“I walked out that night,” she was saying. “I took my jewelry and some clothes and I walked out the door and never looked back.” She’d left her wedding ring on the end table, silent testament to what had happened between them. “I didn’t care about a divorce. Divorce meant I’d have to see him again or speak to him, and I didn’t want that. All I wanted was my freedom, and I didn’t need a piece of paper to give it to me.” She hadn’t expected to fall in love. She certainly hadn’t expected to get pregnant.
“This is what Brian was threatening you with, isn’t it?”
She nodded, a look of such misery in her eyes that it hurt to see it. “Brian said if I didn’t sell my house to Eagle Management, he would call Griffin and tell him where I am.”
“You could have sold him your house.” She could have protected herself with one simple action.
“I thought about it,” she said, “but then I saw you in action, John. I saw how much this town means to you—I saw how much you mean to this town, and I knew I couldn’t do it.” And I love you, John. I just don’t have the courage to tell you.
“Even if it meant bringing your husband back into your life.”
“I love this town,” she said. “It deserves a second chance.”
“What about your husband? Does he deserve a second chance, too?”
“No,” she said in a voice that brooked no argument. “He deserves nothing at all.”
“We can handle this,” he said, taking her hands in his. “Whatever happens, we can handle it.”
“John.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “What if the baby isn’t yours?”
* * *
And there it was. The monster in the closet. The creature under the bed. If Alex lived another fifty years, she prayed she would never see a look of such sorrow on anyone’s face again. Pain was visible in every line, every angle of his face. His eyes were saturated with pain. His mouth was twisted with it.
The seconds stretched into minutes. The minutes would turn into hours if someone didn’t break the terrible silence.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, “but you had to know.”
He nodded, the movement slow, like the movement of an old man. “That’s why you kept putting off the sonogram, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. This is my problem, John,” she said, meeting his eyes. “I’ll understand if you walk out that door and don’t come back.”
He lowered his head and buried his face in his hands. She longed to reach over and stroke his hair, trace the curve of his ear with the tip of her finger, but she wasn’t sure she still had the right. That terrible silence was back again, and she was afraid that the answer she feared most was hidden within it.
“John, if you—”
“I love you, Alex.”
The words stopped her cold. Was she just hearing what she wanted to hear? “Did you say s-something?”
He looked up and met her eyes. “I said I love you, Alex.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he raised a hand to silence her.
“I won’t lie to you and say I wouldn’t give anything for that baby in your belly to be mine, but that doesn’t change anything. I’ve loved you from the moment you walked into the Starlight that morning with your black raincoat flapping around your ankles—” His voice broke, and he cleared his throat. “I didn’t want to fall in love again. I didn’t think I could. But there you were, and there I was and”—he gestured with his hands—“here we are.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks and splattered on her thin hospital gown. “Here we are,” she echoed. “I won’t lose the baby, John. No matter what, I can’t lose the baby.”
“I know,” he said. “I understand.”
“You say that now, but what if Dr. Schulman tells us I conceived in October? How can you be so sure you’ll feel the same way then?”
Again that silence.
“Because the baby is yours,” he said at last. “Because I love you and I love what belongs to you. Because if I met you two years from now, I would love your child the way I loved my own.”
She held onto his words like a talisman as an aide wheeled her into the examination room for the sonogram. John walked next to the stretcher, holding her hand.
Dr. Schulman greeted them, but Alex barely heard her description of what was about to happen. She was vaguely aware of a gel being applied to portions of her belly, of sensors being attached, but her thoughts were far away. For all she knew Brian had already contacted Griffin and told him where he could find his runaway wife. What Griffin would do with that information was anybody’s guess.
Conversation flowed around her. She caught bits and pieces of it.
“Over there... move that sensor... a little more gel... there you go... okay, there it is... are you looking, Alex?”
John’s attention was riveted to the monitor. A look of wonder lit up his face.
“Oh, my God,” Alex said as the image on the screen came together for her. “The baby!”
Tiny hands. Tiny feet. The sweet curve of the baby’s spine.
She clutched John’s hand even tighter than before. “Do you see that?” she asked, her voice high with excitement. “Can you believe it?”
He bent down next to her and kissed her on the mouth. “A miracle,” he said. “It’s always a miracle.”
Dr. Schulman watched the monitor carefully, exchanging opinions with the technician, speaking her notes into a hand-held tape recorder.
“Your baby is being coy,” she said with a laugh. “I can’t tell if we have a little boy or a little girl.”
“I don’t care,” Alex said, tears of joy flowing down her cheeks. “Is the baby healthy?”
“So far, so good,” said the doctor. “But, I think you need some bedrest, for starters. We’ll monitor you for a few days, see if we need to do anything to your cervix, then proceed from there.”
“The due date,” John said.
“Oh, of course.” The doctor glanced at her notes. “I’d say we’re looking at a Labor Day baby.”
“Labor Day.” Alex tried to do the math, but she was too nervous. “The date of conception—?”
