Sleepwalker Read online

  But just you wait, Jamie thought, giving them one last glance from the second story window of the master bathroom.

  On the way back through the bedroom, there was just one last little detail to tend to. For old times’ sake, because Jamie couldn’t resist.

  Before even opening a drawer, it was easy to tell at a glance which of the two bureaus belonged to Allison. One held on its polished top some loose change, a pocket knife, and an electronics charging station. The other, a carved jewelry box, framed family photos, and some kind of three-dimensional contraption consisting of Popsicle sticks bound together with too much colored yarn and tape.

  A child’s clumsy artwork, Jamie guessed. Exactly the kind of thing a mother would proudly display. Not a father.

  At least, not the kind of father Jamie has known . . .

  And been.

  It doesn’t mean Allison’s husband isn’t the most doting daddy—and husband—in the world, though. In fact, Jamie fervently hopes that’s exactly the case.

  It would mean that, unlike Jerry, Allison has everything to live for—and everything to lose.

  It’s only been a few days, but already, that’s proven to be true.

  Even better, watching and listening to the MacKenna family quickly yielded a couple of very interesting—and useful—facts. A new phase of the plan took shape almost immediately.

  Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the right opportunity to present itself.

  “Mack! Wow, look at you!”

  He turns to see a female stranger who’s come up beside him at the edge of the makeshift dance floor. She’s standing a little too close—but then, who isn’t?

  Undeterred by the cold, rainy weather, the Webers had gone ahead with their outdoor party plan, instructing the catering team to cover the huge brick patio where the party is traditionally held. Lit by hundreds of votives and filled with tables, chairs, a band, and people, the heated tent—while almost circus-huge—has had Mack feeling claustrophobic all evening.

  Now, he attempts to take a small step away from the woman beside him, but his back is already up against a tent pole.

  Carefully balancing the nearly full martini glass in her hand, she tiptoes up to kiss him on the cheek with lips so red he’s sure there will be a mark.

  Instinctively, his eyes search for Allison. Not that she’s the jealous type at all. Nothing like Carrie. Nothing like most women, really. He’s a lucky guy.

  He finds her, in a group with a couple of her friends who are doing all the talking, probably filling her head with information about building a home greenhouse to grow her own organic produce from seed or getting on waiting lists now for college admissions coaches who will help Hudson get into Harvard a decade from now, or some such nonsense.

  He wishes Allison wouldn’t buy into it, but she’s trying so hard to do everything right with their children, and who can blame her?

  Gone are the days when kids walk or ride their bikes off to school and come home to eat store-bought, preservative-laced cookies and play freeze tag with neighborhood kids till dark. That’s how Mack grew up.

  His mother was health conscious, yes—and look where that got her. But she didn’t obsess about the ingredients of every morsel he and Lynn put into their own mouths, or whether they’d get into an Ivy League school—Mack didn’t; didn’t attempt to, didn’t want to. He worked his way through a state college, had a blast, and turned out just fine.

  Relatively speaking.

  “I’d know you anywhere,” the woman at his side informs him, and he turns back to her.

  His first instinct is to politely say the same thing, but he actually has no clue who this person might be. She’s a beautiful brunette, svelte in her little black dress and heels, reeks of class—but in these circles, who doesn’t fit that bill?

  Maybe she’s one of Ben or Randi’s many cousins, he decides, or a neighbor he met at a party in years past.

  She grins. “You have no idea who I am, do you?”

  “Of course I . . . don’t.” Compelled, as always, to admit the truth, he’s rewarded by a throaty laugh.

  “Zoe Jennings.”

  The name should probably ring a bell, but it doesn’t.

  “I used to be Zoe Edelman . . . ?” she prompts.

  “Zoe?” Oh! Zoe! This lovely creature bears no resemblance to the pudgy young woman who wore glasses, had quite a knack for telling dirty jokes, and could hold her own with the boys when they all went out to guzzle beers after work. “My God . . . how long has it been?”

