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 dreams. 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.
Â
“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 crazyâand she wasn't about to tell anyone, not even Sethâbut 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.”
“âSurprised' is one way to put it.”
“He seems like a nice kid.”
“He is a nice kid,” Aidan said. “I just wishâ” 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 didâ” 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.
Fifteen years was a long time to be apart from your family. The people you loved and left behind didn't stay preserved in amber while you were gone. They grew up. They grew old. Marriages waxed and waned. Babies were born. People died. Alliances were formed and old grudges continued. And all of it happened while you were searching everywhere for a place to call home. For a family who would love you no matter what.
“If you feel like talking, I'm a good listener.” The sound of Aidan's voice felt like a warm caress.
“It's a funny thing,” she said. “I've spent the last fifteen years trying to make sense of my mother, and you managed to explain her to me in three sentences.”
He touched her cheek with the tip of his index finger, and she was astonished the snow around her didn't melt away. The warmth of the gesture, the slow-hand eroticism of his touch, her own sweet tangle of emotionsâwho could say what magic really was or why it suddenly decided to visit itself upon two unsuspecting people?
But there it was, shimmering between them like captive stars, the kind of magic that happened when two people, who hadn't been looking for love, found it right in their own backyard.
Neither of them moved. Neither broke eye contact. He dipped his head forward and brushed his mouth against hers, and in that instant the entire world, and everyone in it, disappeared. She moved closer to his warmth. He moved nearer to her softness.
Her breath caught. Or maybe it was his. His mouth brushed hers again, warmer this time, more urgent. Her lips parted at the first touch of his tongue.
They melted into each other as if they had waited all of their lives for that moment. Their hearts, their souls, their dreamsâthey held nothing back.
“Wow,” he said when they broke apart to catch their breath.
“Definitely wow,” she said.
They looked at each other and started to laugh with the pure simple wonder of finding each other at the exact point when they had given up looking for happiness.
“Is this real?” Maddy whispered. “I neverâ”
“I didn't thinkâ”
“Do you feelâ”
“Come here.”
Who knew so much could be said, so many promises made in the span of a kiss. He tasted a little like coffee and cinnamon. His nearness, his taste, his smellâit all swirled together inside her skull until she was light-headed with desire. He cupped her face in his big strong hands, fingertips pressing gently against the pulse beating at her temples, and she opened her eyes during the kiss to find him looking at her with an expression of such tenderness, such yearning that she swayed on her feet and would have fallen if his strong arms hadn't been holding her tight.
Nobody had ever looked at her that way. Nobody had ever managed to fill the cold and empty places inside her heart with so much love. She felt loved. Of course it was too soon. You couldn't fall in love this fast and expect it to last. Sane women knew that. Cautious women lived by that rule. But she felt neither sane nor cautious.