Shore Lights

“YES!” MADDY LEANED back in her chair and admired the notice on the computer screen. “Oh, Hannah, wait until you see this!”

She hit Enter, typed in her password, clicked YES YES and YES, then waited while the screen dissolved, then reassembled itself. The seller promised to ship within forty-eight hours, and with a little bit of luck, Hannah’s magic lamp would be wrapped and tucked away in the closet by this time next week.

She exited the program, pushed back her chair, then dashed down the back hallway into the kitchen, where her mother and her aunt Lucy were slicing orange segments for the guests’ salads.

“You won the Lotto?” Lucy asked, deftly slipping her paring knife between the membranes. “Which one: the Pick Three or Pick Four? Pick Six I would’ve seen in the paper.”

She kissed Rose’s cheek for good measure. I’m trying, Mother, but you don’t make it easy. “It’s almost an antique.”

She ignored her mother’s jibe. “FireGuy gave it his best shot, but I was a woman on a mission and I wouldn’t be denied.”

“It’s for Hannah,” Maddy said, wishing she didn’t sound quite so apologetic. She was a grown woman, too, and a mother. She didn’t have to apologize to anyone for the choices she made for her daughter, no matter how ridiculous they might sound to the rest of her literal, practical, no-nonsense family. “She’s always wanted a magic lamp, and this is the next best thing.”

“Yes, but it’s a rusty teapot with magical powers.” Hey, why not? They already thought she was out of her mind. She might as well add a little more fuel to the fire.

“Oh, don’t be an idiot,” Rose said, swatting her big sister with the wet end of a dishtowel. “The only magic thing about that pot is the way it made Maddy’s money disappear.”

“I’m glad the two of you find this so amusing.” Maddy glared at her mother across the bounty of food strewn across the worktable. “Nothing you DiFalco girls like more than stomping on someone’s imagination.” She almost said “dream,” but she was afraid they’d launch into a medley of Frank Sinatra songs.

Who said time travel was impossible? Thirteen words uttered by a woman with dyed red hair, and Maddy was catapulted back to the glory days of her adolescence when the mere sound of Rose’s voice was enough to send her running headlong into the night. Racing down the back hallway to the office didn’t have quite the same impact, not when you were thirty-two and a mother yourself, but a slammed door still made a statement that even the most stubborn woman on earth couldn’t ignore. Her heart was beating so fast she sat down on the edge of the desk and wondered if the Paradise Point rescue squad had a defibrillator.

Oh, God. Not Mrs. Loewenstein again. Didn’t the woman know she was supposed to be off somewhere with Mr. Loewenstein, reveling in the romantic wonders of the Garden State.

Maddy swallowed a string of words not usually heard at the Candlelight. When was she going to remember this was no longer Grandma Fay’s house but Rose’s tribute to the romance of capitalism?

“Everything’s fine, Mrs. Loewenstein.” She opened the office door a crack and smiled up at the elderly woman. “Sorry if the noise startled you. A gust of wind slammed the door shut.”

“You need more insulation,” Mrs. Loewenstein said with a sage nod of her head. “I’ll give you my son Buddy’s card. He’ll take good care of you.”

Maddy thanked her, then closed the door. She considered locking it, but that was probably against the innkeeper’s code of ethics.

ROSE SIGHED AT the sound of the office door slamming shut a second time. “She used to do that when she was a teenager. I was hoping she’d grow out of it by the time she turned thirty.”

“No,” said Rose. “I said something wrong.” She attacked one of the oranges with a cleaver. “Everything I say is wrong these days.”

“Maddy always did have a flair for the dramatic.” Lucy finished sectioning the last orange in her bowl, then rinsed her hands at the double sink. “I’m surprised she didn’t end up in the theater.”

“Ma always said Maddy was one tantrum away from winning an Oscar.” Not at all like the relentlessly practical, fiercely earthbound DiFalco sisters. If Rose hadn’t endured twenty-three hours of labor to deliver the child, she wouldn’t have believed Maddy was her own flesh and blood. Maddy was mercurial, emotional, impulsive. All the things her mother wasn’t and never would be.

“Maybe it’s a good thing I never had children,” Lucy mused as she dried her hands on a snowy-white kitchen towel. “I don’t know what I would have done with a daughter like Maddy.”

“You couldn’t have done any worse than I did.” The sharp edge of the counter dug into her hipbone as she attacked an orange with wild swipes of the knife. “I feel like I’m walking on eggshells.”

She considered bashing one of the oranges with the meat mallet, but thought better of it. Orange bits in the hollandaise would be unacceptable at the four-star Candlelight. “It’s worse than ever, Lucia. We’re at each other’s throats every second. It’s like the last fifteen years never happened and we’re right back where we were.”

“Tell me about it. I wanted this to work. I wanted her to love what I’ve done with the old house and throw herself into growing the business with me.”

“Is that so terrible?” Rose swung around, knife slicing into the air between them. “I’m a successful businesswoman. I’m well liked in the community. I meet interesting people every day of the week without leaving home, and I have enough money in the bank so that I could say to hell with everything tomorrow and never have to worry.” She paused for effect. “Is that such a terrible fate to wish on my only child?”

“She doesn’t know what she wants. If she knew what she wanted, she wouldn’t have—” She stopped, ashamed of what she had been about to say. Ashamed that she could have thought such a terrible thing.

Lucy took the cleaver from her and placed it safely on the counter. “This is Maddy’s life, Rosie, not yours. She’ll find her way sooner or later. We all did.”

“She had it all right there for the taking,” Rose said, her frustration boiling over like an unwatched pot of soup. “She was climbing the ladder at her job. She and Tom had a solid long-term relationship with a real future and then . . .”