  “At least ten, twelve years, right?”

  “At least,” he agrees, remembering back to the good old days when they shared a bullpen at the booming advertising agency where he began his career. “Guess we’re getting old, aren’t we?”

  “Hey, speak for yourself.”

  “I am. You look great.” Mack notes that she’s had a nose job, and maybe some other work as well. Well below the nose—not that he’s looking. But given that low-cut dress, he can’t help but notice.

  “You look great, too.”

  Yeah, right. He’d had to suck in his gut just so that he could fasten the top button of his khakis.

  Sleep-eating. The very thought of it has been bothering him all day. It’s unsettling to think that he’s been walking around the house at night like some kind of zombie . . . though it wouldn’t be the first time.

  When he was a little boy, he was known to occasionally wander downstairs in his pajamas, wide-eyed but obviously asleep. According to his parents and sister, he carried on conversations, but there was a vacant look in his eyes that scared Lynn.

  “It was like someone else—someone creepy—had taken over your body,” she used to say. “It scared me.”

  It scared him, too. He hadn’t thought about it in years, until this morning.

  Sleepwalking, sleep-eating . . .

  No, thanks.

  He promised Allison that he’d give the Dormipram another try, but he has no intention of doing that.

  Certainly not tonight, with the bourbon he’s had.

  Contrary to his wife’s optimistic belief, the party hasn’t turned out to be much fun—and it’s deteriorating quickly.

  “So I hear you’re a big shot in ad sales these days,” Zoe tells him.

  “Big shot? I don’t know about that . . .”

  “Don’t be modest, Mack. I know the industry, remember? You’re a big shot. Admit it.”

  “Where are you now, Zoe?”

  “Do you mean, work-wise?” At his nod, she says, “I’m not. Working, I mean. I’m a stay-at-home mom. Two kids, you know the drill. I married Nate—you remember him, right?”

  “Nate . . .”

  “Nathan Jennings,” she supplies with a smile.

  “Oh, right. I remember Nathan.” He does, vaguely. Nathan, Zoe . . .

  Names and faces from another lifetime.

  “Nate ran into Ben on a sales call not too long ago, and they caught up, and when Ben found out we just bought a house here, he invited us to come tonight.”

  “You bought a house here? In Glenhaven Park?”

  “It’s the place to be, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so. Where’s your house?”

  “On Abernathy Place.”

  “That’s right around the corner from where we live—we’re on Orchard Terrace.”

  “I know, Ben told me. Small world, isn’t it? Can you believe we all wound up in the same town?”

  Mack can. He and Allison may have played follow-the-leader after Ben and Randi moved up to Glenhaven Park, but ever since the recession hit, the area has exploded with their upwardly mobile colleagues snapping up McMansions—and mansions—on the market at rock-bottom prices, some even in foreclosure.

  “Like you said,” he tells Zoe, “it’s the place to be.”

  She touches his sleeve with fingernails that are as red and shiny as her lips. “I heard about your wife.”

  “Allison. I’ll introduce you. She’s right over�
�”

  “No.” Now Zoe is squeezing his arm. “I meant your first wife. Carolyn, was it?”

  “Carrie.” He drains the watered-down remains of the bourbon in his glass and wishes a bartender would materialize with an instant refill. Straight up.

  “I’m so sorry, Mack.”

  He never knows what to say in response to that.

  I’m sorry, too . . .

  It’s all right . . .

  Don’t be—our marriage was over anyway . . .

  He just nods.

  “I remember you were dating her when we were working together,” Zoe goes on. “She was very sweet.”

  You never met her, Mack wants to tell her. He’s certain of that, because Carrie never wanted to socialize with people he worked with. She never wanted to socialize with anyone. And she certainly wasn’t sweet.

  Maybe Zoe’s thinking of someone else.

  Or maybe, over the years, she’s talked so often about her brush with a September 11 victim that she’s convinced herself, and the rest of the world, that she actually knew Carrie. Whose name she thought, until a moment ago, was Carolyn.

