Sleeping Alone

by Bretton, Barbara

  “So get used to it,” Eddie said opening the refrigerator. “Between the accident and that roof of yours, you’ve been through the mill the last few weeks.”

  “The car will finally be ready tomorrow,” she said. “Things will get back to normal.”

  He handed Alex a glass of milk, then poured himself some hot java. “Don’t push yourself,” he said.

  “I’ll bet that’s not what you told John when he was a boy,” she said, laughing.

  “Never had to tell him much of anything,” Eddie said. “That one marches to his own drummer. It was Brian we had to lean on, to keep him on the straight and narrow.”

  Alex opened her mouth as if to say something, then quickly looked back down at the plate of bagels.

  “Hope you’re not a poker player, Alex,” he said, dumping some sugar into his cup. “That face of yours is an open book.”

  “So I’ve been told,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “Brian’s been a disappointment,” he said honestly. “Family doesn’t mean much to him. Not the way it does to Johnny.”

  “You telling stories about me?” John walked into the kitchen with Bailey at his side. “Let Alex make up her own mind, why don’t you.” The twinkle in his eyes made Eddie grin.

  “Coffee?” Eddie asked.

  “Sit down and eat, Pop,” John said. “I’ll get my own coffee.”

  “Hell, no,” Eddie said. “You did the heavy lifting. I’ll do the pouring.”

  Alex looked up at him. The same twinkle glittered in her eyes. “John’s right,” she said. “Why don’t you sit down, Eddie, so we can tell you something.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked, looking from Alex to John. “You two cooking up some scheme?”

  “We have some news for you, Pop,” said John, “and we think you’d better be sitting down when you hear it.”

  His heart lurched, and Alex reached out and touched his hand.

  “For heaven’s sake, John,” she said, “the least you can do is tell your father it’s good news.”

  “It’s good news,” John said.

  “Will somebody just spit it out?” Eddie bellowed in exasperation. “I’m almost seventy years old. I don’t have all day.”

  John and Alex exchanged another one of those looks.

  Alex nodded. “You tell him,” she said.

  “Somebody’d better tell me fast or—”

  “Pop,” said John, “Alex and I are going to have a baby.”

  The words tumbled around inside Eddie’s head like dice. “What?” he asked, trying to make sense of the sounds he’d heard. “What? What?”

  “Pop.” John knelt down in front of him. “Alex is pregnant. You’re going to be a grandfather again.”

  “What about Libby? What the hell’s your wife going to say about that?” Anger bubbled through his veins. “I have four grandchildren already. Four’s enough. I don’t want any more grandchildren.” The blond-haired woman tried to make him smile, but he wasn’t buying it. “You trying to shame your parents, miss? Go find yourself some man that doesn’t already have a family.”

  Her golden eyes flooded with tears. “Eddie, this is Alex. You know I would never hurt anybody.”

  “I don’t know anything about you,” he said as wild birds flapped crazily inside his chest. His heart... was that his heart... it couldn’t be his heart... nobody’s heart beat that fast... he’d be dead if his heart was really beating that fast....

  * * *

  “Pop!” John was crouched down in front of him. “Pop!”

  “What the hell are you yelling about?” Eddie asked, puzzled by the look of fear in his son’s eyes. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He had the feeling he’d missed something, but he didn’t have any idea what it might be. Lately his mind tended to wander, and he couldn’t always figure out a way to cover for himself. This was one of those times.

  “Across the table from him Alex’s big golden eyes swam with tears. She and John looked at each other.

  “What’s with those looks?” Eddie demanded. “Every time I turn around, the two of you are giving each other one of those looks.”

  “Sorry, Pop,” John said. He still looked white as a sheet. “We—uh, Alex and I, have something to tell you.”

  “Yes,” Alex said. Her voice sounded shaky, and he felt bad if he’d somehow hurt her feelings, but he didn’t know what he might have done. “It’s something wonderful, Eddie.”

  “So tell me already,” he said. “I could use some good news.”

  “Pop,” said John. “Alex and I are going to have a baby.”

  “A baby?” He looked at Alex, and she nodded. The last time he’d seen a woman look so radiantly beautiful, it was when Rosie told him she was pregnant the first time. “The two of you?”

  “Yes.” Alex reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Your grandchild.”

  He thought of Jake and Michael, and a lump the size of a lemon formed in his throat. He missed those boys—Jesus, how he missed them.

  “I’m—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “I’m so sappy for—” He couldn’t manage to get the words out past that damn lump in his throat.

  “I know.” John’s voice cracked on the last word. “I know.”

  * * *

  “I believe it’s important to get to know each other before the examination,” Dr. Schulman said as Alex and John took their seats a few days later. “We’ll sit here in my office and talk and then we’ll do the exam.”

  “Sounds good to me,” John said.

  Alex shot him a look. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap to keep them from shaking. So far it wasn’t working. Doctors made her nervous; gynecologists made her crazy. Too many years and too much bad news had conditioned her like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Put her within five miles of a table and stirrups, and she started to hyperventilate.

