Chances Are Read online

  Could a man be too nice? David radiated so much kindness and understanding that it was all Claire could do to keep from hitting him in the head with a soccer ball.

  “Good practice?” she asked while Billy and Ryan snorted with laughter a few feet away.

  “Billy had a great practice,” David said with a nod toward her youngest. “Ryan had a little trouble, but he’s making progress.”

  Ryan looked like he would rather be in the orthodontist’s chair than standing there while two adults talked about him, and Claire’s maternal heart went out to him.

  “I’ve kept you long enough,” Claire said, gesturing for Billy to get into the car. “Thanks for waiting.”

  David brushed her gratitude aside. “Listen,” he said, watching as Billy fastened his seat belt, “we’re planning to pick up pizza tonight. Why don’t you join us?”

  She hadn’t seen it coming. The last time he asked her to go bowling with them her early warning system had noted the faint beads of sweat that popped out on his brow before he spoke, which gave her just long enough to make up a believable excuse.

  “Pizza sounds great,” she said, aware of the intense scrutiny coming from Billy and Ryan, “but—”

  “I know,” David said. “Mondays are tough. Maybe another time.”

  He really was too nice. No wonder his wife left him. Didn’t he know nice guys ended up alone?

  “I’d like that,” she said. She hadn’t meant to say that. She definitely hadn’t expected to mean it.

  David held her gaze a moment longer than usual, and she felt her cheeks flood with heat. “I’m going to hold you to it, Claire.”

  She mumbled something incoherent in response, feeling more like a clumsy fourteen-year-old than a woman of forty.

  “Your face is red,” Billy observed as she slid behind the wheel. “Are you mad at Ryan’s dad?”

  “I’m not mad at anyone.” She glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror. Red didn’t begin to describe it. She looked like she was about to spontaneously combust.

  “Grandma’s face used to get red all the time,” Billy continued. “She said it was changes that did it.”

  “Menopause,” Claire corrected, “and I’m too young for that.”

  Apparently that was too much information for her son, because he leaned forward and fiddled with the radio dial until he settled on WFAN, the all-sports station he loved, and Claire breathed an audible sigh of relief. She’d rather listen to a detailed analysis of the Mets’ chances than face more questions.

  Smooth, Claire. I’m surprised you didn’t trip over your shoelaces when you walked back to the car. Fenelli must really be desperate.

  “Turn up the volume,” she said to Billy. “I want to hear what they say about plans for Old-Timers’ Day.”

  Billy shot her a curious look but upped the volume so high she couldn’t hear herself think.

  Which, of course, was exactly the point.

  Ten minutes later, she pulled into the driveway and cut the engine, mercifully ending a spirited on-air discussion of somebody named Marvelous Marv Throneberry.

  Billy blinked like he was coming out of a trance and said, “You forgot to get Grandpa.”

  “Grandpa’s home today,” she said. “It’s—” She rested her forehead against the steering wheel and groaned. “You’re right. I forgot Grandpa.” She looked over at her son. “Do you remember where he is today?”

  Billy nodded. “The senior center.”

  She tossed him her cell phone. “Press number six, and tell Grandpa we’re on our way.”

  She retraced the path back to town, made a left at the church, then whipped into the parking lot adjacent to the renovated barn that now served as a gathering place for Paradise Point’s senior citizens. She pulled in between an aged Volvo and a spiffy new Mazda Miata with handicapped plates.

  “Where did Grandpa say he’d meet us?”

  “In front.”

  Her father had the annoying habit of running even later than she did. “Go in and tell him we’re waiting.”

  Billy was out of the car like a shot, bounding across the sandy grass and into the center in the time it would have taken her to unbuckle her seat belt. Her father had been living with them for the last few months while he decided where he would settle, much to his grandson’s delight.

  Mike Meehan had been widowed for almost five years and had spent the last three of them making extended visits to his offspring while they tried to convince him he had to finally settle down someplace. Florida. California. Upstate New York. Minnesota. Nothing seemed right to him, not until he came to visit Claire in Paradise Point.

