted a little. But she didn’t say it, even though the words were bubbling up like a pot of Manhattan clam.

  “Hey, girls.” Julie’s timing saved them from a possible Alexis v. Krystle moment. “I just pulled out a fresh batch of blueberry muffins. How about I top off your coffee and bring out a couple.”

  “You’re being awfully nice today, Jules.” Maddy grinned up at the older woman. “Buttering up the competition?”

  “Competition?” Julie twirled her pencil between index and middle fingers. “Your frou-frou tea shop won’t be any competition for me.”

  “Thanks a lot.” Claire bristled with righteous indignation. “I think we’ll do—”

  “Claire, she was joking,” Maddy broke in before her future sister-in-law went too far. “Right, Julie?”

  “Yeah,” said Julie with a puzzled expression on her face. “What the hell else would I be doing? You’ll get the water-cress sandwich set, and I’ll pull in the BLTs on white toast. Not much overlap, if you ask me.”

  “You didn’t need to apologize for me,” Claire snapped when Julie went off to get the muffins.

  “I didn’t,” Maddy said, struggling to rein in her rising temper. “I was trying to keep things from going too far.”

  “Listen.” Claire leaned forward, nervous energy practically jumping from her body. “I really don’t need you to intercede for me with Julie or anyone else for that matter.”

  “Don’t worry,” Maddy said. “It won’t happen again.”

  Julie dropped a platter of warm blueberry muffins down on the table between them, topped off their coffees.

  “Thanks, Jules.” Maddy reached for a muffin.

  “The muffins look great,” Claire said with a forced smile. “Thanks.”

  Julie shot her a look, then walked away without a word.

  Maddy knew a well-placed “I told you so” wouldn’t help familial relations, but the temptation was almost overwhelming.

  Claire jumped in surprise when a dark-haired man walked into the café and took a seat at the counter.

  “Are you okay?” Maddy asked. “You jump every time somebody walks through the door.”

  “Fifth of the day.” Claire raised her coffee cup by way of explanation.

  “You might want to consider decaf,” Maddy said. “You’re practically coming out of your skin.”

  The front door squeaked yet again—clearly Julie was having herself a great morning—and Kelly, arms piled high with books, walked in and headed for a booth in the back.

  “Kelly!” Claire called out. “Over here, honey.”

  Kelly looked around. Her gaze landed on Claire, then slid to Maddy, and she smiled. It wasn’t quite the thousand-megawatt smile Maddy knew and loved, but who could blame her. She probably hadn’t expected to find her aunt and future stepmother lying in wait. The girl was seventeen. At that age you would rather pretend you’d been raised by wolves than acknowledge any of your relatives.

  But Aidan had done his job well. Her smile never wavered as she walked over to their table. “Hi,” she said, holding her books close to her chest. “What’re you guys doing here?”

  Maddy opened her mouth to answer, but Claire was too quick for her. “You first, Kelly Ann. Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “Free period,” Kelly said with a glance in Maddy’s direction. She was probably looking for a kindred spirit.

  Or the nearest exit.

  So am I, Kel. So am I.

  Maddy made a show of checking her watch. “Rosie’s going to have my head on a platter,” she said, gathering up her papers into an untidy bundle. “I’m on latrine duty this afternoon.” The PBS crew was moving out, and a group of seniors from Long Island were moving in, which meant major housekeeping chores were on tap. Lucy expected her to drop by for a fitting that afternoon, as well, but that was looking a little dicey.

  “Are you excited about Saturday?” Kelly asked. “My father showed me an on-line brochure—wow!”

  Claire gave her one of those speculative, borderline paranoid glances that seemed to be her trademark. “What’s going on Saturday, and why is it in a brochure?”

  “My dad and Maddy are going up to Spring Lake for the night. He found this great tower suite with a working fireplace and a balcony and an ocean view.”

  “That’s the way you live at The Candlelight,” Claire remarked. “Sounds like a busman’s holiday to me.”

  “Except this busman doesn’t have to clean the johns,” Maddy said, as good-naturedly as she could manage. She smiled up at Kelly, who was taking in the byplay, spoken and unspoken, between her aunt and future stepmother. “I told Hannah you were coming over on Saturday. She’s so excited.”

  “I thought you were coming over for supper on Saturday,” Claire said to her niece.

  “I said I’d try, Aunt Claire. I didn’t say for sure.”

  “You could have told me you’d changed your mind.”

  “I didn’t change my mind. I never said yes in the first place.”

  “I don’t like the way you’ve been acting lately, miss.” Claire was in full mother-as-general mode. “We need to sit down and have a long talk.”

  To Maddy’s horror, Kelly’s big blue eyes swam with tears. “I’m doing the best I can,” she snapped at her aunt. “I don’t know what else you want from me.”

  The door wasn’t more than fifteen feet away from where Maddy sat, pinned between Claire’s anger and Kelly’s hurt. Would they hate her if she jumped up, grabbed her papers, and made a run for it? They both were staring at her like they expected her to add something to the mix, but what on earth could she say that would make the slightest difference? She wasn’t part of the family, not yet at least, and she wasn’t sure if her natural tendency to take Kelly’s side was the right or wrong thing to do.

