Free Chances Are by Barbara Bretton

she would be a candidate for a midlife crisis, she would have laughed them right out of the room, but more and more she was beginning to wonder if anything short of a visit to see Dr. Phil was going to get her back on track. She yearned for something new, something different, something she had never seen or heard or experienced before, but damned if she knew what that something might be.
    But she knew what it wasn’t. The whole damn town was drowning in memories since the arrival of the NJTV reporter who was assigned to gather interviews about the history of Paradise Point. You couldn’t take a step without tripping over a mossy story about the old days and the way it used to be. (The way it probably never was.) Endless tales about Billy and Aidan’s grandmother Irene O’Malley and her husband Michael, ancient history about the bar’s glory days when it was a restaurant worthy of a special trip down to the shore.
    Irene’s death last December had been reported in a surprising number of newspapers up and down the state. A centenarian with a sharp mind and amazingly accurate command of details, both social and political, was a rare find, and both historians and gerontology students had made it their business to interview Irene frequently during the last ten years of her life. One of those lengthy obituaries had snagged the interest of the state’s public television programmers, and suddenly Paradise Point was at the center of production on a series featuring the rise, fall, and reemergence of Paradise Point.
    The town library was stacked floor to ceiling with donations of scrapbooks, photo albums, old letters, and diaries found stashed away in attics and closets all around town. Locals compared notes every morning at Julie’s Coffee Shop, trying to dazzle each other with outrageous tales about politics, family squabbles, hurricanes, nor’easters, and blizzards.
    And the accident that took Billy’s life and the lives of five other firefighters.
    She couldn’t escape it if she tried. The collapse of that warehouse roof three years ago had changed the town, brought them all closer together as they struggled to understand why God had let this tragedy happen. Paradise Point was a typical small town in that most of the residents were second, third, and fourth generation, living in houses their grandparents had owned, going to the same school their parents had gone to, shopping the same markets, driving the same streets. Their lives were intertwined in ways Houdini couldn’t unravel, and when Billy and his coworkers died, the whole town grieved.
    Claire had watched it all through a bloodred haze of rage. Her anger burned through sorrow, through loss, ignited everything and everyone it came in contact with. She hated the pious prayers, the sympathy cards with the faded lilies and a cross, the pans of mac and cheese, pots of spaghetti sauce, the flowers that stank of death.
    She hated the fact that after a marriage filled with second chances they had finally run out of time. She despised the fact that they thought they knew him, thought they understood who he really was, when they hadn’t a clue. Her flawed, imperfect hero, the husband she had never managed to love the way she wanted to be loved herself.
    A tiny cough erupted behind her, and Claire almost vaulted over the steering wheel in surprise. She had all but forgotten Hannah was strapped in the backseat, waiting to be delivered home. She turned around in her seat at the stoplight and smiled at the little girl, struck again by the resemblance to a young Kelly. Where had those precious years gone? Four of her brood were out there in the world, either in school or working, and this time next year Kelly would join them.
    “Hannah, you’re so good back there I almost forgot about you.”
    No response, just a thumb quickly inserted into a mouth that looked dangerously ready to cry.
    “How would you like to go see the end of Billy’s soccer game?”
    Still no response.