  You’re pregnant, she told herself. Really and truly pregnant. This was a normal, run-of-the-mill prenatal appointment and she had a good man by her side. She’d finally grabbed the brass ring. Now if she could just get herself to believe it.

  She held John’s hand while the doctor explained the schedule of visits and outlined the costs.

  “Susan is our office manager,” the doctor said, scribbling something on a pale green legal pad. “Be sure to speak with her before you leave. She’ll take down all of your health insurance information.”

  “I don’t have health insurance,” Alex blurted out.

  The silence in the room was deafening. “No health insurance?” Dr. Schulman sounded as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

  “No health insurance,” Alex repeated. She couldn’t quite control the challenging note in her voice. “I’m afraid it’s out of my reach.” Did you hear what you said, Alex? If health care is out of your reach, how are you ever going to raise a baby?

  The doctor scribbled furiously. “Susan will help you work out a payment plan. Hospital charges must be paid in full before delivery.”

  “No problem,” John said, withdrawing a checkbook from his pocket. “Tell me what the charges are, and I’ll take care of them now.”

  Alex opened her mouth to protest, but there was something about the look in his eyes that brought her up short. He needs to do this, she thought. He needed to take care of her and the baby, to protect them in whatever way he could. And, God help her, she and the baby needed him. She’d never given a thought to health insurance. Now it was quickly becoming the focus of her life.

  The doctor outlined what they could expect from each of the prenatal visits. She gave them packets of information about Lamaze classes, breast-feeding, and genetic counseling, then reviewed the forms Alex had filled out in the waiting room.

  “You’re twenty-eight,” Dr. Schulman said. “No family history of cancer, heart disease, or diabetes. This s your first pregnancy. Blood type O-negative. You missed something here, Alex.” She looked up and smiled. “The date of your last period.” />
  “I’m not sure when it was,” Alex hedged. “It’s been a while.”

  “Well, this is February,” the doctor said. “December, perhaps?”

  “No, it was longer ago than that.”

  The doctor eyed her with curiosity. “November?”

  “I think it was more like March.”

  Dr. Schulman arched a brow. “Of last year?”

  Alex nodded. “Of last year.”

  “Did you have any spotting in the interim?”

  “Some,” Alex admitted. “But nothing notable.” Nothing that a normal woman would have considered to be a period.

  “Amenorrhea.” Dr. Schulman nodded. “Difficult to achieve a pregnancy, but not impossible.” She flipped to a new page in her notebook. “When do you estimate the date of conception?”

  Her throat constricted as she remembered that terrible October night when her marriage ended.

  The night when Griffin raped her.

  No, she thought. She refused to believe fate would be that cruel to her or to John.

  “Thanksgiving,” she said, looking over at John. “It happened on Thanksgiving.”

  * * *

  John couldn’t sleep. The visit to the doctor’s office had brought back a flood of memories, memories he thought he’d managed to bury in the part of his heart that had died with his wife and children.

  But he’d been wrong.

  The memories were there waiting for him every time he closed his eyes. He saw Libby’s face when she told him they were expecting a baby. He saw Michael’s wrinkled red face when he took his first breath and faced the world. He saw Jake when he pulled himself up and took his first steps straight into his daddy’s arms.

  He waited for the pain to rip through him the way it always did, but it was different this time. The sadness was there, and the regret, but the pain was just a dull ache. It made him feel hopeful and disloyal and disoriented, all at once, the way he used to feel after a bottle of vodka on an empty stomach.

  Sorrow had been a part of him for so long that he’d almost forgotten how to be happy, but day by day it was coining back to him. Living with Alex was the closest he’d been to heaven in a very long time. Sleeping with her in his arms. Seeing her face each morning over the breakfast table. Hearing her chat with Eddie about whether they needed more eggs from the grocery store. It all made him feel alive again, as if the shattered pieces of his heart were somehow moving together.

  Next to him she stirred, and he watched, deeply moved, as her hands covered her belly in that age-old gesture. His heart seemed to swell inside his chest cavity with a powerful combination of love and pride and abject terror. The world was a dangerous, unpredictable place. He hadn’t been able to protect Libby and the boys. What guarantee did he have that he would be able to protect Alex and their baby from whatever life had in store for them?

  Alex stretched slightly, then opened her eyes. “You’re still awake.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Is everything all right?”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” he said, smoothing her hair from her face. “Go back to sleep.”

  She leaned up on one elbow and looked at him. “You need your sleep, too, John. You’re taking out the Kestrel in a few hours.” He was piloting a group of businessmen on an overnight deep-sea fishing trip out past Montauk Point.

  He pulled her into the crook of his arm, where she nestled against his side. “I could pilot the Kestrel in my sleep.”

  She feigned a shiver. “That’s not what I want to hear. I want you to be careful.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “Promise me?”

  “I promise.” For the first time in years he had a reason to be careful.

  “Thank you for what you did tonight,” she said.

  “What I did?” He was genuinely puzzled.

  “At Dr. Schulman’s office,” she went on. “Paying for the hospital and everything in advance. I’ll pay you back.”