  Claire was the one with experience. She knew what worked with kids and what didn’t. Better to leave it to a woman who knew what she was doing, not to a woman who hadn’t a clue.

  She slid out of the booth and scooped up her papers and Day Runner. “Claire, try to be there by eight ten on Friday, if you can. We’ll go live at eight thirty-two. You’ll be our last drive-time segment.” She beamed a smile in Kelly’s general direction. “Grab one of those blueberry muffins while they’re warm, Kel. Jules outdid herself.”

  Cleaning johns at The Candlelight had never looked so good.

  THE DOOR HAD barely closed behind Maddy when Aunt Claire unleashed one of her snarky comments.

  “You and your father better get used to that,” she snapped as Maddy moved swiftly past the front window with a wave good-bye. “Leaving seems to be what she does best.”

  “That’s a rotten thing to say. You heard her. She has to get back to work.”

  “A word to the wise,” her aunt said, not backing down. “That one ducks the tough questions better than the White House. It’s a family trait.”

  It scared her the way her aunt always managed to zero in on exactly what she was thinking. Maddy was funny and warm and very understanding, but somehow every time Kelly was ready to spill her problems to her future stepmother, Maddy managed to put up an invisible barrier that made her stop short. Which was okay. It wasn’t like Kelly was Hannah’s age and really needed a mother to talk to.

  After all, wasn’t she the one other people came to when they needed help? Her father. Her aunt. Her friends. Everyone knew they could always rely on Kelly.

  Her aunt didn’t stop for breath. She leaped from complaining about Maddy to grilling Kelly about why she wasn’t in school, why she was there in the coffee shop in the middle of th
e morning, why nobody had told her about her dad and Maddy’s Spring Lake weekend.

  “I thought you knew,” Kelly said, hoping her aunt would forget she wasn’t answering any of her other questions. “It’s just one night. What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that there’s a bar to run. I wasn’t planning to work Saturday night, and now I’ll have to.”

  “So don’t work. It’s not like you’re going to be there much longer, right?”

  “I don’t like that tone of voice, Kel.”

  And maybe I don’t like being treated like a four-year-old. “If you have a problem with Maddy, why don’t you talk to her about it? I don’t see why I should be put in the middle.”

  “Nobody’s putting you in the middle. I was simply—”

  “Just because you’re unhappy doesn’t mean everyone else has to be unhappy, too.” The words spilled out before Kelly could stop them. She hadn’t meant to say them, but once they were out, she couldn’t pull them back. “Why can’t you just let things change without making everyone feel guilty about it?”

  She had seen her aunt angry before, and she had seen her hurt. But she had never seen her defeated. She looked like her world was about to come crashing down around her shoulders as she gathered up her notebooks and random sheets of paper, then slid out of the booth.

  “Aunt Claire, don’t go! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—” She reached out, but it was too late. Maddy wasn’t the only one with a talent for making an exit.

  “What’s with her this morning?” Julie asked as she deposited Kelly’s hot tea and dry toast in front of her. “She was jumping out of her skin every time the door opened.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “She did seem kind of frazzled, didn’t she?” Which was putting it mildly. And why would her aunt care who came and went from the coffee shop?

  “That’s one way to put it. She walked out without paying her bill.”

  Kelly reached for her tote bag. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You keep your money, sweetie. I’ll start a tab for her. That’s one woman I wouldn’t mind having something on.”

  So far, this wasn’t turning out to be one of her better mornings. After puking her guts out in the bathroom during gym class, all she had wanted to do was get as far away from the curious looks as possible. The last thing she’d expected was to walk into Julie’s and find Claire and Maddy sitting there, shooting eye daggers at each other. Aunt Claire’s radar was starting to pick up signs of trouble on the horizon, and it wouldn’t be long before she confronted Kelly head-on with her suspicions.

  Her father sensed something was wrong, too. He kept setting up opportunities for her to run to him and dump her problems in his lap the way she used to do when she was a little girl. He loved her. He wanted to help her. How could she tell him that she had moved beyond his reach?

  I’m pregnant.

  The words rattled around her brain like pebbles in a tin can, like random words—diesel, peony—tossed together by chance.

  I’m pregnant.

  She couldn’t run away from it any longer, couldn’t pretend it wasn’t happening, that it was nothing but cold ice cream on an empty stomach or a low-grade flu that would disappear in a couple of days.

  I’m pregnant.

  She was almost three weeks late.

  She threw up almost every single day.

  Her breasts were so sore it hurt to put on her bra.

  Last night she had stayed up until almost four, searching the Web for everything she could find about pregnancy, symptoms, alternatives. The amount of information out there was staggering, and no matter how she tried to spin it, she couldn’t run away from the truth.

  Okay, so she hadn’t run a home test yet, but that would just be confirming what she already knew inside her heart.

  I’m pregnant.

  She waited for the flood of emotion she had always believed would follow that realization, but nothing happened. Shouldn’t she be feeling something? Last week the idea that she might be carrying a baby inside her had sent her into a near meltdown, but now she felt nothing. No terror. No joy.

