“That’s the kind of father I wanted to be,” he said, looking at her for the first time since he began telling his story. “Eddie was there for me when I needed him most.”
“And now you’re here for Eddie.”
The look in his eyes warmed her heart. “Not everyone gets it.”
“I do,” she said, and she loved him for it. She thought of how different her life might have been if she’d been lucky enough to have parents who actually cared about her happiness. Her child would never doubt she or he was loved and wanted.
“I’ll be a good father,” John said quietly. “I’ve had a pretty damn good role model to follow.”
Now, Alex. Tell him now.
But she couldn’t do it. Not when he was looking at her like that, as if she’d handed him the keys to heaven. She couldn’t tell him that the baby she carried might not be his. He had managed to survive the worst thing that could happen to a man. He deserved to be happy again and—God forgive her—her baby deserved a father who understood what being a father was all about. Her baby would be part of a family of men who understood what love was all about. Her baby would grow up knowing where he or she fit in the scheme of things. Her baby would grow up with a father who knew how to love.
He placed his hands against her belly, and a womb-deep sense of destiny filled her heart. Yes, she thought, pushing away the sense that she was making a terrible mistake. This is the way it’s meant to be.
Sixteen
Sea Gate roofing wanted eight thousand dollars to repair Alex’s roof and ceiling.
“This is highway robbery,” Alex said to John her first day back at the diner after the accident. It was the quiet period between breakfast and lunch.
“You need a roof and a ceiling,” John pointed out. “That costs big bucks.”
She poured herself a glass of milk and took a sip. “He wants half of it up front. Can you imagine?”
“I can—”
“Don’t say it,” she warned. “It’s my house. I can manage.”
“You can’t live there while they’re working.”
She took another sip of milk. “Of course I can.”
“You’re pregnant. You—”
“Will you keep your voice down?” She glanced toward Will, who was smoking on the back step as usual. “I don’t want the world to know yet.”
“I do,” John said. “I feel like standing on the corner of Soundview and Ocean and telling everyone who walks by that we’re going to have a baby.”
“They’ll know soon enough.”
“Sooner,” he said with a grin. “I think your waistbands are getting a little tight.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Her hands went immediately to her belly, “It’s too soon for me to show.” Unless the baby wasn’t John’s. She pushed the thought away, as she had many times in the week since she’d discovered she was pregnant.
“What gives in here?” Dee popped up in the doorway. “Mrs. Kroger’s waiting for her two eggs over easy. Let’s get moving.”
“He’s a bad influence,” Alex said, cracking two eggs onto the griddle. “You should tell the boss.”
“Dee, you had some roof work done a few years ago, didn’t you?”
Dee rolled her eyes. “Don’t remind me. Except for my marriage, that was the worst three years of my life.”
Alex laughed despite herself. “You paid her to say that, didn’t you?” she asked John.
“Did I pay you to say that?” John asked Dee.
“Did I miss something?” Dee asked, looking from Alex to John. “You two should come with subtitles.”
Alex added three slices of bacon to the griddle. “He thinks l should move in with him and Eddie while my roof’s being repaired.”
Dee arched a brow. “Just the roof?” She sounded skeptical.
“And the ceiling,” John added. “Don’t forget the ceiling.”
“Roof and ceiling?” Dee turned to Alex. “Pack your bags, honey, and don’t look back.”
* * *
A little while later John went back to the marina and Alex left Will to prep for the lunch rush while she took her break out front.
“I know he paid you to say that,” she said to Dee as she sat down on an empty counter stool.
“You’ll thank me,” Dee said. “I would have moved in with Rush Limbaugh if he’d asked, just to get away.”
Dee then proceeded to make her laugh with home-repair horror stories.
“You’re right,” Alex said. “Rush would look pretty good after that.”
“So how’s it going for you two?”
“Rush and me?”
Dee tossed a packet of sugar in her direction. “You and John.”
Alex looked away to hide her cat-and-canary smile. “I’d say it’s going pretty well.”
“It must be if you’re moving in with him.”
“That’s only a temporary arrangement,” Alex reminded her. “I have a home of my own.”
Dee didn’t say anything. Her wicked smile said it all for her.
Suddenly Alex wanted to share her news with the first real friend she’d ever had.
“Remember when you asked me if I needed the number of a good gynecologist?”
“Yes,” Dee said in a careful tone of voice. “And you need the number of a good gynecologist now?”
Alex took a deep breath, then looked her friend straight in the eye. “Actually I need the number of a good obstetrician.”
Dee’s shriek could be heard in Atlantic City. She leaped to her feet, then grabbed Alex in a bear hug.
“We’re not making it public yet,” Alex warned, “so please don’t tell a soul.”
“They couldn’t pry it out of me if they staked me naked to an anthill,” Dee said as huge tears of happiness rolled down her cheeks.
“You’re not supposed to cry,” Alex said, wiping tears from her own cheeks. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be all hormonal and emotional.”
“So sue me,” Dee said, sniffling loudly. “I am a sucker for happy endings.”