  She was glad he had found his way back to his old hometown, but the past six months had been stressful to say the least. Mike was a robust seventy-five, a former fisherman with a powerful build and personality to match. He had an opinion about everything that went on in her house, from where she kept the tea bags to Billy’s spelling tests to why she didn’t buy out Aidan and run the bar herself.

  And to make matters worse, he had a better social life than she did. Many of his old cronies were still alive and living in town or nearby, and just like the old days, Mike Meehan was at the center of the fun. The senior center had become the equivalent of a high school hangout, and Mike was the captain of the football team and class president all wrapped up in one geriatric package.

  It made her biweekly poker party with the girls look pretty anemic.

  “Took you long enough,” her father said as he settled himself into the passenger seat. “Billy said you forgot your old man.”

  “Thanks, pal,” she muttered to Billy’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “I didn’t exactly forget you, Dad. I just lost track of the days.”

  “You’re—what? Forty? What the hell are you going to be like when you’re my age?”

  “Dead,” she said. “You and the rest of the family will have worn me into an early grave.”

  He threw back his head and roared with laughter. “That’s just what your mother would’ve said, God rest her soul. Said I had enough energy for five men and a midget.”

  “Dad!” She slipped easily into maternal reproach mode. “The politically correct term is little person.”

  “Little person? What the hell’s a little person? We called ’em midgets when I was growing up, and they’re midgets now. Scotty Henderson’s brother was maybe three feet tall, and he’d break your kneecap if you tried to call him a little person.”

  “Dad.” She added an extra note of sternness to her tone. “Times change. We have to be mindful of Billy and help him to be respectful of others.”

  “Who’s being disrespectful? People are what they are. You can call a dog a cat, but it still lifts its leg to pee.”

  “Priscilla doesn’t lift her leg,” Billy piped up from the backseat. “Hannah says she just stands there and pees on her paws.”

  “Enough pee talk,” Claire said. “All I’m saying is that if someone wants to be referred to as a small person, then that’s what we should do.”

  “Next midget I see, I’m going to ask him what he wants to be called.”

  “You do that, Dad, but don’t come crying to me if you end up with a busted kneecap.”

  Not for the first time, Claire found herself longing for a nice quiet secluded convent. Maybe that was what she should do. To hell with O’Malley’s. She could open a convent for the Sisters of the Celibate Poor.

  She pulled the car into the driveway for the second time in thirty minutes and shut off the engine.

  “Eggs for supper,” she announced as they trooped through the back door into the kitchen, “and I don’t want to hear any complaints.”

  “Aw, Ma—”

  “I’ll make you a jelly omelet.” She turned to her father, who was leaning against the door to the laundry room while he kicked off his shoes. “And don’t start about your cholesterol. I’ll make yours with Egg Beaters.”

  There were dogs to let out, cats to feed, lau
ndry to start, eggs to scramble, nerves to unfrazzle. Too bad Billy was still at an impressionable age. She felt like saying screw the eggs and sitting out on the back step with a pack of cigarettes and a Bud Light, but she was trying to set a good example.

  Her father whistled for the dogs, and she was almost trampled by the canine stampede as they converged from various points in the house and flung themselves out the door into the yard. Billy, with a little urging, popped the tops on a quartet of Fancy Feast and upended the contents onto four small white plates.

  She was on her way upstairs to change into her usual uniform of jeans and T-shirt when the front doorbell rang.

  David Fenelli stood on the top step with a schoolbook clutched in his right hand.

  She fought down the urge to smooth down her hair.

  “Sorry to interrupt your supper, Claire, but Billy left his spelling book in the backseat. Knowing how much our kids love homework, I figured I’d better get it over here.”

  “That’s sweet of you, David. You didn’t have to go out of your way. I would’ve come by to pick it up.”

  “If I’d known that, I would’ve told you to pick it up at Romano’s over a pepperoni and mushroom.”

