Sleeping Alone (2 page)

“My God, Griffin, I’d have to be blind not to notice her belly.” She barely recognized the sound of her own voice: strident and much too frightened.

His brows drew together as he met her eyes across the table. Griffin hated loud, pushy, angry women. For the first time in their marriage, she was all three.

“Is the baby yours?” She struggled to moderate her tone, but failed miserably.

Griffin glanced down at his medallions of veal, but not before she saw the expression in his eyes. She wished he’d reached into her chest and ripped out her heart, because that couldn’t have hurt her any more than that look of naked pride. This couldn’t be happening to her, not to her safe and protected life. She had given him her loyalty and her love, but Claire had given him the future. There was nothing she could do to compete with that.

“How long have you known?” she managed.

“I was with Claire when the doctor told her.”

She felt herself shrinking in her chair like a frightened child.
Months,
she thought dully.
He’s known about it for months.
“I’m your wife,” she said, trying to sound as if she believed that meant something. “I deserve better than this.”

“There’s no need for moral outrage, my dear. You’ve known about Claire for a long time now.”

“Yes, but you said it was over. I thought...”

“Nothing has changed,” he said, between bites of veal and sips of wine. “Claire and I had a brief reunion, with unexpected results. The situation needn’t affect you.” His voice was soothing, almost hypnotic, and she wanted to believe him, needed to believe him. “Claire and the child will be well taken care of, and you and I will go on as before.”

“Go on as before? You’ll have a child, Griffin. You’ll be someone’s father while I’ll be—”

“My wife,” he said smoothly. “For now and always.”

* * *

Over the next few weeks, her moods ran the gamut from white-hot anger to an almost placid acceptance of the situation. There were times she wanted to force the issue, make Griffin choose between his barren wife and his fertile mistress, but she wasn’t fool enough to believe she would come out the winner. And if she wasn’t the winner, who was she?

In mid-October they hosted a dinner party for Griffin’s French business partners. Alexandra wore a simple Oscar de la Renta sheath that garnered almost as many compliments as the food and wine. But it was the approval on Griffin’s face that spoke loudest.
See?
his look said.
Our life is the same as it ever was.

She wanted to believe that, but the image of a radiant Claire Brubaker was never far from her mind.

Their guests left a little before midnight. Griffin had arranged for a private plane to jet them back to Paris in time to get a good night’s sleep.

“Antoine found you charming,” Griffin said, locking the door to their flat.

“I’m pleased,” Alexandra said as she slipped off her spindly high heels. “He and Monique are delightful.”

“Did I tell you how lovely you look?”

“No, you didn’t,” she said, “but thank you.” There had been a time when those words would have been enough to warm her heart.

He led her back into the front room, then gestured toward the sofa. “Sit down, darling. We’ll have a brandy.”

He poured them each a snifter of Drambuie, and they settled in front of the fireplace.

“Thank God for this,” Griffin said as he stabbed at the logs with a poker. “I doubt if the English will ever master central heating.”

“I’m glad. If they did, our flat wouldn’t have three beautiful fireplaces.”

He reclaimed his seat next to her on the sofa. “It’s been a long time since we enjoyed a fire together.”

“I’ve been here,” she said lightly. “Where were you?”

A flash of annoyance appeared in Griffin’s eyes. “That is something—”

The ringing of the telephone stopped him.

“It’s after midnight,” she said. “Who would call at this hour?”

Griffin set his brandy down on the end table. “Bates can’t seem to master the time difference between here and L.A.” He excused himself to answer the phone.

She placed her glass next to his and sat stiff-backed in the corner of the sofa. Griffin’s voice, low and urgent, drifted toward her, but she couldn’t make out his words. She found her anger flaring up at odd moments lately, burning through her veneer of composure and surprising her with its heat. Anger unnerved her. It demanded a resolution. It demanded change, and change scared her more than anything. She’d spent the first seventeen years of her life searching for the safe harbor her parents had never provided, and she’d thought she found it when she married Griffin.

She took a deep breath, willing the tension from her body. Griffin could talk to Sam Bates for hours. Over the years she’d grown used to his devotion to work. It was that devotion, after all, that had saved her from disaster after her parents’ unexpected death. She rested her head against the back of the sofa and closed her eyes. She wondered what Claire thought when he interrupted a tryst to take a business call or schedule a meeting.

The fire sputtered weakly. It had been roaring when Griffin left the room. How long had he been on the phone?

