Free Shore Lights by Barbara Bretton Page A

sophomore at Rutgers up in New Brunswick. Her early teens had been the stuff of after-school specials and movies of the week on one of those women’s cable channels. Strangely enough, her father’s death two years ago had settled her down. Her grades were improving. She was staying out of trouble. It was more than most of the family had expected. No wonder Claire crossed herself every time Kathleen’s name came up. Claire was a wise woman. She wasn’t taking any chances.
    â€œWhat time is Bernie coming over?” Claire sat down at the table next to Billy Jr. and rubbed her jaw with her right hand.
    â€œAround six.”
    â€œIs Pete working tonight?”
    Aidan snagged a chocolate chip cookie and popped it in his mouth. “He said he’d come in and man the bar while I went over the books.” Pete was a retired firefighter who worked at O’Malley’s a few nights a week.
    She rubbed her cheek again, wincing at the touch of her own fingertips. “I took a look at the ledger,” she said. “It wasn’t a pretty sight.”
    He threw an arm around her bony shoulders and gave her a quick hug. “We’ll make it work. Things will pick up, Claire. Winters are always tough.”
    â€œWhere’re my crayons?” Billy Jr. asked through a mouthful of cookie. “I want to color.”
    Claire sighed loudly. “I’m sorry, honey. I forgot to bring the toy bag with me.”
    Billy Jr. opened his mouth to protest, but Aidan broke in before his nephew had a chance to let go full throttle. “I have something you’ll like better.”
    â€œI like my crayons,” Billy Jr. said.
    â€œMore than a Game Boy?”
    â€œYou have a Game Boy?” Only seven and he sounded as suspicious as a forty-year-old.
    â€œIt was Kelly’s. She said you could have it if you promise not to beat her Zelda score.”
    It was genetic. No O’Malley could resist a challenge. Aidan pulled Kelly’s old Game Boy from the drawer near the back door and flipped the On switch. “Here you go,” he said, handing it to Billy Jr. with a grin. “Let’s see what you can do.”
    Billy Jr. settled down to play with the kind of manic concentration usually found in hockey fans and astrophysicists.
    â€œIsn’t it time for the daily chili delivery?” Claire said in her usual brusquely cheerful manner. “I want to get out of here by six so I can go home and bake cookies for Billy’s class tomorrow.”
    â€œI’ll be back in plenty of time.”
    â€œI didn’t mean to rattle your cage about Kelly.”
    â€œYou didn’t rattle my cage. You told me you saw her on Main Street when she should have been in school. You did what a godmother’s supposed to do.” Claire saw Kelly through a different lens, one that had been shaped by her problems with Kathleen. But Kelly wasn’t Kathleen, not by any stretch of the imagination.
    â€œShe might be smart, but she’s still just seventeen,” Claire said, “and seventeen is a dangerous age.”
    He remembered seventeen. The wild highs and butt-dragging lows. The nuclear-powered hormones. The explosion when desire and opportunity finally come together in a mind-blowing moment of—
    Shit.
    He tried to push aside the faint buzz of apprehension moving up his spine, but the memory of seventeen wouldn’t let him. It sat on his shoulder as he climbed into the Jeep, and it whispered in his ear as he backed out of the driveway and headed west toward the firehouse. Seventeen lived in the now. Seventeen didn’t understand that actions had consequences.
    Seventeen didn’t know that even love had its price.
    Â 
BARNEY KURKOWSKI WAS waiting in the parking lot behind the firehouse. He looked as if he was thinking about bench-pressing a Buick.
    â€œWhaddya got for me today?” Barney asked as Aidan unlatched the back window of the truck and lowered