Chances Are (20 page)

And she couldn’t even think about going to Aunt Claire with this. Her aunt was suspicious and judgmental by nature. Who could blame her? Uncle Billy hadn’t exactly made life easy for her, and Kathleen’s problems had really pushed her over the edge. There were times when Kelly felt like her aunt had cameras hidden all around town, aimed at all the secret spots she and Seth claimed as their own.

She wondered what it would be like if her mother were still alive. She had been told a million times that she looked just like her, and that always made her feel glad and a little strange at the same time. Over the years she had heard stories about how funny her mom was, how easygoing and happy she always was. She’d heard Tommy Kennedy at the bar say how much Maddy reminded him of her mom, how she made her father laugh the same way nobody but her mother had ever been able to do.

Maybe Maddy would understand how she felt. It couldn’t have been easy to find out she was pregnant with Hannah, not when Hannah’s father was so dead set against having another child. Maddy must have gone through the same thing Kelly was going through right now, waking up each morning with just one thought on her mind.
Please, God, please let me see that bright red stain . . . please . . .

So far there had been nothing. Day after day of nothing.

Maddy wouldn’t look at her with eyes filled with pain and disappointment if she told her she was late. She wouldn’t turn icy with anger or act like the world was coming to an end. Maddy didn’t have seventeen years of hope lying on Kelly’s shoulders like a dead weight. She would understand. She would know what to do and how to do it. Maddy didn’t expect her to be perfect, the way her aunt Claire and everyone else did.

She lay there for what seemed like forever, waiting for her father to knock on her door, but the only thing she heard was the sound of the garage door followed by the rumble of his engine as he backed down the driveway.

She started to cry again, and then, when she had no more tears left inside her, she closed her eyes and slept.

THE TENTH BIWEEKLY meeting of the only ladies’ floating poker game in Paradise Point history was set to begin in less than an hour. Five of the most opinionated, gossip-prone, interesting women in town were about to converge on Claire’s house, and she hadn’t even managed to stow the empty pizza boxes or play Hide the Dust Bunnies. In fact, she was wondering if she had time to rent a backhoe to shovel out the living room when Billy Jr. appeared in the doorway.

“Grandpa wants to know if he can watch TV in his jockey shorts tonight.”

She wondered if Rose DiFalco had ever fielded a question like that.

“Only if he locks the door to his room and swears he won’t set foot into the hallway until the party’s over.” The last time it was her turn to host the poker party, he had treated Olivia to a sight that had almost sent her elegant friend into intensive and prolonged therapy.

“That’s just what Grandpa said you’d say.”

“Your grandpa is a very smart man,” Claire said, unable to hold back a smile.

“What if he has to pee?” Billy asked, his dark blue eyes twinkling with mischief. “What if—”

“I get the drift,” she said as she gathered up the huge stack of
People, In Style,
and Spiderman comics that covered the coffee table. It hadn’t taken her father long to figure out that Billy was his best ally when it came to getting what he wanted from his overworked, overstressed, middle-aged daughter. “Why don’t you both watch TV in my room? If Grandpa needs the bathroom, he can use mine.”

“Can Bruno watch TV in your room, too?”

“Only if you make sure Fluffy doesn’t start a fight with him.” Bruno, a sixty-pound bulldog with socialization problems, was the latest addition to their family. Fluffy was a six-pound calico cat who ruled their domestic universe by virtue of longevity and divine right.

“Cool! I’m gonna go tell Grandpa.”

Her youngest had two speeds: supersonic and warp drive, and he was halfway down the hall before she could remind him that the entire menagerie needed feeding and watering and walking.

She tossed the magazines into a recycling bag and snagged one of Maire’s Mickey Mouse slippers from under the end table, a souvenir from—could it be Christmas? Maire had flown home from school in Ireland on her Aunt Frankie’s frequent flyer miles and brought with her the chaos only a sixteen-year-old girl knew how to create.