“Griffin,” she called out, but there was no answer. She stood up and started for the foyer. He wasn’t in the study, the bedroom, or either of the bathrooms. She checked the closet. His camel’s hair coat was missing, and so were the keys to the Mercedes he kept in the car park.

An hour passed, and then another. The fire died out completely, and she wrapped a lap robe about herself for warmth, but it couldn’t begin to reach the chill deep inside her bones.

Claire,
she thought with growing certainty. Fertile Claire with the growing belly. Where else could he be? London was a civilized town. Few businessmen conducted meetings after midnight on Saturday morning. He’d said Claire’s pregnancy wouldn’t change anything between them, but he was wrong. Claire was between them every hour of every day, and she would be for the rest of their lives.

Whether or not Griffin realized it, he and Claire had forged a bond that nothing, not even his marriage to Alexandra, could ever break. First cries, first teeth, first words—there was so much ahead for them to share together, and Alexandra knew that as the weeks turned into months and the months became years, she would be reduced to a shadowy presence with no future of her own. Griffen would have a child to love, and Alexandra would have no one.

One day last week Alexandra had forced herself to sit down and take a look at her situation. She didn’t own property or blue-chip stocks. Their investments were in Griffin’s name. All she owned were the clothes in her closet and the jewelry he’d given to her during their marriage. Emerald and ruby bracelets. Sapphire rings. A treasure chest of diamonds and gold. Oh, yes—Griffin was a generous man who bought only the best. An establishment like Sotheby’s in New York would pay good money for her jewelry. Enough to give her a start at building a life away from Griffin and Claire and their child. She could buy herself a little house somewhere, a house that would belong to her alone. A home that nobody could ever take away from her.

She’d pushed away the thought, feeling guilty, although she didn’t quite know why. Griffin and Claire were the guilty ones, weren’t they?

She dozed for a while, curled in the corner of the sofa, until she was awakened by the sound of a key scratching in the front door lock.

“Griffin?” She sat up and pushed her hair off her face. “Is that you?”

His lean silhouette filled the archway. He was still wearing his camel’s hair coat. The unexpected stench of whiskey surrounded him like a humid cloud. A series of alarms went off inside her skull.

“Where have you been?” she asked, rising to her feet as he crossed the room toward her. “I—”

The first blow caught her off guard. Her head snapped back, and she fell against the arm of the sofa, more stunned than hurt.

“What—”

The second blow landed against her jaw. She tumbled backward, striking her hip against the desk chair as she crashed to the floor. Ferocious waves of pain tore across her jaw and down her right leg. She scrambled to her knees and tried to dodge the next blow, but he trapped her between the desk and the sofa, then pinned her with his body. She could smell the rug freshener the maid used when she vacuumed, a powdery smell that made her want to vomit.

“Griffin, please...” She bucked sharply, trying to knock him off, but she couldn’t topple him.

He gripped her shoulders, fingers digging into her flesh as he clung to her. “Jesus,” he said, his voice harsh and raw. “Jesus...” He started sobbing, ugly tearing sobs that sounded almost like screams.

Sweat broke out under her arms. “What’s wrong, Griffin?” She struggled to gentle him with her voice. In all the years she’d known him, she’d never seen her husband lose control, and the sight of his face twisted with emotion was shocking. “Talk to me, please.”

The high shriek of ripping silk filled the air as he tore the front of her dress from neckline to hem.

“No!” She swung at him with her fists, but he didn’t seem to notice. He was looking past her, through her, those drowning eyes of his fixed on something only he could see. Her dress was bunched over her hips and he shoved her legs apart with his knee. “You don’t want to do this, Griffin. Tell me what’s wrong. I can help you. I can—”

She heard the scratchy rasp of his zipper, and her body jerked with raw terror. Tears poured down his cheeks, dropping to the bare skin of her breasts. His anguish dwarfed everything but her fear as he fumbled between her legs.

“You don’t know...” he mumbled, his voice thick with pain and booze, “... shouldn’t happen... never happen...”

“Not like this, Griffin,” she pleaded, desperate to make him stop before it was too late for them both. “We have a wonderful bed... we can—”

“My son,” he cried out as he drove into her tight, dry body. “My son is dead.”

* * *

Griffin lay deeply asleep on the floor near the sofa. He was still wearing his topcoat, but his trousers were pulled down and twisted around his knees. Alexandra stood over him in the first light of morning as a strange sense of relief washed over her. No more hesitation. No more guilt. For the first time in weeks, she understood exactly what she had to do.

