Shore Lights (47 page)

Bill enveloped her in a bear hug, and the enormity of what was happening took on an even darker edge of foreboding.

“I thought you were some place woodsy and midwestern,” she said, trying to lighten the mood.

“I still am,” he said. “Just thought I'd use up a few of those frequent-flyer miles I've been accumulating and come admire your snow.”

He had always been a terrible liar.

He tried hard not to show how much or how deeply Hannah's condition affected him, but he seemed to age as he stood there by her bed, her tiny hand in his, and talked to her.

“Go for a walk with your old man,” he said to Maddy after he wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and stuffed it deep into his pants pocket. “I need to stretch my legs.”

“Hannah's doctor should be here any minute,” Maddy said. “He promised to let me know when they're taking Hannah up for the tap.”

“They'll find you,” he said.

They walked past Irene's open door. The room lights had been dimmed and Maddy could just make out the slight figure of the old woman as she moved restlessly in the bed.

She turned away.

“It's a hard life,” Bill said as they neared the nurses' station, “and sometimes we don't leave it with quite the grace we'd hoped for.”

“She's a fighter,” Maddy said. “I guess you don't live over one hundred years if you don't know how to fight.”

“True enough,” he said, “but sooner or later the time comes when you need to stop fighting and let go of the past.”

They paused by the window at the far end of the corridor and looked down on the parking lot below.

“I'm glad Rosie finally told you the truth.”

She could feel her spine stiffen with anger. “She didn't exactly tell me.” She explained how the truth had actually come out.

“But now you know,” Bill said. “Now it'll finally make some sense to you.”

“Make sense? What are you talking about?”

“When you were pregnant with Hannah,” he went on, oblivious to her confusion. “Why she didn't come out and help you.”

“I don't get it,” she persisted. “I don't see what one thing has to do with the other.”

“For a smart woman you can be mighty dumb when you put your mind to it.” He fiddled with a mended latch on the window. “You're good with numbers, Maddy. Think about the timing and tell me what you come up with.”

She saw it all in an instant. The evasions. The flimsy excuses. The times when Rose sounded like answering her phone took took more energy than she had to offer. The missed Christmas.

“Oh, God,” she said, “that's why.”

Bill nodded. If she didn't know better she would think his blue eyes were damp with tears. “She didn't want to put a damper on a happy time,” he said. “And, let's be real honest here, she figured if nobody knew, she wouldn't have to deal with all of their worrying on top of everything else.”

“Dad, I—”

“Go,” he said. “And thank God for second chances.”

 
ROSE WATCHED THEM until they disappeared around the bend in the corridor. She could count the times on one hand when she had been able to indulge herself in the pleasure of watching the man she loved and the daughter they had created walk down a corridor together.

A small pleasure in the grand scheme of things, but all the diamonds in the world would fall short by comparison. Both tall. Both rangy. Both with that long, loose stride Rose always thought of as quintessentially west of the Rockies. She had carried Maddy for nine months inside her body, but you would never know it to see them together. Her genetic material was nowhere in sight.

If only Hannah had been walking with them, her shiny blond hair bouncing on her shoulders and—

No. Don't think about it. Think positive thoughts. They were going to get this whole thing figured out any minute now, and before you knew it Hannah would be her old bouncy self.

She refused to believe anything else was possible.

It felt good to sit there surrounded by family and dear friends. If positive energy meant anything, Hannah would get well in record time and Irene O'Malley's passing would be gentle and swift. She could never remember a time when she had felt more connected with her family or with Paradise Point. She hoped Maddy felt even a tiny portion of what she was feeling right now. If she did she would understand that she was loved.

That she had finally come home.

Her eyes closed and she began to drift. She could work eighteen-hour days at the Candlelight and leap from bed the next morning eager for more, but worry exacted a different toll from a woman. Exhaustion tugged at her like the undertow near the Point. Sly and seductive. Relentless. Pulling you away from shore until there was nothing you could do but give in to its demands.

A hand on her shoulder jolted her back to earth. “I'm not asleep,” she said. “I was just resting my eyes.”

You would think a woman would recognize her own daughter's touch, wouldn't you? But they had never been touchers, Rose and Maddy. No spontaneous hugs or arms slung around a waist for them. There were days when breathing the same air was about as close as they cared to get.

Maddy sat down next to her on the bench seat. An inch was all that separated them. Rose wasn't sure they'd been this close at any point since Maddy left diapers behind. She felt almost drunk on her daughter's nearness.

“You didn't have to go through it alone.” Maddy spoke softly. For Rose's ears alone. “I would have come home to help you.”

“I wasn't sure you would,” Rose said, looking down at her nails, “and that would have hurt more than anything the doctors could have done to me.”

“The day Hannah was born I was so sure you would show up. Every time I heard footsteps I looked up, expecting to see you standing in the doorway.”

“I wanted to be there,” Rose said. “More than you'll ever know.” She had been desperately ill from chemotherapy at that time. Struggling to pull herself through from one day to the next while maintaining the illusion that none of it was happening.

“We could have helped each other,” Maddy said. “Neither one of us should have been alone.”

“I dreamed of you every night,” Rose said. “I hung the Polaroids of your beautiful belly from my lamp shade. They were the last thing I saw every night when I went to sleep.”

“You shouldn't have had to go through any of it alone.”