There had been a time when the thought of inviting someone like Olivia or Rose or the other members of their poker game into her home would have been laughable. “Five kids!” she would say with a roll of her eyes meant to convey unleashed chaos, and everyone would laugh and nod their heads in instant understanding.

It was an easy out, a way to keep the hum of gossip to a tolerable volume without inviting more. Her kids’ birthday parties were held at the local bowling alley or down on the beach or maybe even at Great Adventure, someplace fun and impersonal. A place where she wouldn’t be wondering if the woman smoking a Marlboro in her kitchen had spent yesterday afternoon in bed with her husband.

She had seen the looks, heard the whispers that grew louder over the years. She would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to avoid them.
Poor Claire. How humiliating. Doesn’t she have any pride?

How many times had she asked herself the same thing? You run in to the supermarket to pick up a gallon of milk and end up wondering if the new girl on register six was your husband’s latest conquest. Or how about the time you popped into the insurance office and found yourself face-to-face with the blond-haired office manager, and your imagination raced into overdrive. And then there was the owner of the pet shop, or maybe that sweet-faced kindergarten teacher, the one with the big weepy blue eyes.

No regrets.
That was what she had told herself on a daily basis. Nobody had ever said it would be perfect between them, but for a little while it had been close to heaven. He had been her knight in shining armor, riding in on a white charger, offering her sanctuary when she had nowhere else to turn.

It had taken Claire a long time to make peace with the life she had been handed. She had spent most of the last three years since Billy’s death looking for someone, something, to blame for the bad luck, the wrong turns, the fierce, nuclear rage that pushed the people she loved most far beyond the reach of her arms. She had blamed her parents, blamed her siblings, blamed her in-laws, blamed her husband who had died a hero’s death before they had the chance to make things right one last time.

The O’Malleys always said that if it wasn’t for bad luck, they would have no luck at all, and in the years she had been part of the family, she had come to understand the truth of that statement. She and Billy hadn’t planned a life together. They barely knew each other when they exchanged their vows. Both of their hearts belonged to others, but fate had had other plans for them.

Before she drew her next breath, she was twenty years down the road with five children, a mortgage, and a heart that had been broken more times than she wanted to count, in more ways than she could have imagined possible and still keep on beating.

She was nineteen when they met. She and Charles were newly engaged, and love had made her impervious to his best pal Billy’s considerable charms. The truth was, even Billy had faded into the background next to her fiancé. Most men did. The fact that they both thought Charles hung the moon made them instant friends.

It was, of course, too good to last. Charles was killed in a traffic accident two months before they were going to be married, and his death devastated both Claire and Billy O’Malley. They loved Charles more than anyone else in the world ever could. He was the sun they revolved around, grateful for his light and warmth. Raw and aching with grief, Claire and Billy turned to each other for comfort, and that shared grief wove a powerful, if illusory, bond between them.

When she found out she was six weeks pregnant with Charles’s baby, Billy asked her to marry him, and she accepted. Years later she wondered if it was their finest moment or the beginning of a tragedy that was still being written.

But once the play was in motion, there was no turning back. Claire needed someone to lean on, and Billy needed a family. They had been too young, too filled with emotion to know what they were doing. They had come together at the wrong time, for all the wrong reasons, even if those reasons had seemed pure and noble. And maybe they had been. She wanted to believe that.

There had been a lot of talk when she and Billy returned to Paradise Point as a married couple. The gossips had had a field day with their sudden marriage in the aftermath of Charles’s tragic death, and much of that gossip had to do with the paternity of the child she was carrying. But as the weeks and months passed, Charles vanished from the town’s radar screen, and the unexpected union of Claire Meehan and Billy O’Malley was no longer the number-one topic of conversation and conjecture.

When Kathleen was born, everyone said she was the image of Billy, and the two of them fell into a silent conspiracy that was much easier than the truth. But they had never been able to fool his grandmother Irene. The day she and Billy came home from Maryland with the rings and the marriage license and the belly bump, Irene had turned her cold heart against Claire.

