“It's my pleasure,” Rose said and she meant it. She was never happier than when she was fussing over her guests, making sure they had their maps and their picnic baskets and the chance to make a few memories. There were even times when she forgot all about the outrageous profit she made from every guest who passed through her doors.
She stowed the picnic basket in the backseat of their Chrysler, then waited while they buckled their seat belts.
“You drive carefully,” she ordered them with a friendly smile. “We're having a beautiful Trout Amandine tonight that I know you'll love.”
“We'll be there,” Mr. Armagh said then.
She waved goodbye, then went back inside where she finished putting the kitchen to rights, checked the pantry against her dinner recipes, and called Lucy to tell her to stop at Shop Rite for cardamom on the way over. That took all of ten minutes. The house was as close to perfect as it was likely to get. There wasn't a mantel, side table, or doorway that had been neglected. Boughs of shiny holly were everywhere, laced with fairy lights and festive red velvet bows.
It occurred to Rose that there was still a half-carton of holly stowed in the mudroom, and a huge copper planter almost begging for a little Christmas cheer. Who was she to deny their mutual destiny?
Martha Stewart, eat your heart out
.
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Paradise Point High School
Seth was waiting for her in the parking lot behind the track. Kelly pulled into the last empty spot, and by the time she gathered up her books and papers, he was opening her door for her.
“Eleven hours, forty-six minutes,” he said.
“Forty-seven,” she corrected.
The hours and minutes since they had been together.
“You look tired.”
She brushed the hair from her eyes. “I'm okay.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Why would you think that?”
“I don't know,” he said, obviously searching for the right words. “Just a feeling.”
She leaned closer, breathing in the familiar smell of his skin.
“You're not sorry, are you, Kel?”
She could tell him why she was worried. He would understand. Seth wasn't the kind of guy who would run from trouble. He loved her. He would be there with her. Hadn't they spent ages talking about what they would do if the worst happened and she found herself pregnant? They didn't keep secrets from each other. That wasn't their way.
“I love you,” she said. “There's nothing to be sorry about.”
“Some day,” he said, draping an arm across her shoulders. “Next year we'll be in college and things'll be different.”
The thought both thrilled and terrified Kelly. Spreading her wings meant leaving the nest behind, leaving her father alone.
“He'll be fine,” Seth said, reading her mind. “This is what he wants for you, Kel. You know he's proud of that scholarship you won.”
“I know, I know. If it wasn't for the accident, I wouldn't feel so bad. He's so alone, Sethâ” Her voice cracked and she paused a second, then spoke again. “I wish he had someone. I wish he wasn't so alone.”
She turned and buried her face against the side of Seth's neck and cried. Lately she had been spilling over with emotion. A beautiful sunrise would start her crying. A cross look. A snippet of poetry. The thought of Grandma Irene, so old and alone. The fact that no matter what she did or said she could never make it turn out all right for her family.
“I wish we were already old,” she said. “I wish I could see ahead into the future and know how everything was going to turn out.”
“I know how it's going to turn out,” he said, stroking her hair.
She pulled away slightly from his embrace and met his eyes. “Tell me.”
“We're going to live happily ever after.”
Sooner or later, somebody had to.
ROSE WAS ON the front porch putting the finishing touches on the planter when Maddy raced up the walk with that little dog of hers cradled against her chest. Rose's breath caught for an instant as a wave of love for her only child almost brought her to her knees. She looked so beautiful with her cheeks red with cold and her soft golden brown curls wreathing her face, so much like the old Maddy that Rose's eyes filled with unexpected tears.
Rose addressed her full attention to the holly as her daughter approached.
“I'm sorry,” Maddy blurted as she climbed the porch steps. “I meant to be back here by nine to help you.” She reached into the crate of holly and withdrew an armful of clippings.
