Sleeping Alone (6 page)

“You don’t think it’s a mistake, do you?” Alex asked, suddenly struck with the terrible notion that she might not have the job after all. “Maybe I misunderstood.”

“You spoke to Dee?” John asked her.

She nodded.

“And she said you had the job?”

She nodded again.

“So don’t worry about it.”

“But what about the owner? What if she didn’t ask him and he comes back and fires me?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“How do you know it’s not going to happen? I don’t have any—” She almost bit off the tip of her tongue in her haste to stop her words.

“Experience?” he asked.

Color flooded her cheeks. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to. It’s obvious.”

“What do you mean, it’s obvious? You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“I have eyes,” he said.

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“Waitresses don’t pay cash for their houses or wear Burberry raincoats and Ferragamo loafers.”

She opened her mouth to say something witty and cutting, but no words came out. She’d blurted out the truth to Dee. Why was it so much harder to tell him?

A funny little grin lifted the left side of his mouth. A funny little flutter rippled through her belly.

Next to her, Eddie cleared his throat. She’d forgotten his presence entirely. “Bailey needs to get a good foot under her,” he said, edging toward the door while the dog danced at his feet. “We’ll meet you back home, Johnny.”

“You’re going to let him walk home in his pajamas?” Alex asked as Eddie closed the door behind him.

“It’s not like this is the first time.”

“It’s raining,” she said, horrified. “He’ll catch his death.”

“He’s not going anywhere,” John said. “He’s sitting in the truck smoking a cigarette.”

“But he said he was going to walk home.”

The look in his eyes almost melted her on the spot. “My old man says a lot of things, Alex. Believe me, he’s in the truck.”

She parted the living-room curtains and looked outside. “You’re right,” she said. “He’s in the truck.” She turned back to John. “You were right about something else, too: I’ve never waited tables before.”

“Does Dee know?”

“I told her.”

He whistled low. “You’re either the most honest woman on the planet or the craziest.”

“Crazy,” she said. “Definitely crazy.” She started to laugh, softly at first, so soft he wasn’t sure it was really happening. That serious face of hers suddenly broke apart like the sparkling pieces of a kaleidoscope, then came together in a brilliant smile.

“Poor Dee,” she said. “I hope she doesn’t regret it. I don’t know the first thing about waiting tables.”

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. If she’d been beautiful before, she was otherwordly now. He’d never seen a woman so transformed by something as simple as a smile. “That English accent of yours will have the crowd at the Starlight eating out of your hand in no time.”

Her smile wavered. “What English accent?”

“Tomato, to-mah-to—your accent.”

“I was born in New York City.” She looked uncomfortable somehow, as if she hated to give up even that much of herself, but maybe that was his nonexistent romantic imagination kicking in, creating mysteries where there weren’t any.

“Back at the diner you said you’d lived abroad.”

She looked away as the kaleidoscope shifted one more time, and her smile disappeared.
You’re pushing, Gallagher. It’s none of your business.

“Forget I said anything.” He crossed the living room to the front door. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“No problem.”

“And for taking Eddie in.”

“I enjoyed his company.”

“See you at the Starlight,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “See you at the Starlight.”

If he was looking for something more, she wasn’t about to oblige. He turned to leave. The rain had turned icy while he was inside. He had a vision of himself tumbling down the three brick steps to the ground, but he managed to keep his footing and slid his way toward the truck. Behind him he heard the sound of the front door squeaking shut, followed by the thud of the dead bolt sliding into place. At least she remembered to lock up this time.

“Took you long enough,” Eddie said as John motioned for Bailey to jump into the rear of the truck.

“I thought you were walking home.”

“In this weather?” Eddie snorted. “I may be old, but I’m not crazy.”

“You’re the one in pajamas.” John stuck the key in the ignition.

“Did you ask her out?”

“Don’t start,” John warned as he waited for the engine to turn over.

“It’s Thanksgiving. You gonna have her eat alone?”

“Maybe she’s not going to be alone, Pop. She might have a husband and six kids.”

“And maybe she doesn’t have anyone.” Eddie swung open the passenger door.

“Where the hell are you going now?”

“Where do you think?” Eddie countered. “I’m going to ask her out.”

* * *

Alex quickly let the curtains drop back into place as Eddie started up the pathway to the front door. She hoped they hadn’t seen her peeking out the window at them. She told herself she’d wanted to make sure John made it to his truck without slipping on the ice, and there was a kernel of truth in that. Unfortunately that kernel of truth was overwhelmed by the real reason: She couldn’t take her eyes off John Gallagher.

She opened the door at the first knock and gave Eddie her best smile. “Did you forget something?”