  For months after she died, Mack ran into people who had barely known her, or people who, he’s fairly certain, hadn’t liked her if they did know her, because to outsiders, Carrie wasn’t very likable.

  Hell, Mack was an insider and in the end, she wasn’t very likable to him, either.

  But those people would talk about her as if she’d been some kind of hero or martyr.

  Strange how sudden death brings instant celebrity to the victim and to those left behind. Especially a death as spectacularly horrific as Carrie’s.

  “You must have been devastated when it happened,” Zoe tells Mack, who nods, because that, at least, is the truth.

  He wishes somebody would show up to rescue him. Turning his head, he spots Allison’s friend Sheila and her husband, Dean, standing nearby but keeping to themselves, looking somewhat glum.

  Allison told him that they’re in the midst of infertility treatments—at Riverview, the very same clinic Mack and Carrie used.

  Not surprising, really. The place came highly recommended; some of the best fertility specialists in the city—perhaps in the entire country—are on staff there.

  Mack carries a lot of memories of those days at Riverview, located in a Washington Heights brownstone that struck him as charming the first time he ever saw it, yet gloomily foreboding ever after.

  The only happy scene he recalls unfolded in a sun-splashed room at the very beginning of the journey, when Dr. Hammond told him and Carrie that she could help them conceive. On that day, parenthood was tantalizingly within their reach.

  As time marched on, though, things went downhill. Mack certainly didn’t relish his regular treks to the clinic’s windowless room—stocked with sticky, outdated porn—to leave sperm deposits. The former altar boy in him couldn’t help but find the experience somewhat humiliating. But it was nothing compared to what Carrie went through, and she never missed a chance to remind him of it.

  The hormonal drugs wreaked havoc on his wife, and weight gain was the least of it. Always somewhat moody, she became downright impossible. Not a memory he particularly wants to revisit.

  And so, a day or two ago, when Allison suggested, over a hurried breakfast in their kitchen, that he give Sheila and Dean a little pep talk about the infertility experience, he flatly refused.

  “Nothing I have to tell them is going to make them feel any better. If anything, it would be the opposite. My experience at Riverview didn’t exactly have a happy ending, remember?”

  Now, he quickly looks past Sheila and Dean, avoiding eye contact.

  Ben is nearby, talking to the lead guitarist of the live band. They’re on a break at the moment—a most welcome one, as far as Mack is concerned.

  His father had worked for a record label, and he’s enjoyed music—particularly live music—for as long as he can remember. But tonight, the amped guitars and relentless percussion made him cringe, and he’s not quite sure why.

  All he really wanted was a quiet Saturday evening on the couch. But here he is, because this is his best friend’s party and Allison, who’s stuck home with the kids every day, really wanted to come. They even actually have a sitter for once, having borrowed Greta, Ben and Randi’s au pair, for the night.

  “Don’t worry about anything,” Randi told Mack and Allison when she offered Greta’s services, since both her own children were conveniently invited to slumber parties. “You know she’s great with kids. And if it’ll give you peace of mind, you can borrow my nanny cam for the night.”

  “You’re still using that?” Allison asked, and looked at Mack.

  How well he remembered when the Webers first installed the surveillance equipment that allowed them to spy on their childcare providers, back when their children were young. Ben walked him through the house and showed him the tiny cameras hidden in every room.

  It didn’t sit well with Mack at the time—though of course, that was before he became a father. Now that he is, he knows how hard it is to leave your precious children with a virtual stranger. He can’t blame the Webers for wanting to keep an eye on things. And, as Ben pointed out, this is the world they now inhabit.

  “There are cameras everywhere you go, Mack. Seriously. Big Brother is always watching.”

  “In public, that’s true.” He’d read somewhere that since 9/11, monitored surveillance cameras are able to zoom in on anything in the city, right down to a square inch on the sidewalk. “But at home . . .”