Her bags were packed and in the hall. The sides of her Coach tote bag bulged with her jewelry. The car and driver would be there any minute to take her to Gatwick, and by this time tomorrow she would be back in the States ready to start a new life.

Funny how the thought no longer scared her. A thousand other emotions battled inside her, but fear wasn’t one of them anymore. She mourned the baby who had been born too soon. She even felt compassion for Claire. But when she looked at her husband she felt nothing at all. There had been hope for them right up until the last moment. If he’d turned to her for comfort, she would have offered it gladly. She would have opened her heart to him one more time and tried to find a way to make their marriage work.

She touched her chin gingerly, wincing at the pain. She’d done her best to cover up the blossoming bruise, but there was nothing she could do to disguise the swelling. In a way she was glad. Any time she lost her nerve and wondered if she’d done the right thing, all she had to do was look in the mirror.

In a strange way Griffin had given her a gift last night. He’d given her back her future, and she wasn’t going to waste another second of it.

The doorbell rang. “Your car is here, Mrs. Whittaker. Anthony will fetch your luggage.”

She pressed the intercom. “Thank you, Michael.”

Griffin stirred slightly, but he didn’t wake up. She slipped off her wedding ring and placed it on the end table near the phone. Her finger looked strange without the ring, but she would get used to it, the same way she had gotten used to sleeping alone.

She gathered up her things, walked out the door, and didn’t look back.

Sea Gate, New Jersey

The first time John Patrick Gallagher’s old man disappeared, he only made it as far as the intersection of Spring Street and Soundview. Mrs. Mangano, who lived in the corner house with the view of the water, found him sitting on her back porch eating a bagel and waiting for dawn. She gave him a cup of coffee, then called John.

“Take a load off,” Eddie had said when his son got there, patting the seat next to him as first light gilded the ocean. “It doesn’t get much better than this.”

John didn’t think too much about it that time around. Eddie had spent all of his life in fishing boats, watching the sun rise over the Atlantic, and after sixty-eight years it was a tough habit to break. He’d lost his driver’s license last summer after an unfortunate run-in with an Atlantic City-bound stretch limo, and everyone in Sea Gate had gotten used to seeing Eddie walking around town at all hours of the day.

Eddie showed up two more times at Mrs. Mangano’s house that month, and once he almost made it to the highway before Dan Corelli, one of the local cops, offered him a ride home.

“He’s sleepwalking,” Dr. Benino said, scribbling a prescription. “Lock the doors and don’t worry about him. Sooner or later it’ll stop.”

John locked the doors and continued to worry. Eddie strayed a few more times, then stopped, but just as John started to believe the problem was over, his old man took off again the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

He woke up in the gray early-morning light to find Bailey, his huge sweet-faced mutt, pushing against his hand with a cold wet nose.

“Can’t it wait?” he muttered. “Ten minutes more, Bailey, and we’ll—” Bailey whimpered insistently, and John came awake. “Something wrong, girl?”

She trotted toward his bedroom door, her tail at half-mast, and whimpered again. John threw back the covers, then swung his legs out of bed. He grabbed his jeans from the floor, yanked them on, and pulled a fisherman’s sweater over his head. The only times he’d ever heard Bailey whimper were when his father disappeared on one of his nocturnal rambles.

“Shit,” he mumbled as he shoved his feet into a pair of Nikes. The front door was wide open. Dead leaves tumbled across the living-room floor and came to rest in front of the television. He scratched Bailey behind the ear. “You stay here, girl. One of us might as well get some sleep.”

He wondered if this was how his old man had felt twenty years ago. How many times had Eddie turned up in some rathole of a bar down the Jersey Shore to drag John home by the ear? Turnabout was fair play. It was John’s turn to track down his father and return the favor.

He pretty much had it down to a science at this point. He didn’t bother with the car. Sea Gate was small enough that he could cover it on foot and never break a sweat. A cold gray rain was falling, and the wind was beginning to pick up off the ocean. It didn’t take a degree in meteorology to know some major weather was on its way. He turned left at the corner onto Mullica Drive, then headed toward the center of town. He used to take this route to school, down Mullica, across Ocean, then down to Soundview. He knew every shortcut, every dead end, every hiding place, and so did his old man.

