Sleeping Alone

by Bretton, Barbara

  “—you had me. Heard it before, Ma.” He sniffed the air. “When’s breakfast?”

  “You know how to pour yourself some cornflakes, Mark.”

  “Yeah, but I was hoping for waffles.”

  She pointed toward the mound of waxy turnips piled on the counter. “You start peeling them, and I’ll make you waffles.”

  He made a face. “Geez, I hate doing that crap.”

  “Surprise, Mark, sometimes so do I. Get to it.”

  She flung open the pantry door and pulled out a red box of Aunt Jemima, then grabbed eggs and milk from the fridge. Mark was searching through the dishwasher for a clean knife, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from sliding open the utensil drawer and handing him one. You can’t do everything for him, she told herself as she cracked eggs into a metal bawl. You have to let him find his own way. Another two years and he’d be in college, and she wouldn’t be able to help him at all.

  “You want these things cut, too?” he asked.

  “Quartered,” she said as she measured pancake mix. “Be careful with that knife, Mark. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “Ma, I’m sixteen. I know how to handle a knife.”

  “Accidents happen,” she said, hearing her own mother’s voice echoing inside her head. “The kitchen’s a dangerous place.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said.

  She opened her mouth to deliver a lecture on culinary safety, but her son was saved by the telephone.

  “A little early, isn’t it, Johnny?” She cradled the phone between her shoulder and ear and whisked the batter.

  “How would you feel about one more for dinner?”

  She started to say what she always said, that one more at the table hardly made a difference, but she caught herself. “Depends on who the one more is.”

  “Alex Curry.”

  She laughed out loud. “Great,” she said, pouring batter into the sizzling-hot waffle iron. “Why don’t you ask Princess Di to come, too?”

  “Eddie asked her. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “I can’t have that woman in my house,” Dee said.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I don’t have time to redecorate, that’s why.”

  “The woman bought Marge Winslow’s place, didn’t she? That isn’t exactly House Beautiful.”

  “Give her six weeks,” Dee said darkly. “She’ll turn it into a showplace.”

  She hung up the phone and glared at the waffle iron. Her house needed a paint job badly. Her sofa was covered in cat fur, dog barf, and pizza stains. She’d had to borrow folding chairs from her brother, her next-door neighbor, and Sally Whitton in order to seat everybody for dinner. She wondered if she’d be able to find a throne for Alex Curry on such short notice, then felt guilty as hell for even thinking that. You’re becoming a bitch, Dee. Just because the woman was beautiful and classy, she had her pegged as a snob. Snobs didn’t wait tables at the Starlight or move into the scuzziest house on the water. And you could be classy without being rich—at least that’s what her mother always used to tell her.

  No, it was her own insecurity rearing its ugly head. She’d seen the look on John’s face when he first saw Alex. Hell, she’d seen that same look on the face of every man in the diner the other morning. Worshipful. Awestruck. Amazed. No one had ever looked at her that way, and she had the feeling no one ever would. She didn’t inspire awe in anyone but her banker, and that was only because she managed to do so much with so damn little.

  “Finished,” Mark said.

  She pointed toward the basket of brussels sprouts next to the sink. “Wash them and cut an X in the bottom.”

  “Of each one?” He sounded horrified.

  “Life’s tough,” she said.

  Her son grumbled but got back to work. Although it wasn’t much of a victory, she’d take it.

  All in all, things could be worse. Alex Curry was coming for dinner, but Brian Gallagher wasn’t. At least she had that much to be thankful for.

  * * *

  Brian Thomas Gallagher motored down the window of his bright red Porsche and tossed a pair of coins into the toll basket. He waited, engine revved and ready, until the signal turned green, then roared back onto the Garden State Parkway. Traffic had thinned out after Toms River, and he could move at a pretty damn good clip now. Of course, he always had to keep one eye out for the fuzz. Red sports cars seemed to bring out the worst in the breed, and he’d learned a long time ago to throttle back and fake humility when necessary in order to avoid a ticket.