Rose felt her expression soften. “The little girl who turned my little girl’s life inside out.” She thanked God for her granddaughter every day of her life. Hannah was a bit of heaven on earth, proof that angels sometimes deigned to mingle with mortals. She couldn’t imagine a world without Hannah in it, but how she wished Hannah’s arrival hadn’t exacted such a high price from Maddy.

“Maddy’s doing a great job with her,” Lucy said, pouring them each a cup of coffee from the decaf pot. “She’s a good mother.”

“I know you mean well, Rosie. I know you love that girl more than life itself, but you’d better take a step back before you lose her all over again.”

“She doesn’t like me.” It hurt to say the words. Much more than Rose had imagined it would. “She never has.” Even when Maddy was a little girl, Rose had sensed the distance between them, a barrier she couldn’t break through no matter what she said or did. “You would think after thirty-two years I’d learn to accept that but”—she dragged the back of her hand across her eyes and winced at the sting of citrus—“I thought it would be different this time. I thought if we approached this as partners, we’d strike a balance.”

“You hurt her badly,” Lucy said. “When you didn’t fly to Seattle to be with her when Hannah was born, you almost broke her heart.”

“Yes,” Lucy said calmly, “and it was a valid reason. But the one person on earth who deserves to know the truth is still in the dark.”

“You owe her the truth, Rosie. She’s been carrying that burden around with her since Hannah was born. Help her out. Tell her why you weren’t there for her.”

Lucy draped an arm around her little sister’s shoulders. “It’s only been three weeks, honey. Things will get better before you know it. I promise you.”

“I hope so,” Rose said. If they didn’t, she would be the first winner of the New Jersey Innkeeper of the Year award to run away from home.

“ENOUGH ALREADY,” CLAIRE said as she finished slicing hamburger rolls for the lunch crowd. “You’re staring at the screen like you lost your best friend. So you didn’t win the auction. So what. Kelly’s a smart kid. She knows you can’t win them all.”

“I’ve forgotten all about the auction,” he lied. “I’m checking tomorrow’s tide. Amos might come out to repair the dock and I want to—”

“Fine,” she said, brushing the crumbs into the palm of her hand, then tossing them into the sink. “Whatever.” She piled the rolls high on a platter. “I’ll bring these out for Tommy to toss on the grill before the natives start eating the bar rags.”

“I have a dentist appointment in fifteen minutes and then I go to pick up Billy at school. I’ll be back around three-thirty, four o’clock.”

The second she left he flipped the screen back to the auction site, and the big, full color picture of Kelly’s teapot appeared. He felt a tug of emotion as he looked at it, and he wondered if Kelly had experienced the same thing when she first saw it. The original O’Malley’s had been a neighborhood restaurant with a regional reputation for good food and great atmosphere. There was a box of memories up in the attic, filled with newspaper clippings from the hundreds of articles that had been written about O’Malley’s in its heyday, before the Hurricane of ’52 swept it all away.

Kelly said the teapot she was bidding on reminded her of one of the many teapots Grandma Irene had had on display at the restaurant years ago, but that was like saying you liked one grain of sand over another grain of sand. Who could tell the difference? Still, he couldn’t deny the way the thing pulled at him.

“Hey, boss,” Tommy greeted him as he pushed through the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the bar itself. “I thought you were back there getting the books ready for Bernie.”

Tommy glanced up at the television screen. “How many times are you gonna marry the wrong guy, Erica?” He sounded more like a lovestruck teenager than a sixty-year-old retired cop.

“Damn straight and one day she’s going to answer and”—Tommy made a va-room noise like a fast-moving car—“hasta la vista, baby. Send my last paycheck to Pine Valley.”

“You’re a sick man, Kennedy.” His own glance bounced quickly over photos of his late parents on their wedding day and his brother, Billy, the first day he reported for duty at the firehouse. Where was the one of Mike and Irene and the old restaurant? “Good thing Jean’s an understanding woman.”

“Works two ways, pal o’mine.” Tommy’s eyes were glued to the screen. “She’d leave me in a New York minute for Harrison Ford.”

It was bar room bullshit and they both knew it. Tommy and Jean Kennedy were one of those till-death-do-us-part couples who were happy to be in it for the long haul. During forty years of marriage the Kennedys had been hit by just about everything life could possibly throw at them, but somehow the good times always managed to outnumber the bad in their eyes. They were lucky and they knew it, which made them luckier still.

Sometimes Aidan wondered what he and Sandy would have been like ten or fifteen years down the road. Would they have grown together like the Kennedys or lived parallel lives in the same house like so many of his old friends? He liked to think that what they had shared would only have grown deeper and richer with the years, but the truth was he would never know. Intimacy required an openness of spirit, a willingness to risk heartbreak. O’Malleys seemed to have the ability to bypass intimacy and go straight to heartbreak without passing GO.

Aidan slid open the drawer. Rubber bands. A crumpled Canadian dollar. Two Frank Sinatra CDs, one Pink Floyd, a well-thumbed copy of last year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. He slid his hand under the magazine and poked around.

Aidan checked the drawers, the cabinet adjacent to the dartboard, even unlocked the utility closet hidden behind the rack of pool cues and looked behind mega-sized bottles of Clorox and Mr. Clean.

Not much else he could do. He went back into the kitchen, poured himself his sixth cup of coffee, then stared at the open laptop on the table. No matter what Kelly hoped, that dented teapot wasn’t going to change anything. It wasn’t about to undo years of neglect and turn Grandma Irene into the kind of cozy, nurturing figure both he and his kid secretly longed for. It wouldn’t bring Sandy back or save Billy. It wouldn’t make him whole again.

But his kid had seen something in it, the possibility of something wonderful, and that was reason enough to give it one more try.