“Your Thanksgiving Day guess was pretty close, but I’d put it closer to the beginning of December.”
“And you’re sure of that?” Alex asked, her heart thundering crazily inside her chest. “You’re positive?”
“As positive as I can be without a menstrual chart to guide me.”
“And it couldn’t have happened in October?”
“Absolutely not.”
She looked at John and saw her future in his eyes. She saw a chain of days stretching into months, months moving into years, all of them spent together as a family.
Some women dreamed of jewels.
Some women dreamed of designer clothes.
Some women dreamed of a family to call their own. Alex’s dream was finally coming true.
“Your baby,” she said as he kissed her again. All of his goodness, his strength, his courage—it would all be part and parcel of the child growing inside her womb. The child who would make them a family.
“Our baby,” he said.
“I love you.” The words came hard for her. It was so much easier to show him how she felt, but she knew he needed to hear those three words as much as she needed to say them. “I love you so much that it scares me, John, because I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”
The look he gave her was enough to break her heart. “So if you love me so much, why don’t you marry me?”
* * *
Of course, they both knew the answer to that. Until Alex and Griffin divorced, there could be no wedding.
Alex was to spend four nights in the hospital. It seemed to her as if everyone in Sea Gate passed through her room to see how she was doing and wish her well. Dee knew about her lack of health insurance, and she took up a collection at the diner and presented Alex with a check. Alex was overwhelmed by the gesture.
“Don’t go thinking
this is out of the goodness of my heart,” Dee said with mock severity. “I expect you back at the Starlight ASAP.”
“I can’t wait,” Alex said. “Would you believe I miss everyone, and I’ve only been gone a couple of days.”
“I still believe in Santa Claus,” Dee said. “I guess I can believe just about anything.”
The movement to save Sea Gate from developers had exploded into action since that night at the marina when Brian Gallagher was revealed as the power behind Eagle Management. Family didn’t do that to family. Brian had violated an unwritten code of behavior, violated it in a way that good people like Sally and Rich and Vince couldn’t condone. Sally backed out of her deal the morning after the incident. Rich and his wife were seeing a lawyer about reneging on their deal. Rumor had it the other members of Eagle Management were rethinking their position on Sea Gate and looking to target another Shore town.
“Nothing is certain yet,” Dee said, “but things are finally looking up for all of us.”
John, Alex thought happily. It was all thanks to John. His passion. His persistence. His courage.
“So when’s the wedding?” Dee asked. “They’re taking bets again. Sally has the July Fourth weekend covered, but Vince is pushing Memorial Day.”
“You know the story,” Alex said. “First I have to get a divorce.”
“So get a divorce.”
“It’s not that easy.” She’d spent the last three days waiting for the phone to ring, and every time it did, she expected to hear Griffin’s cultured, disapproving tones. “Brian must have called him by now,” she said.
“You’ve taken the fun out of his revenge,” Dee said. “With the Sea Gate deals falling apart, he has other things to think about.”
Which meant it could drag on forever. “That’s it,” Alex said, reaching for the telephone on the stand next to her hospital bed. “I’m going to call him.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Dee asked. “Maybe you should have a divorce attorney make the call. These things can get pretty sticky.”
Alex pressed 9 for an outside line, then began to dial the city and country codes for London, England. “I didn’t bring anything into the marriage,” she said, “and I don’t want to take anything out of it except my freedom. The whole thing should be cut-and-dried.”
It was all academic. His secretary told Alex that he was out of town on business, and she didn’t know when he was expected back.
“I’m going to let you rest,” Dee said. “Once you’re home, you’ll be thinking about this interlude with longing.”
“I’ll be home tomorrow,” Alex said. “I should be back at the Starlight by Monday.”
“Don’t rush things,” Dee warned. “Take your time. The Starlight will still be there.”
Alex smiled. That was one of the best things about Sea Gate. You could count on things and people being there when you needed them.
She felt restless after Dee left, unsettled. John was busy repairing the Kestrel for a weekend trip down to the Chesapeake. He wouldn’t be in for a few hours. She hated daytime television. The thought of being reduced to watching Jerry Springer made her break out in hives.
Closure, that’s what she was looking for. She was anxious to get on with her life, to move forward. She wanted to marry John, to stand up before God and make those beautiful promises. She wanted—
“Alexandra.”
She turned toward the door. “Griffin!” She recognized his suit; it had cost almost as much as her new roof.
He stepped into the room. “I would have telephoned, but some things are best done in person.”
* * *
John left the marina around four o’clock. He hadn’t finished the repair work on the Kestrel, but the need to see Alex, even for a few minutes, was too strong to ignore. He got to the hospital a little after four-thirty and was striding through the parking lot toward the entrance when he bumped into Dee as she was about to climb into her car.
“Look at you,” she said with a shake of her head. “You’re so much in love it’s disgusting.”
He grinned and tugged at a lock of red hair. “Your turn’s coming, pal,” he said. “You and Sam seem to be hitting it off pretty well.”