Endings? Alex thought. It seemed to her that life was just beginning.
* * *
“Here you go, Brian.” Gwen, his paralegal, deposited a thick manila folder on his desk blotter. “Sorry it took so long. This is everything I could find on Griffin Whittaker and his wife.”
“Nice work,” Brian said. “Many photos?”
“A few,” Gwen said. “There’s one nice portrait of the two of them taken at a charity ball in London.”
Gwen was in a chatty mood. It was all Brian could do to keep from tossing her out on her shapely butt; the manila folder was practically burning a hole in his desktop. Finally Gwen went back to her own office, and he dove into the stack of papers.
Griffin Whittaker wins Businessman of Year award... Whittaker announces layoffs at London office... Mr. and Mrs. Griffin Whittaker of New York City smile for London cameras—
Griffin and his wife were posed before a dark blue backdrop. Whittaker wore a tux. His wife wore a Grecian-styled gown that made her look like a goddess.
There were two more photos, both candid shots of Alex and Griffin in London. According to the accompanying article, the last photo of the Whittakers had been taken on October 1. From that point on, there was no mention of Alex anywhere. It was as if she’d never existed.
Brian continued thumbing through the photocopied pages. He needed something he could sink his teeth into. Something that would wipe the smug smile off his baby brother’s face.
Halfway through the stack he found it. Apparently Griffin Whittaker’s devoted wife Alexandra had walked out on him suddenly back in October, and her husband had been looking for her ever since. Whittaker had put out discreet, gentlemanly feelers around London and the Continent but had met with no success.
Alex Curry had managed to drop off her husband’s radar screen by moving to a nowhere Jersey Shore town. She’d bought the Winslow place for cash, drove a beat-up VW, and worked at the diner in a
world that was probably invisible to her Ivy League husband.
Hide in plain sight, he thought. It worked every time. The big question, however, was why she’d walked out.
A woman didn’t turn her back on penthouse apartments and chauffeured limousines unless she had a good reason. And a woman didn’t move into a rathole like Marge Winslow’s place unless she was desperate. No doubt about it: Alex Curry was running scared.
He grinned as he slid the stack of papers back into the manila folder. Greed was a strong motivator, but fear was a stronger one. This was even better than he’d hoped for. Not only did Alex Curry hold a key piece of property in the takeover of Sea Gate, but also she held the key to his brother as well.
When Alex fell, Sea Gate would fall with her.
* * *
Funny how sometimes good news could depress the hell out of you.
Dee was as honestly happy for Alex and John as she’d ever been for any two people in her life. John had been part of her existence since the cradle. They’d shared first teeth, first communions, and first loves. When she’d found out she was pregnant with Brian’s baby, it was John who’d volunteered to do the right thing by her. She’d never forgotten that gesture. If she hadn’t loved him before, she did from that moment on.
And you wanted the people you loved to be happy. John’s life had taken a 180-degree turn from despair to the purest kind of joy. John was one of those rare men who was born to be a father. When Dee was pregnant with Mark, her mother had told her not to expect much from her husband for the first twelve months. “It takes most men at least a year to get used to the idea that the baby isn’t going away.”
But not Johnny. He bonded with his boys in utero, and the connection between them had grown stronger every day, right up until he lost them in that accident. She’d thought they were going to lose John, too. His pain had been so great there were times she’d almost wished God would take him too so he could be reunited with the family that had been his life.
He deserved a second chance to be happy, and she wondered if Alex had any idea how lucky she was that her baby would have a man like that to look up to.
Mark looked up to John, even if he wouldn’t admit it. And God knew, her son adored Eddie. More and more over the last few months she’d found herself wanting to tell Mark the truth, to tell him that he was one of the Gallaghers, too, even if he didn’t share the name. Maybe she’d done too good a job of keeping secrets.
Marrying Tony had been the biggest mistake of her life. He’d said he could accept another man’s child as his own, but within months she knew that would never happen. Every time her husband looked at her son, he saw Brian Gallagher looking back at him, and that was no way to begin a marriage.
“You’ve got to tell the kid,” Tony had urged her after the divorce became final. “You can’t keep a secret like that in Sea Gate.”
But she had. Brian was long gone by the time she returned with Mark but without her husband. He’d married the kind of woman she’d always known he would marry, sophisticated and well-connected and rich. The kind of woman who’d never waited tables in a diner to make ends meet. In fact, Dee doubted if Margo had ever set foot inside a diner in her whole privileged life. With Brian out of the picture, the people who’d whispered behind their hands had moved on to other, juicier topics.
She knew it was hard for Eddie to see Mark around town every day and not be able to claim him as his first grandchild, but he did his best. Mark didn’t make it easy. Mark had looked up to him from the first day they met, and he’d begged Eddie to take him out on the Kestrel any chance he got. Somehow Eddie had managed to be a good friend to the boy without ever hinting that their relationship was one of blood and bone as well.
