Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(32)

“I know you do. Please be careful.”

She says it every time he leaves.

“Don’t worry,” he always replies.

Not this time. This time, the cannonball is clogging Vic’s throat so he just nods, and goes upstairs to get his things.

Despite two cups of black coffee—Allison brews it good and strong, just the way he likes it—Mack is starting to fade quickly. Sitting on her couch in front of the endless breaking news reports, holding the sandwich she insisted on making for him, he tries to restrain another deep yawn.

“You should sleep.”

He looks up to see her watching him, again sitting in the chair opposite the couch. Like a butterfly, she tends to alight for a minute or two, then flutters off again to accomplish some other task: making the sandwich, refilling his cup, watering her lone plant, washing out the coffee carafe . . .

Maybe she’s uncomfortable having him here. Or maybe she just likes to stay busy—one of those people with a lot of nervous energy to burn.

She’s so different from Carrie, who always spent so much of her time at home sitting, very still, lost in thought.

When they first met, that made Mack uncomfortable. He’d struggle to think of things to say, trying to draw her out. Sometimes he was rewarded; most of the time, he was not.

Eventually, he learned to just let her be, but he never stopped wishing there was a way to make his wife more . . . less . . .

Hell, he doesn’t even know what he ever wanted from Carrie.

But yesterday morning, when he was lying there pretending to be asleep, and she was getting ready to leave for work, he realized what he didn’t want.

He didn’t want to talk her into becoming the mother of his child. Even if he could get her to change her mind about what she’d said . . .

It wouldn’t be right.

She was not equipped—not at this stage in her life, anyway—to devote herself wholly to another human being. Not Mack himself, and not a baby.

Every child deserves a mother who will provide unconditional love and nurturing. He won’t provide his own child with anything less.

“Why don’t you just put your feet up and lean back for a while?”

Allison’s voice drags Mack’s thoughts away from Carrie.

He’s grateful for that. He doesn’t want to keep remembering what happened with his wife yesterday morning.

Allison turns off the television. “I’m sorry, but . . . I can’t watch any more of this. They’re not saying anything new right now, and they keep showing . . .”

“I know.” He shrugs. “I feel immune to it now.”

They both fall silent.

“Do you hear that?” Allison asks after a moment.

“Hear what?”

“The music coming from upstairs. I forgot about it, but now that the TV is off, I can hear it again.”

He listens and nods, hearing faint strains of an Alicia Keys ballad.

Allison frowns. “I hope she’s okay—Kristina, I mean.”

“I hope so t— Wait a minute. She told me about a million times that she doesn’t even have a CD player.”

“She told me the same thing.”

“Why would she say that if it wasn’t true?”

“Who knows? Maybe she’s a compulsive liar.”

“Or maybe the music is coming from the television.”

“Same song over and over?”

“Okay, maybe she went out and bought herself a CD player,” Mack says reasonably, and sets the sandwich plate on the coffee table between a stack of fashion magazines and a stack of flyers.

He can’t bear to look at Carrie’s face staring up at him from beneath the word “MISSING.” He turns his head to avoid it and finds himself locking gazes with Allison.

“I’ll go put those up,” she tells him. “You can go lie down, or just stay here if you don’t want to be . . . you know, there.”

“You don’t have to put them up,” he says, “and I don’t mind being . . . there.”

But the truth is, he does. He doesn’t want to be home, alone, thinking about what happened to Carrie.

It’s strange to be here though, too, isn’t it? Just sitting here in unfamiliar surroundings on a weekday afternoon with this barefoot blonde who popped up out of nowhere, offering to help . . .

He’d chatted with Allison in passing around the building. She was hard to miss, with her striking looks and lanky build made taller by the high-heeled shoes she was always wearing.

Only the other night, though, when he was sitting outside and she stepped out of that cab, did they have a real conversation. He can’t even remember much of what they talked about, but he knows he connected with her on some level.

Oh hell. Maybe he was flirting. He’d had a drink—two—and he was pissed at his wife, and—

And let’s face it, Allison is beautiful.

But of course he wasn’t going to do anything about that.

He still isn’t. He’s just here because . . .

“Any port in a storm.”

He looks at Allison in surprise, wondering if she somehow read his mind. “What?”

“Haven’t you ever heard that saying? Any port in a storm,” she repeats. “It means when you’re in real trouble, you accept the help you’re given, even if it’s not what you’d have chosen.”