  A woman in a white Lexus pulled alongside and kept pace for a few miles. She was okay-looking, albeit in an obvious way. The makeup was too heavy, and the hair too overdone in a Jersey Shore kind of way, but she had enough going for her that he entertained motioning her over to the shoulder and asking her to dinner. Fortunately his brain got the better of his dick before he followed through.

  Hell, he was a married man. Married men weren’t supposed to pick up women on the Garden State. Of course, married men weren’t supposed to be alone on Thanksgiving Day either, but that hadn’t occurred to him or Margo when they’d said good-bye at the airport.

  “Are you sure you can’t join us, darling?” she’d asked just before boarding the flight to Aspen. “Mother and Daddy will be terribly disappointed.”

  His two daughters were tugging on his pants legs like a pair of golden retriever puppies. “I have a deposition to take on Friday,” he said, looking appropriately crestfallen. “No way I could be back in time.” He bent down and hugged Caitlyn and Allison. By tacit agreement he didn’t hug his wife. Margo had been brought up to believe public displays of affection were hopelessly middle class.

  “The Roswells are having people in for a buffet tomorrow,” Margo said as they called her flight. “You’re welcome to attend.”

  “Not without you, darling,” he said smoothly. The truth was he couldn’t stomach the Roswells and wouldn’t go near their buffet on a bet.

  Margo smiled. “Cook is off for the holiday,” she said. “Where will you go?”

  “This is New York City. I think I can find someplace.”

  So why the hell was he heading down the Shore? He should have stayed in town and grabbed himself a bite to eat at one of those trendy Columbus Avenue places that offered free-range turkey with fat-free dressing and organically grown sweet potatoes—food with about as much soul as his life. But who needed soul? he thought, gripping the wheel tightly. He had money, and that was supposed to be enough.

  It was raining like hell, a steady downpour that was giving his wipers a workout. People drove like assholes in the rain, especially on New Jersey highways. All he needed was for some idiot in a Ford to hydroplane across six lanes of traffic and crash head-on into his Porsche. If he had half the brain he liked to tell people he had, he’d be home drinking Scotch.

  Who in hell would have figured the pull of his old hometown would be too strong to resist?

  Brian had spent most of his life trying to put as much distance between himself and Sea Gate as humanly possible, but lately the only time he felt like a success was when he roared down Ocean Avenue in his Porsche, the local kid who’d made good. They all bought into the illusion of fancy cars and hand-tailored suits and haircuts that cost more than the Starlight Diner probably cleared on a good morning. They didn’t like him, but they all wanted their kids to follow in his footsteps, to go off to the big city and swim with the urban sharks.

  Not that Dee was impressed by any of it. When she bothered to acknowledge him at all, it was only to shoot him a withering glance that made him feel as if he were the one waiting tables at a third-class hash house. I’m the one who got away, Dee, he wanted to say to her. I’m the only one who managed to pull it off. She’d married and moved to Florida seventeen years ago, but when her teenage marriage collapsed a few years later, she came back to Sea Gate. His old man had never even tried to get away. Eddie Gallagher seemed to think everything he needed could be found with
in the town’s limits.

  Not even his little brother Johnny had managed to escape permanently. He’d tried life in the big city but turned tail and run back home. When Libby died, John’s last chance to be a success had died with her. He’d fallen into a grief so dark and black that he lost sight of what was important. The powers that be at Samuel, Roberts, and Margolin had been patient, but after a while their patience had run thin. They’d told John to shape up or lose his position, and John had told them to shove their corner office up their corporate ass. Baby brother would live and die in Sea Gate and never know there was a whole wide world out there.

  He slowed down the Porsche as he approached another toll plaza. He hated the Garden State. How the hell were you supposed to make time when you had to stop every few miles and toss coins in a basket? As far as he was concerned, they could drop a bomb on the Jersey Shore, and he’d never miss the damn place. Hurricanes, floods, brown tide—how many hints did Mother Nature have to drop before the light dawned? The old Jersey Shore was gone. The days of ramshackle bungalows and town-square picnics were over. People expected more from a summer vacation place than four walls and a roof. They wanted to be catered to; they wanted a certain amount of luxury. The working class wanted to aspire toward the middle, while the middle wanted to emulate the rich. Places like Sea Gate were yesterday’s dream, and the sooner they realized it, the better off they’d be.