“Sure did,” he said as she motioned him in from the cold. “What are you doing for dinner today?”

“Dinner?” She tried to visualize the contents of her refrigerator and cupboards. “Probably soup and a salad.”

His frown threw the lines on his weathered face into even sharper relief. “For Thanksgiving?”

His words took her by surprise. “It can’t possibly be Thanksgiving yet.”

“Fourth Thursday in November,” Eddie said, “regular as clockwork.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t believe I forgot.”

“Why don’t you have Thanksgiving dinner with us?”

She was so touched by his offer that tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, I couldn’t do that, Eddie.”

“You got someplace else to go?”

“No, but—”

“So it’s settled. Three o’clock. Number 10 Lighthouse Way.”

A family Thanksgiving,
she thought. Her first in more years than she could count. “I really shouldn’t,” she said. God help her, she sounded like a woman in need of convincing.

“Why not?” Eddie asked. “You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

She laughed again, the second time in less than an hour. “I’m not a vegetarian.” She met his eyes, looking for the slightest hint of uncertainty. “Will your family mind?”

“The more the merrier, they always say.”

“Then I’d love to join you.”

Eddie beamed his approval. “Now you’re talking. 10 Lighthouse Way. Three o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

“One more thing,” Eddie said. “Are you married?”

How could such a simple question be so hard to answer? She glanced down at her left hand. “No,” she said after a moment. The truth fell somewhere in between. “Not anymore.”

Eddie nodded as if he’d known it all along. “Perfect,” he said, his bright blue eyes twinkling with delight. “Neither is Johnny.” He turned and left without another word.

Alex stood in the doorway and watched as Eddie climbed into the truck. The two men exchanged words, then John looked toward her. Their eyes met. She felt the way she’d felt when he held her in his arms, dazed and yielding; all the things she didn’t want to feel.

So turn away,
she told herself. All she had to do was go back into the house and close the door behind her. It was an easy enough thing to do.

But she stood there on the top step, in the wind and the rain and the cold, and she watched until the truck turned onto Soundview and disappeared.

No grown woman should greet the dawn with her arm wedged up to the elbow inside a turkey.

Dee was a firm believer in the importance of holiday rituals and traditions, but there was something about dealing with twenty-five pounds of naked poultry before your first cup of coffee that made her think it was time to adopt a few new family traditions. Like vegetarianism. She yanked out the bag of giblets, then tossed it into the trash without remorse. Call her a renegade, but she drew the line at gizzards and neck bones.

Vegetarians didn’t have to go through any of this, she thought wistfully as she ran cold water through the carcass. All across the land, vegetarians were cuddled under their eiderdown quilts, secure in the knowledge that there wasn’t a vegetable on earth that needed six hours in a 325-degree oven. Vegetarians could sleep until noon if they wanted to and not feel a moment’s remorse.

“Next year,” she muttered as she patted the turkey dry with paper towels, then set it down in the gargantuan roasting pan that came out at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Next year it would be a festival of vegetables, and she’d personally strangle the first person who uttered a complaint.

She worked swiftly, spooning stuffing into the bird, then stitching up the cavity with a wide-eyed needle and butcher’s twine. She quartered onions to place around the turkey the way her mother had taught her to do. Her mother had also taught her how to make a gravy so dark it was sinful, and the best pumpkin pie in New Jersey. Maggie Murray was ten years dead, but she was never closer than when Dee was in the kitchen. She rummaged in the junk drawer for the meat thermometer, then plunged it deep into the turkey’s breast as she stifled a yawn. Turkey. Stuffing. Onions. Thermometer. That about covered it. She grasped the pan and slid it into the preheated oven.

A new speed record, she thought, glancing at the clock over the sink. Gizzard patrol was over, and it wasn’t even seven-thirty yet. “You’d be proud of me, Mom,” she said out loud. “Looks like I’ve finally gotten the hang of it.”

“Talking to yourself again?”

She whirled around to see Mark, her sixteen-year-old son, yawning in the doorway. He wore a Hootie & the Blowfish T-shirt, a pair of threadbare gray sweatpants, and thick white socks that looked as if he’d used them to track grizzlies. A lump formed in her throat as she smiled at him. Whoever said love hurt must have been the parent of a teenager. You tuck him in one night and he’s a little boy with a teddy bear, and you wake up the next morning to find he’s turned into six feet of raging hormones.

“Did you get taller overnight?” she asked as he sat down at the kitchen table.

“You’re getting shorter,” he said around another yawn. “Happens to all of you old people.”

“I’m not old,” she snapped. “I wasn’t much older than you when—”

“—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 within 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.