“No need for apologies,” Rose said, wishing she could somehow find the right tone of voice, the right words, to bridge the widening gap between them. She pointed to a bare spot on the north side of the basket and watched as Maddy filled it with luxuriant branches. “Hannah made her bus without trouble, I assume.”
Her heart sank. Literally sank. She could feel it drop lower in her chest as Maddy's jaw settled into an all-too-familiar angle. Even Priscilla was looking up at her with a faint hint of scorn.
Oh, Rose, Rose . . . when will you learn to keep your mouth shut?
“Of course she made her bus.” Maddy met Rose's eyes over the empty carton. A crushed holly berry lay at her feet. (Rose would have to remember to wipe that up before her guests returned.) “Why wouldn't she? I'm not in the habit of making my daughter late for school.”
Don't mention all the commotion this morning . . . don't mention Priscilla's “accident” . . . take a deep breath, Rosie, and start all over again
.
“A package arrived for you while you were out.” The man had shown up at her door unannounced, a pale and slender elderly gentleman who was back in his Dodge before Rose had a chance to ask his name.
The guarded, slightly sullen expression in Maddy's eyes vanished. “The samovar?”
“I didn't open it, butâ”
Maddy swooped Priscilla up into her arms and raced for the front door. She lingered for a second with the door open and Rose was about to chide her gently for trying to heat the entire neighborhood when she realized Maddy was waiting for her.
Rose put her pruning shears down next to the carton of holly, brushed her hands along the sides of her tweed pants, and followed her daughter inside.
“Who delivered it?” Maddy asked over her shoulder as she made a beeline for the office.
“It wasn't UPS or the postal service,” Rose said, wiping a smudge of dust from one of the hall tables as she galloped past. “Just an old man in a plaid wool jacket and a fedora.”
Maddy chuckled. “A fedora?”
Rose laughed, too. “My thoughts exactly.”
“Was he nice?”
“I don't know,” Rose said as Maddy pounced on the package. “He handed me the parcel for you, I said thanks, he said don't mention it, and that was that.”
“String!” Maddy said, fingering the twine.
“And a brown paper package.” Rose leaned against the desk, struggling against the urge to straighten Maddy's stack of papers. “I feel like we should burst into song.”
It took only a split second for Maddy's smile to turn into a full-fledged laugh. A current of absolute, pure delight flooded Rose's being.
Oh, baby, how I've longed to make you laugh that way! It's been so long since we laughed together
. . . .
Maddy plucked a pair of shears from the top drawer of the desk and cut the string with a flourish. “Remember when Gina and I decided we were going to stage
The Sound of Music
in Grandma Fay's front room while she was making Thanksgiving dinner?”
“I don't think I ever heard my mother use that language before in my life.”
Maddy tore off the brown paper with wild abandon. “I don't think I ever heard
my
mother use that language before, either.”
The years tumbled back onto themselves until Rose wasn't that much older than Maddy. It was their first Christmas without Bill, and she had felt awkward and defensive about her failure as a wife. She had been determined to be the DiFalco who would break the string of bad luck, the one who would show them how easy it was to be in love and married and happy all at the same time. Her divorce had hit her hard, much harder than she had ever admitted to anyone but Bill himself. Only he knew about the long, lonely nights. The phone calls. The declarations of love. The inability to compromise. The fact that no matter how hard they had tried, they always fell short of happily ever after.
“Oh.” The sound of Maddy's disappointment snapped her back to the here and now. “You were right, Ma. Hannah's magic lamp is nothing but a rusty teapot after all.”
Rose trained a critical eye on the curved lines of the samovar. The graceful swells, the slender spout, the intricately worked leaves and vines that wove their way around the handle.
“Yes, it's in terrible shape,” she said, “but I have to admit it's beautiful, Maddy. Hannah's going to love it.” Not that she understood the whole magic-lamp business, but there was no denying it was an attractive teapot.