  The world was changing faster than the speed of light, and you had to change with it or be left a few centuries behind. The last time he saw John, he had tried to explain some of his ideas, but his little brother had the foresight of a sea urchin. “The marina’s dead,” he’d tried to tell John. “Hell, the whole town’s dead. Get out before it takes you under with it.” He’d had a developer lined up who was willing to take it off his brother’s hands at a profit, but John wouldn’t budge. John gave him a load of crap about the local fishermen, what it would do to their livelihood, but Brian wasn’t buying any of it. His brother was a fucking pussy who didn’t have the balls to grab opportunity when it came along.

  But it wasn’t over. Brian had an arsenal of weapons at his command, and he wasn’t afraid to use them. Change was coming to Sea Gate whether or not his brother wanted it. Brian had put together a group of like-minded businessmen who were looking to grab a piece of the Jersey Shore for their own. Sea Gate was close enough to Atlantic City to cash in on the money being made in that gambling mecca. He’d taken a look at the specs and liked what he saw. They’d raze the town from the docks west to Barnegat Road, which led to the highway. The marina, houses, down-on-their-luck businesses—they’d all go under the wrecking ball if Brian had his way. The town center would become a megamall-sized parking lot. A new upscale marina would be erected, stretching from the south end of Sea Gate’s shoreline to the north. There would be restaurants, a small hotel, and berths for thirty dinner yachts that would ply the waters between Sea Gate and the Atlantic City marina.

  They’d tried to ace him out of what was rightfully his, but one day soon Brian would have the last laugh.

  The Sea Gate exit loomed a mile ahead. Another thirty minutes and he’d pull up in front of Dee’s house. The driveway would be clogged with cars, most of them aging clunkers with bad exhaust systems and enough rust damage from salt air to choke a horse. His garaged Porsche would stand out like a victory flag.

  They’d never been behind him. Right from the start, they’d made it clear whose side they were on, and it wasn’t his. They’d wanted him to give up his future and settle down right there with Dee, but he couldn’t do it. He’d wanted her, but he hadn’t wanted the complications that came along with her. He would have lost his scholarship—hell, his entire future would have gone down the toilet.

  So he made his choices and now he was trying his damnedest to live with them. He had the cushy job in a prestigious law firm. He had the apartment and the cars and the two little girls and the trophy wife who had never quite managed to creep inside his heart.

  Only one woman had ever done that, and he’d lost her a long time ago.

  Six

  Last thanksgiving Alex and Griffin had attended an intimate supper at the home of a British lord who happened to be married to a homesick American woman. Fifteen couples, none of whom knew each other well at all, gathered around an ornate cherrywood table to celebrate a holiday that had absolutely no meaning for most of the people in the room. Instead of turkey, they served squab. Wild rice replaced sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping. And, to Alex’s utter disbelief, there wasn’t a pie in sight.

  She had wanted to bake an all-American apple pie and bring it with them as a Thanksgiving offering, but Griffin had been horrified at the thought.

  “Leave the cooking to the help, darling,” he’d said, dismissing her the way one would a backward child. “A magnum of Dom and flowers is more the thing.”

  She never argued points of etiquette with Griffin. He was older and more sophisticated and knew how to navigate the shark-infested waters of London society. An apple pie wasn’t much in the scheme of things, but it had represented a basic difference between herself and Griffin, in the way they looked at the world. She’d thought about that miserable Thanksgiving many times in the twelve months since and wished she’d had the guts to listen to her own instincts.

  What a difference a year made.