Connie Mangano’s house was dark and quiet. There was no sign of Eddie at the park or the beach or the ball field, so he headed for the marina.

Gallagher’s Marina was an institution in Sea Gate. His parents had bought it the year before John was born, and Rosie Kelly Gallagher went into labor at the big desk to the right of the office door. Rosie ran the marina while Eddie fished the Atlantic. She managed to give preference to townies and fishermen who made their living on the sea without ever once taking advantage of the weekenders whose money kept the whole enterprise afloat. They should have known it was too good to last. Rosie died, the nor’easter came, and the town began its downhill slide. After a while Eddie quit going out in his fishing boat and for the most part avoided the marina and its memories—yet that was where John found him that morning, sitting at the end of the dock with his bare feet and legs dangling into the Atlantic Ocean.

It was so damn cold John could smell the ice forming on the water, but his old man didn’t seem to notice. Weather had never mattered much to his father except when he was taking the boat out into the ocean. Eddie wore a faded pair of blue flannel pajamas Rosie had given to him twenty years ago and a shapeless old fishing hat with a fly lure pinned to the dent in the top. A copy of the
Newark Star-Ledger
was spread out on the dock next to him, and it looked to John as if his father had peeled shrimp on top of Doonesbury.

Eddie was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, looking out to sea the way he used to when he piloted the
Kestrel,
as if the secret to life was just beyond the horizon.

“I can’t give you much,” he used to tell his sons when they worked on the boat with him during school vacations, “but there ain’t much better than what I
can
give.”

It had taken John almost thirty-five years to understand what he meant.

A cluster of Canada geese bobbed in the gray and choppy sea. Whitecaps crashed against the stretch of beach that curved to the east of where they sat. The only sound was the cry of a gull circling overhead.

“Pop?” He placed a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s go down to the Starlight and grab some breakfast.” The Starlight was the local diner, the place where everyone gathered to drink Dee’s coffee and shoot the breeze.

“Hey, Johnny boy.” Eddie motioned for his son to sit down. “Hendrickson took his boat out this morning.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Fat lot of good it’ll do him, going out so late in this weather. You’d think he’d know better, wouldn’t you?”

“Hendrickson?” John crouched down next to his father and peered out at the angry gray ocean. “You sure you mean Hendrickson?” Frank Hendrickson had been dead at least half a dozen years. Eddie had been pallbearer at his funeral.

“Who else is gonna go out in
Lucky Lady?
Sure it’s Frank, and no other.”

There wasn’t a single boat out on the water, and with good reason. Only a fool would venture out with a storm ready to slam into town.

“I don’t see him, Pop.”

“Damn right you don’t. Frank’s halfway to Ambrose Light by now.”

“So what are we doing here?” John asked with false good cheer. “I don’t know about you, but I could use some coffee right about now.”

“No use sitting here waiting for Frank,” Eddie agreed. “He won’t be back before nightfall.”

John helped his father to his feet. He considered suggesting that Eddie stop by home and change into something besides his pajamas before they went to the diner, but it was early enough that Dee would be the only one around. And Dee was practically family. Hell, she would have been family if his brother Brian hadn’t been too goddamn stupid to recognize a good woman when he found one.

“Will you look at this?” Eddie stopped in front of the slip where Dick Weaver’s dory was moored.

John whistled low. “Someone must’ve taken an axe to it.” The starboard side of the steel vessel had sustained a series of two-foot gashes and dents from stem to stern.

“Damn kids,” Eddie muttered. “Too much time on their hands, if you ask me.”

“I’m not so sure kids did this, Pop. It’s been happening too often lately.” He’d noticed that it was always fishing boats that were hit and never pleasure craft, but when he mentioned that to the sheriff last week, Mike hadn’t thought much of his suspicions.

“One day I’ll catch one of the little bastards red-handed,” Mike had said around a big unlit cigar. “That’ll put an end to this shit soon enough.”

Truth was, Mike didn’t much care what happened at the marina. Sea Gate’s economy didn’t revolve around the marina any longer—hell, most people said Sea Gate didn’t even have an economy. Fifteen years ago Gallagher’s had done turn-away business with everyone from locals who depended on the sea for their living, to weekenders in their plush cabin cruisers, to charter boats ferrying sportsmen out for some deep-sea fishing.