Maddy trained her critical eye on Rose. “I think I like it better when you don't mince words. This is a ridiculous lump of rust. It'll give Hannah nightmares!” She gathered up the box and the tissue paper and was about to toss the teapot into the mess and haul it out to the garbage when Rose stopped her.
“Give me an hour,” she said, taking the parcel from Maddy. “I bet you don't recognize the samovar when I'm finished with it.”
Maddy looked confused and more than a tad suspicious. “I screwed up,” she said, with perhaps less of an edge to her voice than Rose had come to expect. “I should have gone to Toys “R” Us instead of wasting my time on that on-line auction. You don't have to pretend I found a diamond-in-the-rough, Mother.”
“But that's exactly what you did find,” Rose protested, and she set out to prove her point.
Â
MADDY FOLLOWED HER mother into the kitchen, where Rose ordered her to pour them each a cup of decaf while she gathered up her potions and lotions and special cleaning rags. Rose claimed she didn't believe in magic, but in Maddy's opinion nothing short of some real hocus-pocus had a snowball's chance of success.
“Why bother?” Maddy said as she slid a mug of coffee across the counter toward Rose. “It's nothing but a bucket of rust, just like you said.”
“I like a challenge,” Rose said as she slid her beautifully manicured hands into a pair of rubber gloves. “Why do you think I took on the Candlelight?”
“I would've thought I was enough of a challenge for you for a lifetime.”
“You were that.”
Maddy waited for the zinger, but none was forthcoming. Was it possible they were having a real conversation? She settled down at the kitchen table to peel some apples for that evening's individual tarts with pecans and caramel while her mother launched into the impossible task of turning a piece of junk into a well-polished piece of junk.
“What's that stuff?” she asked as Rose poured a glob of something creamy and foul-smelling onto one of the rags.
“Trade secret.” Rose began applying the stuff to the side of the samovar with long, smooth strokes. “Grandma Fay's grandmother came up with it back in Ireland. She used it to clean the Squire's silverware. Fay made four bottles of it just before she died. This is the last of the lot.”
“You know,” said Maddy, “I've never been clear how Great-great-grandma Mary managed to meet and marry a guy from Sicily. You wouldn't think too many
paisans
wandered through County Cork in those days.”
Rose's slender shoulders lifted, then fell as she reapplied the glop to her cleaning rag. “Apparently one did. The story I heard when I was growing up was that Great-great-grandpa Vincenzo saw her in church and fell in love with her at first sight.”
“But what was he doing in her little Irish church?” Maddy persisted. “How did he get there?”
Rose refolded the rag, then began to buff a small portion of the samovar with short, brisk strokes. “I think he worked for a shipbuilder or something.”
“Andâ?”
“And that's all I know.”
“I wish I'd asked Grandma Fay more questions while she was alive.”
“That makes two of us.” Rose applied more polish to the rag. “All of those stories gone forever. It's a terrible shame.”
“What about Great-aunt Louise? Do you think she might remember a few stories?”
Rose sighed deeply and brushed a lock of hair off her face with her forearm. “Lou isn't doing too well these days. She set fire to her kitchen twice back in August. Jack and Tommy and their wives decided it was time she sold the house and went into assisted living.”
A shudder ran up Maddy's spine at the thought of feisty, eccentric Aunt Lou relegated to some anonymous rabbit warren of rooms where old people waited to die. “She has five kids. You're telling me not one of them could make room for her?”
“Lou said she would lie down naked in the middle of the Garden State Parkway before she moved in with any of her kids.”
“Where is she now?”
“Shore View.”
“Isn't that where the Bella Capri used to be?” For more generations than Maddy could count, the Bella Capri had been the place for weddings, proms, and all manner of local celebrations.
“I'm surprised you remember.”
“That's where they held my senior prom.”
“Six days before you packed your bags and left town.”
Maddy forced herself to concentrate on the apple she was peeling and not the old resentments her mother's words called back to life. “I don't recall anyone begging me to stay in Paradise Point.”