Sleeping Alone Read Online Free

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