Dee had settled back into her old life without a ripple, and after a while it was as if she’d never left. After her parents died she moved into their old house, and the money she used to spend on rent now went toward saving for Mark’s college education. She’d made it clear to Mark that he would have to help share the burden. He had to keep his marks up in order to qualify for a partial scholarship, and it was understood he’d have to hold down a job to help pay for gas and car insurance and clothes.
She’d done a good job with her boy, a damn good job, but he needed a father now more than ever. She would have known what to say to a daughter, how to guide her through the rough waters of adolescence. The difference between the sexes had never seemed more acute than they did these days as she watched her son take his first steps toward manhood. The sweet-natured boy she used to tuck into bed at night had been replaced by a sullen, angry stranger. She could talk football and baseball with the best or them, but she couldn’t show him how to be a man.
She didn’t blame Tony for his indifference. Her ex-husband had tried to love Mark the way he would have loved his own child, but it had been like swimming against the tide. The fact that he kept in contact with the boy thirteen years after the divorce meant something, even if it wasn’t enough to erase the pain and confusion in her son’s eyes every time Tony’s name came tip. He didn’t look or sound or think like Tony and he never would. As Mark grew older, those differences grew more apparent. It seemed to Dee that he looked more like a Gallagher with every day that passed.
And that was the problem. Mark was a Gallagher through and through, and it was time he found out.
She had taken a deep breath the other day and told Sam Weitz the whole story. She’d never done that before. Lots of people knew bits and pieces of her story, but now only Sam knew it all. They’d become lovers the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, and now, almost six weeks later, she was feeling cautiously optimistic about the future. She knew that even cautious optimism could be dangerous, but she couldn’t help herself.
She’d made more than her share of mistakes with men. Those mistakes had made her cautious and guarded and sometimes downright unapproachable. If Prince Charming decided to sweep her off her feet, he’d better be wearing a flak jacket. Poor Sam, she thought. He had no idea what he’d gotten into.
Brian had called a few times since Thanksgiving, and she found his sudden attention disconcerting, to say the least. At first she’d thought he was looking for sex, but by the second phone call she’d realized that was only a small part of it. He persisted in wanting to walk down memory lane with her, reliving high school triumphs and ignoring his one glaring failure until she wanted to wrap the phone cord around his neck.
He acts as if the pregnancy never happened, she had thought. As if Mark belonged to someone else.
“Tell Mark the truth,” Sam had urged her over dinner last week. “That’s the only part of the equation you can control.”
Maybe Sam was right. She wasn’t fool enough to believe there would ever be a father-and-son reunion between Mark and Brian. That wasn’t what she was looking for. But a grandfather-and-son reunion—well, that was another story.
Whether or not John would admit it yet, something was wrong with Eddie, and Dee was afraid she knew what it was. Her aunt Louise had started the same way. Forgetfulness, followed by disorientation, followed by mood swings, followed by—she couldn’t bring herself to think about the way it had ended.
If she was going to give her son the gift of a family, she would have to gather up her courage and do it soon, before it was too late.
Seventeen
There had been times over the past few years when Eddie’s faith in God had deserted him. You couldn’t watch your wife die a long miserable death without wondering exactly what the Almighty had in mind when He decided who would make an easy exit from this life and who wouldn’t. He’d been raised a Catholic and had practiced his faith for almost seventy years without questioning why, but losing Rosie had shaken his belief to the core.
Eddie found his faith again on Valentine’s Day when Alex Curry moved in with his son.
John had been smiling nonstop for two weeks now. And laughing. Eddie couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard his son laugh as if he meant
it. When he told Eddie that Alex was moving in with them while her roof was being repaired, Eddie had been tempted to go to church and light a candle in thanks.
The two of them had shoveled out the house, then applied a little elbow grease where necessary. Dusting. Polishing. Cleaning. Waxing. He wondered if the Guinness Book of World Records gave a prize for having a record number of cobwebs. They managed to get the place in shape an hour before John went to collect Alex and her stuff, and then only because Eddie had come up with the idea to stuff some of the junk in the toolshed.
“Whatever works,” John had said, and Eddie agreed.
He and Bailey were waiting on the top step when John pulled his truck into the driveway.
“Welcome to our home,” he’d said, kissing Alex on the cheek.
“I promise it’s only temporary,” she’d said, bending down to scratch Bailey behind the ear. “I’ll be out of your hair the second the roofers are finished.”
“Don’t rush on my account,” Eddie said, meaning it. “Stay here as long as you want.”
She and John exchanged a look that puzzled Eddie, but he let it go. He hadn’t been alone so long that he’d forgotten the different ways men and women communicated with each other.
The house felt different with her in it. She’d only been there five minutes, and already it felt more like a home than it had since Rosie died.
“I made coffee,” Eddie said as he led the way into the kitchen. “We’ve got bagels and cream cheese if you want them.”
“I’m not much of a coffee drinker,” Alex said with a gentle smile, “but I’d love a glass of milk.”
“You sit down,” Eddie said, gesturing toward the kitchen table. John was busy unloading the truck. “I’ll get it for you.”
“You don’t have to spoil me like this,” Alex said, claiming a chair.. “I might get used to it.”
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