“He has possibilities.” She gave John a quick hug.
“What’s that for?”
“For being happy,” she said. “I’ve waited a long time to see that smile on your face again.”
“I’m as surprised as you are,” he said to his old friend. “Guess I’m proof that anything can happen.” They chatted for a couple of minutes about Mark and Eddie, then John said he’d better go in and see Alex.
“Some Cary Grant type stopped me in the hall when I was leaving,” Dee said. “He asked which room was Alex’s.”
“A Cary Grant type?”
Dee wrinkled her nose. “You know the type I mean. Tailored up the yin-yang, too good for the rest of us.”
John took off at a run. He didn’t bother waiting for the elevator; instead he took the stairs to the third floor two at a time. Brian had made good on his threat, and now Griffin Whittaker had come to town to claim his wife. A nurse gave him a fish-eyed look as he barreled down the hallway toward Alex’s room, but he didn’t give a damn.
A red mist of rage exploded behind his eyes as he thought of the last night Alex had spent as Griffin Whittaker’s wife. He wanted to get his hands around the son of a bitch’s throat and make him pay for what he did to her.
The door to her room was closed. He didn’t bother to knock. He grabbed the knob and swung the door wide. Alex was sitting on the edge of her bed, a glass of orange juice in her hand.
“John.” Her face lit up with her smile. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
He stepped into the room. “Whittaker,” he said. “Where is he?”
“You’re too late.” She motioned for him to sit down next to her, and he did. “He’s gone.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said, her smile growing brighter. “You could say that.”
It was hard to shift down from anger to relief. “He didn’t stay long.”
“He didn’t have to. We settled our business pretty quickly.” She met his eyes. “He doesn’t want me, John. I’m free.”
It took a second for her words to penetrate, and even then he couldn’t quite believe it was over. “You’re free?”
“He has a new pregnant mistress. He wants to marry her. My belly and I are a major embarrassment to him, and he wants me out of his life ASAP.”
“He’ll give you a divorce?”
“At the speed of light.” She looked a little sheepish. “Remember what I said about not taking a settlement from Griffin?”
He nodded.
“Apparently his guilty conscience got the better of him, and he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Six months from now I’ll be a free woman with seed money for the catering business I’d like to start with Dee.”
“You and Dee?”
“We’ll make a great team. She’ll keep the books; I’ll cook the food. I had to depend on Griffin for everything,” she said, “even my self-esteem. That’s too much to ask of a marriage, John.”
“So what are you saying?” He couldn’t keep the uncertainty from his voice. Maybe when push came to shove she didn’t believe marriage was a viable option for her.
“I’m saying I’m a different person now. I’ve learned I’m not weak or powerless or any of the things I thought I was when I was Griffin’s wife. I’m strong and I’m smart and I can handle just about anything life throws my way.”
“And where does that leave us?”
“Married,” she said, “if you’ll ask me again.”
He met her eyes. “I’m asking.”
“And I’m saying yes,” she said, placing his hand on her belly. Their baby stirred beneath his palm, tiny hands and feet kicking hard, and he knew a moment of profound happiness he’d never expected to feel again. “We both say yes.”
&n
bsp; One word.
One syllable.
And a new family was born.
Twenty-five
Mark didn’t much care for weddings, and for the most part babies were invisible. But when the wedding was John and Alex’s and the baby was their brand-new Emilie Rose, even Mark had to make an exception. Besides, you didn’t often go to a wedding and christening on the same day.
Although he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, he’d gotten a little misty when Father O’Laughlin made that speech about love and families and how sometimes God sent happiness your way after you’d stopped believing He even remembered your name.
It almost hurt to look at John, as if you were invading his privacy. He’d never seen a happier man. And Alex. Well, she always looked beautiful, but there was something real special about brides, and she was no exception. When she’d walked down the aisle carrying six-week-old Emilie Rose, there hadn’t been a dry eye in the church. Even tough Vince Troisi had blubbered into his handkerchief.
“Come on,” Eddie said, waving to him from the church steps. “They’re taking a family picture.”
Mark looked from his grandfather to his mom. She and Sam Weitz were standing on the top step with the Gallaghers, smiling like they’d won the Lotto. My family, he thought as he joined them. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe it.
It had felt funny at first, calling Eddie “Grandpa,” but he got used to it real fast. Nobody had expected Brian to show up for his brother’s wedding, and he didn’t disappoint them. But it didn’t matter that much to him anymore. He was one of the Gallaghers now, and he didn’t need Brian to make it possible.
He knew where he belonged.
He was connected to all of them. To Eddie and John. To Alex and Emilie Rose. To his mom and maybe even to Sam Weitz, if things kept going the way they’d been going. No matter what happened in his life, they would be there for him, because they were his family.
He would be there for them, too. Not because he had to be, but because being part of a family was a whole lot better than being alone.
He took his place between his mom and Eddie. She smoothed his hair with her hand, and the look of love in her eyes made a big fat lump form in his throat.
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