  The timer dinged, and she jumped up from the kitchen table to take a pair of apple pies from the oven. The latticework top crusts were baked to a perfect golden brown and the juices bubbled merrily in the cinnamon-sugar syrup. Her two years of gourmet cooking classes hadn’t been wasted, she thought as she admired her handiwork. She might not be turning out tournedos of beef in a morel sauce, but she’d bet her spatula these pies could hold their own anywhere.

  She’d also bet her VW that the Gallagher men wouldn’t have anything like this on their Thanksgiving table—not unless there were some Gallagher women on the premises. No one had mentioned any Gallagher women. Eddie had the rudderless look older men often got when their wives were no longer around to guide them. And John—there was an almost visible barrier around him, as if he’d been hurt once and wasn’t about to let it happen again. The two men probably lived alone in a house that was even more in need of repair than her own, eating frozen dinners and forgetting to take out the trash.

  She sank down onto a kitchen chair and rested her chin in her hands. She didn’t even know these people, and she was trying to analyze them like some sleazy pop psychologist.

  Get a life, Alex, she thought as she stared at her perfect pies. Preferably one of your own.

  * * *

  Alex told herself she was changing her clothes to celebrate the occasion, not because she was going anywhere. It was Thanksgiving Day, after all, and the holiday deserved some respect. She peeled off her jeans and T-shirt, took a quick shower, then dressed in dark charcoal gray trousers, a cream-colored silk shirt, and a cardigan in a heathery shade of pink. She brushed her hair until it shone, then carefully French-braided it until it swung between her shoulder blades like a heavy golden rope.

  A woman owed it to herself to look her best, even if there was no one around to see her. It was part of maintaining discipline. Which was all well and good, but it didn’t explain why she redid her eye makeup twice or changed her shoes three times, struggling to find the perfect pair of flats to go with the straight-leg trousers. Her naked lobes begged for adornment, but all she had was the pair of earrings she’d tucked away for a rainy day. She glanced out the window at the soggy landscape. It was raining. And it wasn’t as if she was planning to go anywhere. Besides, even if she did and someone happened to notice her earrings, who would believe they were real.

  She puttered around the kitchen, wiping down the sink, dusting off the top of the fridge, staring at the pies. What a shame for two such perfect specimens to go to waste. Maybe she would drop them off at John and Eddie’s house.

  The broker had given her a small map of the village that
showed all the inlets and cross streets. She rummaged around in the shoe box she used as a makeshift filing cabinet. There it was, tucked under the stack of legal documents that said she was the proud owner of the Winslow place. Her house was highlighted in yellow. Ocean Avenue, the marina, the triple inlets just beyond—there it was. Lighthouse Way. How strange, she thought. It wasn’t even near the water. Lighthouse Way was at the far end of town, tucked in the middle of what looked to be a small residential housing development. It shouldn’t take her more than fifteen minutes round-trip to zip over there, wish the Gallagher men a happy Thanksgiving, then drive home.

  * * *

  Number 10 Lighthouse Way was a small Cape Cod with raised dormers, a chain link fence around the backyard, and a bright red mailbox decorated with shamrocks. The shamrocks puzzled her. Try as she might, she couldn’t quite imagine either John or his father painting shamrocks on their mailbox. Maybe there was a Mrs. Eddie after all.

  John’s truck was parked in the driveway, surrounded by a half-dozen vehicles in varying states of disrepair. Either he was running a freelance used-car lot, or she was just one of many guests invited to share turkey and cranberry sauce chez Gallagher. Good, she thought as she turned off the ignition and gathered up her things. This way there would be no hard feelings when she told Eddie she wasn’t staying.

  She dashed through the rain to the front door, juggling two pies, one umbrella, and a slim black clutch bag. “First and ten...” she heard a TV announcer say from inside the house. “Ball on the forty-yard line.” A chorus of loud male commentary erupted in response. She pushed the bell with her elbow, then waited. Maybe they couldn’t hear her over the blare of football and male laughter. She pushed the bell again, two short blasts this time. She knew an omen when she saw one. If someone didn’t open the door by the time she counted to three, she and her pies were going home.

  She was about to leave when the door swung open.