Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(37)

Marianne used to toy with the idea of coming out to her family, but the older she gets, the more she wonders why she’d put herself—and them—through the heartache. They wouldn’t accept her lifestyle, and that would hurt a lot more than it hurts her to keep certain things to herself.

“Listen, if you’re so afraid of falling and killing yourself, Ma, you should stay off the stepladder,” Marianne advised her. “No one your age needs to worry about dusting the ceiling.”

She was wasting her breath, of course. Cobwebs are her mother’s worst enemy.

“Why don’t you just move back in with her?” George, the youngest of Marianne’s four older brothers, asked, clueless about Marianne’s lifestyle—certain aspects of it, anyway, that she might not want to share with their religious mother, anyway.

“Why don’t you move back in with her?” Marianne shot back.

But of course, Ma would never let that happen, even if George were willing. She’s always talking about how busy Marianne’s older brothers are with their jobs, their wives, their kids. George and Marianne are both single, but as the only daughter, Marianne is the one who’s expected to look out for her mother.

So, on September first, she moved out of her old place, dumped all her belongings in this new one, and then left with her girlfriend, Rae, on the weeklong cruise they’d planned for months. Early Sunday morning, as they sailed back into New York Harbor, a fellow passenger snapped a photo of the two of them on deck with the twin towers against a pink-streaked dawn sky in the background.

The next morning, Marianne brought the film to the one-hour development place near her office as Rae flew off to Denver on a business trip. She’s there now, stranded indefinitely—but at least she’s safe.

Marianne keeps looking at the photograph of her and Rae at sunrise just four days ago, the twin towers standing in the background like proud sentinels guarding the home port.

What if Rae’s flight had been for Tuesday morning instead of Monday? What if she’d been going from Newark to California instead of to Denver? What if, when she flies home, her flight is hijacked?

“Don’t worry,” Rae said when they spoke on the phone this morning. “I’ll be fine. Nothing’s going on here. I’m just worried about you in New York. Be safe. If anything ever happened to you . . .”

“Nothing is going to happen to me,” Marianne promised her.

She sighs, using a box cutter to slit the packing tape on the bottom of the carton she just emptied. This one was full of books she’s never had the time to read and will most certainly never have the time to read now that she’s doubled her commute to her uptown office, but she carted them all to the new apartment anyway.

After flattening the box, she adds it to the growing stack on the living room floor, then sticks her head into the kitchen.

The large-boned hulk of a maintenance guy is kneeling in front of the open oven door. He’s not tinkering, not even moving a muscle, just seems to be staring off into space.

Maybe he’s thinking about whoever it is that he lost yesterday.

She clears her throat, and still, he doesn’t move. She steps closer and realizes he’s wearing headphones. They’re attached to a Walkman clipped to his belt, and she can hear music coming from them.

She reaches out and touches his shoulder. He jumps, then sees her and pulls off the headphones.

“Sorry,” she says. “Didn’t mean to scare you again. I keep doing that to you, don’t I.”

“It’s okay, Marianne.”

Marianne?

Maybe she did introduce herself earlier, but it seems a little jarring that not only does he remember her name—she doesn’t remember his—but he actually used it. That just feels . . . overly familiar.

Or maybe you’re just overly touchy because he’s a man. And you’re not into men, and sometimes it bugs you when they’re into you. Right?

Whatever. “Um,” she says, “I have to be someplace by five, so . . .”

“I’m almost done.”

“Are you sure?”

He nods vigorously.

She checks the clock on the stove above him. Oh, crap. “Listen, I have to go get ready right now, or I’m never going to get out of here on time, and then my mother will think something horrible happened to me.”

“What? Why would she think that?”

Taken aback by his wide-eyed dismay, Marianne shrugs. “She always thinks that.”

“But why?”

He’s like a child, she realizes, suddenly feeling sorry for him. The world must be a hard place for a guy like this. A boy in a man’s body.

“Never mind. It’s just my mother. It’s how she is. Aren’t they all?”

He greets her forced smile with a troubled expression, and she wonders why the heck she’s bothering to do all this talking.

Because even though you feel sorry for him, there’s something about him that makes you nervous, that’s why.

“I’m going to go get ready. Just finish up and let yourself out, okay?” She doesn’t wait for a reply.

In the bedroom, Marianne closes the door, then, as an afterthought, presses the lock button in the middle of the knob.

It pops right out again.

Dammit—she never noticed the lock didn’t work when the Realtor took her through the apartment.