  Nothing but a huge, yawning emptiness where her future used to be.

  She opened a notebook to a blank page and uncapped her pen. Making lists always helped her to clarify her thoughts. Somehow seeing the problem laid out in black and white, the components neatly numbered and in order, made anything seem manageable. Grandma Irene had taught her the value of list-making when she first started grade school. All you had to do was capture the problem, and the solution would follow.

  Maybe Grandma Irene was watching over her right now, nudging her toward the path she was meant to follow. It was a nice thought, even if she really didn’t believe it.

  She was in this alone.

  She drew a vertical line down the center of the page. That seemed a logical way to begin. On the left she would put all the reasons why she should keep the baby. On the right she would list the reasons why she shouldn’t.

  The right side filled up quickly.

  She was too young.

  She had no money and Seth had even less.

  They both had full scholarships to Columbia and a world opening up before them that most definitely did not include a baby.

  She and Seth had planned out their life together years ago. They shared the same goals, the same ambitions, the same dreams. First school, then the fun of seeing all of that schooling, all of that hard work, channeled into the challenge of launching their careers. They were going to do great things. They dreamed big, and they knew how to make those dreams come true. Together they could make a difference in the world.

  One day, in the shadowy far-off future, there would be babies but not yet. Not for a very long time. She didn’t want to end up like her Aunt Claire, angry and trapped and so jealous of everyone she could barely see straight.

  Once again Grandma Irene was right. All she had to do was look at the list, and her path was clear.

  Eleven reasons why this wasn’t the time to have a baby.

  Not one single reason why it was.

  She stared down at the expanse of white space and the pale blue horizontal lines on the left side and waited for something, anything, to materialize, but nothing did.

  Only one decision made any sense at all, no matter how you twisted or spun the facts. Saturday morning she would drive over to the CVS at the mall and buy a home pregnancy test, just to be sure, and then she would do what she had to do before too much more time elapsed.

  She had to talk to Seth. He had the right to know what she was thinking, how she was feeling. She also knew that he would support whatever decision she made. He had sworn to be with her every step of the way, and she believed in him. She had always believed in him. He would understand and be there for her, just as he had promised.

  “Need more tea?” Julie paused, coffeepot in hand, next to her table.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Eat the toast,” Julie urged. “Don’t make me give it to the gulls. Those greedy beggars scrounge enough off me as it is.”

  Kelly nodded and pretended to take a bite of toast, but the second Julie moved away, she put it back on the plate. Her stomach had finally settled down. There was no point in pressing her luck.

  She had done enough of that already.

  “HEY, WATCH WHERE you’re going with that thing, Claire!” Frankie, the produce manager, leaped aside as Claire’s shopping cart barely missed his left hip. “I don’t have collision on my ass.”

  “I’m sorry, Frankie.” She spiked a bunch of celery into her cart. Nothing like taking out your aggressions on innocent vegetables. “I didn’t see you standing there.”

  Frankie glanced down at his aproned bulk. “Didn’t see me? I weigh two hundred eighty pounds. They can see me on Mars.”

  “Everyone’s a comedian,” she said with a shake of her head. “Are you out of string beans?”

  “We’re out of everything. The farm truck’s behin
d schedule. Come back around four.”

  “Like I have nothing better to do than make a second run to Super Fresh.”

  “Whaddya want from me, Claire? We’re out of string beans. You want ’em, you come back. We’re not Ray’s Pizza. We don’t make deliveries.”

  By the time she pulled into her driveway, she had managed to alienate the checkout clerk, the pharmacist, and every driver who had the misfortune to be on the road with her. That sparring contest with Maddy had gotten under her skin more than she had realized. The sight of that small diamond sparkling on her left ring finger had seemed to awaken every ugly emotion she had spent a lifetime tamping down and send them spilling out across the table.

  It wasn’t that she wished for Aidan to be alone, because she didn’t. He deserved happiness. God knows, so did she, but happiness showed up where and when it wanted, and this time it was Aidan’s turn. But she wasn’t convinced Maddy Bainbridge would be around for the long haul. There was something about her, an impermanence, that irked Claire, as if the woman always knew the exact distance between herself and the nearest exit.

  Just look at the way she had acted at the coffee shop. She couldn’t get away from there fast enough when Claire and Kelly tangled. The woman had almost left skid marks on Julie’s freshly waxed floor as she sprinted toward freedom. That wasn’t the kind of wife Aidan needed, and it sure as hell wasn’t the kind of stepmother who could steer Kelly through her college years. The first sign of trouble, real trouble, would send her running for her life.

  Not that it was any of her business. Aidan could marry whomever he wanted to marry. There was nothing she could do about it. She was there to advise him if he wanted her advice. She was there to help Kelly if she wanted her help. If they didn’t want her—well, that was their mistake. She would still be there when they finally came to their senses.

  Her father was sitting at the kitchen table eating a tuna sandwich when she came in through the back door schlepping a trio of grocery bags.

  “You look like a sherpa,” he observed, looking up from his paperback Spenser mystery.

  “An old sherpa,” she said as she dropped the bags on the counter near the sink. “I could use a hand unloading the trunk.”