  “Wait till your kids are older,” Ben told him. “Yesterday, I walk into my son’s room to tell him something, and I’m wearing a towel, and then I realize that we’re not alone—Josh has a video chat open on his iPad and there’s some kid in there who can see and hear everything that goes on. There’s no privacy anymore, anywhere—even in your own house. You never know who’s watching and listening. A nanny cam is the least of it.”

  As a perpetually worried mom, Allison would have gladly accepted the use of the nanny cam for tonight, but Mack talked her out of it.

  “It’s just a few hours,” he reminded her. “And Greta is trustworthy. If she weren’t, the Webers wouldn’t use her.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  Now he wishes he hadn’t been so gung-ho on the sitter.

  As Zoe talks on, speculating about what September 11 must have been like for him, Mack looks over at Allison, who—as if sensing he needs her—turns her head to meet his gaze head-on. She’s lost a few pounds lately, and she looks spectacular in her own little black dress.

  From where she is, she probably can’t see Zoe, who has her back to her, and of course she has no idea that he’s trapped in a conversation about Carrie.

  Carrie, unlike Allison, would never have considered Ben and Randi friends—much less family—and insisted that they come here tonight.

  Allison was right, of course. They had to come. But now . . .

  Obviously thinking the same thing he is, she raises a questioning eyebrow and lifts a thumb, jerking it in the direction of the nearest tent flap.

  God, yes, he tells her silently, with a slight nod.

  God, I love my wife, he thinks, and turns back to Zoe Edelman—make that Zoe Jennings—to make his excuses and get the hell out of here.

  Chapter Six

  Rocky Manzillo trudges wearily up the front steps, glad to see that there are no soggy plastic-bagged newspapers littering the stoop this time. He’d finally remembered on Thursday night—after coming home to three days’ worth of rain-soaked New York Posts—to ask his next-door neighbor to grab the day’s paper whenever it’s still sitting there at noon.

  The neighborhood is far from the most dangerous area in the Bronx, but it’s definitely not as safe as it was when Rocky was born here sixty years ago—or, for that matter, when he and Ange were raising their three boys here twenty-five, thirty years ago. And you don’t have to be a cop to know that it’s never
a great idea to advertise an empty house.

  Then again, for all Rocky cares right now, anyone can walk right in and help himself. Material possessions? Who gives a shit about any of that?

  As long as you’ve got your health . . .

  Funny. It was Ange who always went around saying that, and Rocky who rolled his eyes about all those checkups and medical tests she wanted him to have. She worried about him.

  And I never worried about anything. Ever. Not even about Ange.

  But that was certainly not because he didn’t love her. She was his childhood playmate and high school sweetheart; his bride; the mother of his children; his best friend. Ange is his whole world.

  It’s just that Rocky has never been the kind of guy who goes around worrying about terrible things that might happen. When you’re a homicide detective with the NYPD, you’ve got your hands full enough trying to do something about all the terrible things that already have happened.

  This . . . this is worse than anything Rocky could ever have imagined. To see his wife lying there in the trauma unit, comatose, with a breathing tube down her throat and a feeding tube in her stomach, day after day, week after week . . .

  Swallowing over the lump that took up permanent residence in the back of his throat when Ange suffered her brain aneurysm in August, Rocky unlocks the door and steps into the entry hall.

  Right away, he notices that the house smells funny.

  When Ange was here, it always smelled like whatever she was cooking or baking, and it smelled like her freesia-scented bath gel, and it smelled clean.

  Now it smells—not dirty, exactly, but dusty. Musty. Not clean. Not like food, or freesia, or Ange.

  That’s because Ange isn’t here; hasn’t been here in almost two months; might never . . .

  No. Don’t you dare go there.

  Rocky pushes forward, through the living room, where the shades are drawn, and the dining room, where the good tablecloth is covered with a clear plastic one and a crystal vase of peach-colored silk flowers sits precisely in the center. On either side are long peach tapers set into the matching crystal candlesticks Ange’s sister Carm, their doting junior bridesmaid, gave them on their wedding day so long ago . . .