Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(23)

For another, throwing them away would be like giving up. It would mean she can’t imagine a scenario where she’d ever wear those beautiful shoes again.

Anything is possible. That’s your philosophy, remember?

She carries the shoes to her closet, pulls out the box they came in, tucks them inside wrapped in layers of tissue, and returns it to the shelf. Then she does the same with the pairs she picks up from the floor, all frivolous sandals with impossibly high stiletto heels.

She can’t imagine setting foot outside her apartment in anything but running shoes—or maybe combat boots—but life might get back to normal someday.

It always has, right? No matter how bad things have been. Every time she’s hit rock bottom, she’s told herself that there’s no place to go but up.

This is different, though, whispers the little voice in her head, piping up like the frightened child she never wanted to be—never allowed herself to be.

This is different from waking up one morning to learn that her father had abandoned his family, different from coming home from school to find her mother unconscious, having OD’d—again.

As far as Allison was concerned, whatever happened back in Centerfield was never anybody’s business but her own.

But this—what happened today—this happened to millions of people. It happened to everyone, really.

We’re all in it together, Allison thinks, and somehow, somewhere deep down inside, she finds comfort in the idea of camaraderie.

She thinks about her coworkers, her friends, her neighbors . . .

Kristina. Is Kristina okay?

And Mack, and his wife . . .

But it’s too late—too early—to call anyone.

Allison wearily slips out of her dress.

She’s about to toss it over the footboard of her bed. Instead, she finds a hanger, drapes the dress over it, and returns it to the closet, where it can wait until the day when fashion matters again.

“Mack?”

Startled, he whirls around to see Ben Weber, the director of advertising sales. He’s Mack’s boss—and one of his closest friends.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Ben says. “Any news?”

“No. Where have you been?” Mack absently notes that Ben is no longer wearing the dark suit he had on earlier. He’s changed into jeans, a Yankees cap, and a hooded Cornell sweatshirt.

“I went home to see Randi and Lexi, remember?”

Mack doesn’t remember—but he nods anyway.

He thinks back to everything that led up to this surreal act—his being here, at his deserted workplace in the middle of the night, printing out a missing persons flier for Carrie—and it’s like waking up and trying to remember the details of a nightmare.

He forces his mind back, back, all the way back to the Tuesday morning alarm clock after a restless couple of hours’ sleep. He remembers hitting the snooze button, then pretending to go back to sleep as Carrie moved around the bedroom getting ready for work, slamming things moodily.

He was going to be late, but he knew that if he got up while she was still there, he’d have to acknowledge what she’d said last night—that she was finished. That she didn’t want a baby after all.

He couldn’t deal with that—with her—that morning.

Something clicked in Mack’s brain as he lay there, avoiding his wife. It was as though he’d been looking at his life through a blurry binocular lens for months, and then all at once, things became clear.

He finally knew what he had to do.

And he did it. He did it quickly, impulsively, before he could lose his nerve.

And he didn’t regret it when it was over.

He got dressed, got to work, and just as he was getting ready to go out on his first sales call of the day, Ben burst into his office and told him about the plane hitting Carrie’s building. It was as if someone had abruptly jerked the focus dial in his brain, and everything was fuzzy again.

Still is.

Now, trying to piece together the rest of his day, Mack is dimly aware that Ben was by his side for the duration. Ben walked with him from NYU Medical to Saint Vincent’s Hospital to Bellevue. Ben helped him negotiate chaotic seas of frantic people searching fruitlessly for loved ones at the hospitals and triage centers set up at Chelsea Piers, the Staten Island Ferry terminal, Stuyvesant High School. Ben asked all the right questions, the questions Mack couldn’t seem to articulate, and he gave out information to all the right people.

Through it all, Mack vaguely recalls Ben making furtive, sporadic phone calls to his wife, whenever cell service would allow. And yes, he remembers that at one point, Ben asked Mack if he’d be okay for a little while alone while he went home to check in on his family.

How long ago was that?

Where was I when Ben left?

How did he know to find me here?

Mack rubs his palms against his burning eyes, wondering if he’s suffering from mere exhaustion, or posttraumatic amnesia.

“Did you stop back at your apartment?” Ben is asking.

Mack nods, vaguely remembering going into the apartment, looking around, and leaving again. “She wasn’t there.”

Such a stupid, stupid thing to say. Ben knows she wasn’t there. If she had been there, Mack wouldn’t be here, printing out hundreds of missing persons fliers.

“Was the power back on yet?”