Shore Lights (34 page)

He deactivated the alarm system, then let himself into the bar. So far the electricity was holding, but if it didn't he had a stack of wood covered on the back step that he could toss into the old fireplace in the main room. He pulled himself a Guinness, then grabbed a container of chili from the freezer to nuke for supper.

He checked in with Kelly, who sounded as if her high-decibel cousins were wearing her out. “Just stay put,” he told her, trying not to laugh. “I'll rescue you tomorrow.”

The microwave dinged and he pulled out the nuked chili. No point dirtying a bowl, so he grabbed a clean spoon and carted his makeshift supper out into the main room. The cable was out, but he managed to find a weak signal coming from Philadelphia. Some guy with a helmet of hair spewed endless factoids about the storm—The biggest! The longest! The earliest!—and the requisite warnings about the dangers of shoveling snow.

He finished the last of the chili, then turned off the television. He was a Jets fan, a dying breed on the Jersey shore. A Philly station wasn't likely to waste any airtime analyzing Gang Green's chances on Sunday against the Dolphins. If he wanted an update, he'd be better off booting up the desktop in the office and logging onto their Web site.

And maybe, since the computer would be on anyway, he'd zap off an e-mail to JerseyGirl.

 
“ALTHOUGH THE COMPANY is wonderful, ladies, I'm going to call it a night.” Lucy rose from the easy chair next to the fire and stretched. “This has been quite a day.”

“And then some,” said Rose. “I'm glad you stayed with us, Lucia. I don't think I could have handled the Loewensteins
and
the Armaghs today without you.”

Lucy brushed off her thanks. “I don't think Patton could have handled them alone today.” She walked over to the window and peered out through the curtains. “Do you think the roads will be passable tomorrow?”

“Oh, God,” Rose moaned, “I hope so.”

Lucy and Maddy burst into laughter, and, a moment later, Rose joined in.

“You know I don't mean you, Lucy,” she said. “I was talking about—”

“I know.” Lucy pecked her on the cheek. “Besides, my sensibilities aren't so fragile that I can't take a joke.”

Mine are
, Maddy thought as she watched the byplay between the sisters. A tiny misstep like the one Rose just made would have been enough to drive her away in a snit.

Maddy and her aunt exchanged good nights, and Lucy left the room.

It was Maddy's turn to stand up and stretch. “I suppose I should call it a night myself.”

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.

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.