At first Claire had tried to work her way back into what passed for the old woman’s affections, but when Kathleen was born to the sound of her great-grandmother’s indifference, she hardened her own heart in response. If Billy could look past Kathleen’s paternity, why couldn’t Irene do the same thing?

Billy loved the blue-eyed little girl like one of his own. Claire saw that clearly when three more daughters arrived in quick Catholic succession, and their fate was sealed. They were a family.

In the second decade of their marriage she made the decision that changed the course of her life. Everyone in town thought she had taken the kids down to Florida to see her parents, but the truth was she had left Billy for good. It was an impulsive decision, but then her life been a series of impulsive decisions.

She had been waiting for the traffic light to change at the corner of Main Street where it intersected with Church, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel while she tried to figure out what she would make for dinner that night, when her gaze happened to land on Patty Hansen’s living room window.

You don’t expect to see your husband making out with the Brownie troop leader at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning artfully framed by her Laura Ashley curtains and drapes.

Claire was on the road to Florida by late afternoon, determined to start a new life that didn’t include sharing her husband with anyone who didn’t also share his DNA. Her parents were curious, but for once they didn’t ask too many questions. Mike and Margaret had an active social life that kept them busy, something for which Claire was intensely grateful. Besides, they had spent the first sixty-something years of their life in Paradise Point. They knew what was going on.

The kids missed their daddy, but she made sure they quickly settled into their new routine. The trick was to keep them busy so they wouldn’t ask too many questions. She couldn’t handle questions at the moment, especially not questions about why they were in Florida and Billy was still in New Jersey. Claire drove them to the beach, took them to Parrot Jungle, and one day while they were frolicking in the community pool, she fell in love.

She had been floating through her days, trying hard not to think too much, enjoying the occasional lazy afternoon with the daughter of her parents’ next-door neighbors, a flamboyant thirty-something-year-old woman named Olivia Flynn, who was waiting out her second divorce in three years. The Flynns were New Jersey émigrés same as the Meehans, and the two families got on well together.

Olivia was the star attraction of Del Mar Vista, Phase II, and the male residents congregated around her, eager for whatever crumb of attention she might toss their way. Claire, who had never inspired slavish male devotion, stood back in awe and enjoyed the show.

Olivia had come to town to arrange a golden wedding anniversary party for her parents. Her younger brother Corin, a photographer, was off somewhere in Europe, but he had promised to make it home in time for the big day. It had been two years since Corin had been back in the States, much to his father’s loud disapproval. Brendan Flynn was a retired Teamster. The fact that his only son made his living snapping photos of worthless celebrities at opening nights and other sideshows infuriated him. No matter how many times Olivia tried to explain to Brendan that Corin did much more than snap photos of Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe partying in Cannes, it simply didn’t sink in. The work Corin had done in Bosnia had won international acclaim, but you wouldn’t know it to hear Brendan talk.

Claire had been expecting a male version of Olivia, and in many ways she wasn’t disappointed. Corin Flynn carried the same kind of high-energy force field as his sister, a powerful magnetism that drew people to him. He shared her dark good looks, her sly sense of humor, but where Olivia saw life as an endless party, Corin knew it was anything but.

He lived anywhere and everywhere. He only owned what he could stuff into a backpack. He made his way through the world as an observer, capturing what he could with his camera, then moving on. There was an almost palpable sense of reckless danger about him that Claire found irresistible. She always had. Looking back, it all seemed sadly inevitable.

Night after night the three of them sat out on the lanai and talked as the moon rose high in the sky. They talked about life, about family, about sex and politics and religion. Neither one noticed when Olivia began to say good night earlier and earlier. Everyone noticed when they began to stay out later and later. Corin told Claire about the wife he had loved and lost to another man. She told him about Billy, things she had never shared with anyone on earth. They told each other their secret dreams, their deepest fears.