Bed-and-breakfast inns popped up on both sides of Ocean Avenue, and before long they were booked a year in advance. Travel guides lauded Sea Gate as a contender for the Cape May crowd, the perfect place for everyone from honeymooners to senior citizens. Far enough away from New York and Philadelphia to be quaint, yet close enough to Atlantic City to be glamorous, Sea Gate enjoyed a boom that even the most jaded townies believed would never end.

A monster nor’easter took care of that. A full moon, high tide, and fifty-mile-per-hour winds had destroyed the beach and most of the businesses. Now, almost eight years later, the town was still reeling from its effects. Half the shopkeepers had closed their doors permanently and moved to sunnier climes. One family after another said good-bye and followed the jobs to Somerset and Monmouth. Pollution took its toll on the fishing industry during the bleak summers of the late 1980s. The weekend crowd abandoned Sea Gate for Cape May, and sometimes John wondered if it would have been better if the damn storm had just leveled the town.

The weathered boards of the dock glistened with sea spray, making the surface slick as a skating rink. Eddie had a tough time keeping his footing. His bare feet shot out from under him, and twice John just managed to grab him before his butt hit the ground.

He yanked off his Nikes and pushed them toward his father. “Put these on,” he said. “I don’t feel-like carting your sorry ass to the emergency room when you break your leg.”

His father grumbled loudly, but he put on the shoes. “Where’s the car?” he asked as they crossed the parking lot.

“Home.”

“What the hell’s it doing there?”

“It was easier to look for you on foot.”

“Look for me?” Eddie sounded puzzled. “Why were you looking for me? I wasn’t lost.”

“You took off in your pajamas at four in the morning, Pop. What was I supposed to think?”

“A man’s got the right to go wherever the hell he wants whenever he wants.”

“Not in your pajamas,” John said, trying to hang on to what remained of his self-control. “Next time you feel like going out, try getting dressed first.”

Eddie made a gesture of disgust, then stalked off ahead of John.
What’s wrong, Pop? What the hell’s got you so bent out of shape?
Eddie’s temper was erratic, his judgment dubious at best. The strong father figure of John’s youth was being replaced by an increasingly frail old man, and it was all happening faster than it should.

Eddie kept up a brisk pace as they walked to the diner. John could have caught up with him in a few strides, but he hung back, letting his father lead the way. He wasn’t much in the mood for conversation and he doubted if Eddie was either. He’d seen the look of fear in his father’s eyes. Eddie suspected something was wrong, same as John, but both Gallagher men were pros when it came to avoiding the truth.

His old man had claimed a counter seat by the time John caught up with him. He refused to make eye contact with his son. The Gallagher men also knew how to hold a grudge.

Dee peeked out from the kitchen. Her long dark red hair was pulled back in a ponytail that was already beginning to droop. She didn’t look old enough to be the mother of a seventeen-year-old boy. “You guys are early today. The grill’s not even hot yet.”

“You got coffee?” John asked as he sat down two stools away from his father.

“We’ve always got coffee,” Dee said, looking from John to Eddie. Her eyes lingered on the pajamas. “Everything okay?”

Eddie cocked a thumb in John’s direction. “He’s a horse’s ass.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” She disappeared into the kitchen to get their coffee.

“Now that,” said Eddie, “is what we used to call a good woman.” He sounded like his old opinionated self.

“You won’t get an argument from me.”

“Your damn stupid brother should’ve married her when he had the chance.”

“No argument about that either.” Except for the fact that Eddie was sitting there in his pajamas, it was your regular morning at the Starlight. The tight ball of tension inside his gut began to unravel. Maybe Dr. Benino was right, and this was all just some weird sleepwalking thing his father was going through. Scary as that might be, it wasn’t half as scary as some of the alternatives John had been dwelling on lately.

“You ever think about maybe giving her a call?”

John shot his father a look. “Dee’s a friend. You don’t date friends.”

“
You
don’t date at all.”

“Don’t go there, Pop. It’s none of your business.”

“You can’t mourn Libby and the kids forever, Johnny. Sooner or later you’ve got to get on with your life.”

Wrong again, Pop.
He could mourn forever. Libby and his sons had been everything to him, the reason he got up in the morning, the reason he had set out each day, looking to conquer the world. People said men didn’t give a damn about family, that you could plug in a new wife and kid where the old wife and kid had been, and the bastards wouldn’t know the difference, but they were wrong. Three years had passed, and the ache inside his heart was as strong as ever. He hoped it never left him, because that ache was all he had left of his family.