  “Who’re you talking to out there?” her father bellowed from the kitchen. “If that’s Barney, don’t let him in. I’m not talking to that welsher!”

  “It’s not Barney,” Claire hollered back. “It’s Ryan’s father.”

  “Ask him if he wants some eggs.”

  She met David’s eyes. “You don’t want eggs, do you?”

  He shook his head. “No eggs.”

  “Thanks, Dad. They already ate.” She lowered her volume. “He’s not really my father,” she said. “I found him wandering in front of the senior center and took pity on him.”

  “That’s where I found mine, too. In fact, are you sure it’s not the same guy?”

  Some of the day’s tensions mysteriously vanished as they laughed.

  “Listen,” he said, his gaze holding hers, “I don’t want to keep you from your eggs.”

  “Seriously, if you and Ryan have room for some scrambled eggs and bacon, I’d—”

  “I promised him pizza, but I wouldn’t mind a rain check.”

  Say it, Claire. Go on. You know you want to. “I wouldn’t mind one either.” His eyes widened behind his glasses, and she felt that familiar heat rising once again to her cheeks. “I mean, maybe next time you and Ryan go for pizza, Billy and I could join you.”

  Fenelli really had a good smile, kind of loopy and ironic all at the same time. It wasn’t a devastating smile or a sexy smile but still . . .

  “Maybe next time Billy and Ryan could stay home, and we’ll go for pizza.”

  “I’d like that.” You would? I didn’t think you had it in you, Claire.

  They stood there staring at each other for what seemed like a semester or two. It took Ryan’s plaintive wail of “Daaaaad!” wafting across the front yard to end the moment.

  “See you at the bus stop,” David said as he turned to leave.

  “Thanks for bringing the book over.”

  “Maybe we can work in that pizza next week.”

  “Sounds great.”

  He smiled.

  She smiled back.

  He jogged across the lawn to his car.

  She waved good-bye.

  Okay, so it wasn’t Love Story, but for Paradise Point, it wasn’t half bad. Not bad at all.

  OLIVIA WESTMORE, ELEGANT owner of Le Papier, sat at Rose’s kitchen table making notes on a beautiful pad of pale pink watermarked notepaper better suited for letters to the Queen of England.

  “A fountain pen?” Rose couldn’t help the note of incredulity that crept into her voice. “I didn’t think anyone still used fountain pens.”

  “This is a 1950s-era Duofold,” Olivia said proudly. “I usually keep it at home, but I was feeling reckless today.”

  “It probably cost more than your Jimmy Choos.”

  Olivia glanced down at her pricey footwear and shrugged. “And worth every penny.”

  “You really are a shameless hedonist, aren’t you?”

  “Damn right,” Olivia said with a wicked smile. “Not much point to life if you don’t enjoy the things around you.”

  “I know there’s a flaw in your logic,” Rose said as she pulled a container of boeuf bourguignonne from the freezer. “When I figure it out, I’ll get back to you.”

  “Oh, don’t play innocent,” Olivia said, capping her pen and placing it on the tabletop. “I’ve seen those silky robes of yours and the bath oils. You’re not a stranger to worldly pleasures, Rosie.”

  Rose didn’t deny it. She loved fine wine, beautiful music, delicious food, soft and sumptuous fabrics that caressed her skin. It was those very inclinations that had helped her shape the fantasy world that The Candlelight Inn offered to her guests. Her eye for beauty combined with her head for business had turned her mother’s tumbledown Victorian into a highly acclaimed moneymaker.

  Now, if only the same thing would happen with Cuppa, she would be a very happy woman.

  “So what did you come up with?” she asked Olivia, gesturing toward the pad of notes. “I’ll need all the details I can get to make the presentation to Maddy.”

  “She’s your daughter,” Olivia said, “not your contracts attorney. Tell her it’s a great opportunity, and she’s the right one to manage it.”

  “She’s also an accountant,” Rose reminded her. “She’ll want facts and figures.”

  Maddy was slightly fey and charmingly unpredictable, but like it or not, she had inherited her mother’s business acumen. She would want to know cost projections, zoning laws, overhead.