“I had Lucy to lean on,” she said. “I hadn't planned to, but thank God it happened that way.”

Maddy's lovely face, both familiar and strange to her, began to crumple, and Rose's heart ached in response.

“I didn't say that to hurt you.”

“I know,” Maddy whispered. “All this time I thought you stayed away because”—her face contorted with remembered pain—“because you didn't love me.”

“Oh, honey!” She pulled Maddy into her arms and held her tight. “That's the one thing that will never happen.”

GRANDMA IRENE CONTINUED to hang on through the evening. The doctors couldn't explain it, even though they tried to cobble together an AMA-approved explanation. The nurses just shook their heads and chalked it up to two things: the will to live and the will of God. Two things you didn't learn much about in medical school.

Kelly's father suggested she and Seth go out and grab themselves some pizza or a burger some place, but she wasn't hungry. The DiFalcos had brought a ton of food. So had Aunt Claire and some of the old guys who hung out at O'Malley's.

Seth was sitting with Tommy and Mel Perry watching some television special about the NFL. Kelly tried watching with them, but she felt unsettled and restless. Maddy and her mother, Rose, were looking sadder by the minute, and it was all Kelly could do to keep from crying every time she thought of Hannah. How strange was it that someone right there in Paradise Point ended up winning the samovar she had wanted for Grandma Irene.

She was glad now that she hadn't won it after all, especially after seeing Grandma Irene's reaction. Her great-grandmother's cries still echoed inside her head. The last thing Kelly had wanted to do was cause her any pain and she hated herself for making such a big fat issue of the stupid teapot.

At least Hannah loved it. She smiled as she remembered the little girl pulling the samovar from its hiding spot in Rose's closet, so eager to make pretend tea. Kelly had been the same way at Hannah's age, living deep inside an imaginary world of fairy princesses and flying carpets. Her imaginary friends had seemed more real to her than the kids who sat beside her every day in school and she had the feeling it was the same way for Hannah.

How could everything change overnight? This time yesterday Hannah had been a healthy little girl rummaging through her grandmother's closet for hidden Christmas presents. Now she was—

No
.

She forced the scary thoughts from her mind. Thoughts had power and she refused to allow anything but positive, healing thoughts about Hannah.

Her father was sitting next to Irene, thumbing through a magazine. It was so dark in the room that she didn't know how he could even see the pages, but she supposed it didn't matter. He was just flipping the pages the way Toni DiFalco fingered her rosary beads.

Grandma Irene was muttering something under her breath, strange sounds that her father ignored, but that unnerved Kelly. It was like the old woman was trying to tell them something but they no longer spoke the same language.

“Could you move your chair, please?” she asked her father. “I better give the samovar back to Maddy before I forget.”

He nodded and shoved aside so she could get by.

Grandma Irene started at the sound of his chair scraping against the tiled floor. Her eyes fluttered open, deep blue even in the half light.

“Dad.” She kept her voice soft and even. “Dad, Grandma's awake.”

He looked over at Irene, then shook his head. “Her eyes are open, Kel, but she's not awake. The doctors explained it to me.”

Kelly met Grandma Irene's eyes and smiled.

“She sees me,” she said. “I smiled at her and she blinked in response.”

He put down his magazine. “Kel, I don't want to see you reading anything into reflex actions. She doesn't know what's going on.”

“I think she does.”

Irene extended her right hand toward Aidan. Her gaze was focused full on him.

“Just a reflex?” Kelly asked, heart pounding with excitement.

She saw her father swallow hard and her heart went out to him. He loved Grandma Irene. If only things could have been different for all of them. If only they could have been born into one of those big happy families like the DiFalcos. The DiFalcos were noisy and not great when it came to staying married, but they loved each other and they weren't shy about letting you know it. You could do a whole lot worse.

Her father reached out and placed his hand over Irene's. Kelly's eyes swam with tears. He looked over at her and nodded. She put the samovar on the floor and rested her hand on top of his. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Irene's cloudy gaze moved from Aidan's face to Kelly's, and she had the sensation of being hugged. Oh, she knew what the doctors would say—“She doesn't really see you!”—and what Aunt Claire would say—“That romantic imagination is going to get you in trouble one day.”—but the sensation was so strong, so real, that she could actually feel the arms around her and the warmth of the embrace she had never known.

“I—”

Kelly and her father exchanged glances. This was more than the odd sounds Grandma Irene had been making now for hours.

Aidan leaned closer. “Did you say something, Grandma Irene? It's Aidan. I'm here with Kelly.”

There was no doubt about it. Irene's gaze left Kelly and settled definitely on her father. She was afraid to breathe, afraid to do anything that might break the spell.

“Ah . . . I . . . I . . .” Grandma Irene's eyes closed.

“No!” Kelly's voice rang out despite her best efforts at controlling her emotions. “Please, Grandma! What were you going to say?”

Irene's lids were so thin that they were almost transparent. They fluttered open one more time, and there was no mistaking the clarity of her gaze.

Or the emotion behind it.

She looked straight at Aidan. Kelly heard a low sound deep in the back of his throat and she prayed he wouldn't cry. She didn't know what she would do if he cried.

“My blue-eyed boy . . .” Grandma Irene said, her voice the sound of a soft breeze. “. . . always loved you . . . always . . .”

 
MICHAEL WAS WAITING for her.