  “We’re not keeping score here. I don’t expect to be paid back.”

  “I know that,” she said, pulling away from him. “It’s important to me.”

  “You’re carrying my baby, Alex. It’s as much my responsibility as it is yours.” The old rules between them no longer applied. The baby had changed everything.

  “You don’t understand.” Her voice was a whisper.

  “Then tell me,” he said. “Make me understand.”

  “I think your imagination’s running away with you, John. I value my independence.”

  “It’s more than that,” he persisted. “I don’t know one damn thing about you, Alex. We’ve been sleeping together for months, you’re carrying my baby, and the only thing I know about you is that you were born in New York.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You know a lot about me.”

  “Half of what I know I learned today in the doctor’s office. Twenty-eight years old, O-negative, no family history of diabetes.” He pinned her with a look. “Care to elaborate?”

  “Is this a job interview?” she shot back. “Will you fingerprint me, too?”

  “I’m not blind, Alex. I know you don’t belong in a place like Sea Gate.”

  “I love Sea Gate,” she said. “I always have.”

  He caught her face gently between his hands and forced her to meet his eyes. “What did you say?”

  She wanted to look away, but the force of his gaze wouldn’t allow it. “I said, I’ve always loved Sea Gate.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  She nodded as ridiculous tears welled up in her eyes. “The summer before my parents died.” She told him about the boat trip, about needing repairs, about a magical few days spent in a town she thought she’d never see again. It seemed as if her parents had been on the move her entire life, searching for the magic key that would push her father higher up the ladder of success. Those few days together in a small Jersey Shore town were her happiest memories of being a family.

  “You were probably already married and living in New York by then. I used to watch the kids going in and out of the pizzeria and I’d try to imagine how it would feel to really belong somewhere, to be part of something.”

  “All of that moving around must have been rough on you,” John said.

  “Oh, it didn’t bother me at all,” she said with a brittle laugh. “They parked me at boarding school for ten months out of the year. It was the other two months that were the problem.”

  He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. Maybe he was, she thought. She’d never revealed this much of her past to anyone—not even to Griffin. He had known the details of her parents’ death but not of the life she’d led before that point. He’d known nothing of the loneliness, the isolation, the sense that when push came to shove, she was in this life alone.

  “How did your parents die?” John asked.

  “A plane crash,” she said in a voice devoid of emotion. “They were heading off to Aspen or Vail or someplace, and their jet went into the side of a mountain.”

  “Jesus,” John whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “They weren’t part of my day-to-day life,” she said, trying to explain the situation to a man who’d had two parents who loved him. “When the headmistress broke the news, I remember just nodding, then going right back to French class. It wasn’t until spring break and everyone else went home that I finally realized I was all alone.” A fact that was hammered home with brute force when Alex discovered there wasn’t any money left for her to return to school—or to do anything else, for that matter.

  “You must have had somebody, Alex. An aunt, an uncle—maybe a cousin somewhere.”

  She shook her head. “Nobody but bill collectors beating down my door, trying to get me to pay my parents’ debts.” She was barely seventeen years old and terrified beyond description. “One of my parents’ friends recommended that I talk to a man they knew. They said he might be able to make sense of everything for me and maybe help me find a way ou
t of the mess.” Again that hollow laugh she couldn’t quite turn into the real thing. “He did better than that: He married me.”

  “You married your financial advisor?”

  “Guilty,” she said, closing her eyes against the memories. “Is there anything more clichéd than that? He was twenty-five years older than I was, way more sophisticated, and he said he’d take care of everything. I thought I’d never have to worry about anything ever again.” Griffin had been husband, father, and safe harbor, and she’d been more than willing to spend the rest of her life as his grateful wife and the mother of his children. Her laugh was bitter. “Apparently I failed at both.”

  “Life doesn’t always work out the way we think it should.” John reached for her hand, and this time she didn’t pull away. “I thought I’d grow old with Libby and the boys.”

  “And I thought—” She stopped abruptly. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. That was another lifetime. I was another person. I won’t make those mistakes again.” She’d shared more of herself with him than she ever had with any other person on earth, but it was what she hadn’t shared that had the power to destroy them.

  He placed her hand on her belly, then covered it with his own. “This isn’t a mistake, Alex.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “It’s a miracle.”

  They lay together for a long time, hands pressed to her belly, letting the past drift away from them... keeping the future at bay. She loved the way his hands felt against her skin, so warm and strong. So tender. She’d never imagined a man could be tender, but John managed to be passionate and exciting and tender all at once, and he stole her breath away.

  He gentled her with his hands, his lips, his body. He grasped her by the waist and positioned her above him so that she straddled his hips. All or nothing or anything in between—it was her choice. Her decision. Her desires that ruled what happened in that bed tonight.

  * * *

  She was warm and wild, nurturing and demanding. She took him places he hadn’t even dreamed about, places he didn’t know existed. She gave him her body, but what he really wanted was her heart, and he had the feeling that was the one thing that wasn’t hers to give.