  Olivia read her the lists she had pulled together while Rose busied herself getting supper ready. Her mind, however, refused to focus on what her friend was saying. Her thoughts bounced from the way Maddy had looked surrounded by wedding gowns to the sound of Hannah’s laughter in the backyard to how much she wanted them to stay in Paradise Point forever.

  Rose wasn’t fanciful by nature. That was one of the many differences between her and her daughter. Maddy had always been given to outrageous flights of fantasy that left Rose scratching her head in dismay. But when it came to her beloved Candlelight Inn, Rose could show her daughter a thing or two. The house wasn’t just a house to Rose. It lived and breathed and had opinions, not all of which she shared. Every creaking board, every gleaming window, every single dust-free inch of the old Victorian wonder vibrated with a life—and a story—of its own.

  On days when she was very lucky, her ex-husband Bill was there, too. He liked the little aerie on the third floor, the tower room with the antique iron bed and patchwork quilt. Twice last month she watched the sun rise over the ocean from that bed, head nestled against his graying chest, and thanked God for letting her live long enough to find her way back home to the first and only man she had ever loved.

  Maddy seemed delighted that her parents had rekindled their love after so many years, while Hannah, bless her heart, accepted it all as perfectly right and logical.

  Maybe you had to be a little crazy to believe in love. Love didn’t play by the rules. Love defied logic. It didn’t come when you called or slink away when you were done with it. Love was occasionally fickle and sometimes, but not often enough, it was forever. Every time she looked into Bill Bainbridge’s faded blue eyes, she felt the same sense of wonder she had felt forty years ago when he first asked her to marry him.

  And she saw that same sense of wonder in Maddy’s eyes when she looked at Aidan, as if her daughter couldn’t quite believe her own good fortune. What a joy it was to see Maddy with a man who loved her the way she deserved to be loved. The sight of the two of them together made Rose’s heart ache with happiness. There was a certain sweetness about them, a sense of completion that went beyond the sparks they generated every time their eyes met. The whole town agreed that Aidan O’Malley was as head-over-heels as any man they had ever seen i
n their lives. “Do you see the way he looks at our girl?” Lucy had asked with a sigh the other night. “I swear I could see the moon and the stars in his eyes.”

  Life flew by so fast. Maddy was still too young to understand just how quickly these precious days with Hannah and Aidan would disappear. One moment you were a young woman with a baby in your arms, and the next time you blinked, your mother was looking back at you from your mirror, and she was telling you that you were running out of time. Next month she would celebrate the fifth anniversary of her successful battle with breast cancer. Five years had come and gone since the doctor gave her the “all clear”—five years she wouldn’t have had if God had decided differently. Five years that were lived with her daughter and granddaughter thousands of miles away, building memories that didn’t include the people who loved them the most.

  Maybe that was why she had this sudden, unexpected determination to give Maddy a wedding day to remember. She had missed the birth of her only grandchild, something she would always regret. Maddy had been deeply hurt by her absence, and the rift between them had grown wider and deeper as a result. Not even the truth, that she had been undergoing grueling chemotherapy treatments at the time and a cross-country trip would have been beyond her endurance, could explain away the fact that she hadn’t been there when her baby gave birth to a baby of her own. She had waited too long to explain, and the years apart had already done their damage.

  Sometimes she felt like she would always be playing catch-up where Maddy was concerned, struggling for the right thing to say and the right time to say it, but never quite succeeding. They had lost so many years to distance. Rose had seen to the emotional distance; by the time Maddy moved across the country to Seattle, she was only making it visible.

  You couldn’t build a lifetime of memories on a two-week visit every year, two weeks that usually ended in tears and recriminations. A wedding would be something they could share, a grand and beautiful event built upon a foundation of love and hope. The memories would be good ones, precious ones, that would weave their lives together indelibly in a way so far only genetics had been able to accomplish. Life was so painfully short. If they didn’t start banking memories now, it would one day be too late.