Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(5)

Tammy had her own cross to bear, as the church ladies would say. Everyone did. Mom was Allison’s—hers alone—and she dealt with it pretty much single-handedly until the day it ceased to exist.

But going back to Centerfield—even to have the last laugh—would mean facing memories. And who needs those?

“Memories are good for nothin’,” Mom used to say, after Allison’s father left them. “It’s better to just forget about all the things you can’t change.”

True—but Mom couldn’t seem to change what was happening to them in the present—or what the future might hold.

“Weakness is my weakness,” Brenda once told a drug counselor. Allison overheard, and those pathetic words made her furious, even then.

Now Mom, too, is in the past.

Yes. Always better to forget.

Anyway, even if Allison wanted to revisit Centerfield, the town is truly the middle of nowhere: a good thirty miles from the nearest dive motel and at least three or four times as far from any semi-decent hotel.

Sometimes, though, she pictures herself doing it: flying to Omaha, renting a car, driving out across miles of nothing to . . .

More nothing.

Her one friend, Tammy, moved away long before Mom died seven years ago, and of course, Dad had left years before that, when she was nine.

Allison remembers the morning she woke up and went running to the kitchen to tell her mother that she’d dreamed she had a sister. She was certain it meant that her mom was going to have another baby.

But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. In the kitchen, she found the note her father had left.

Can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. Good-bye.

God only knows where he wound up. Allison’s only sibling, her half brother, Brett, wanted to find him for her sake after Mom died.

“Well, if you do, I don’t want to hear about it. I never want to hear his name again,” she said when her brother brought it up at the funeral.

It was the same thing her mother had told her after her father left. Mom considered Allison’s deadbeat dad good for nothin’—just like memories. True as that might have been, Allison couldn’t stand the way the townspeople whispered about her father running off.

The best thing about living in New York is the live-and-let-live attitude. Everyone is free to do his or her own thing; no one judges or even pays much attention to anyone else. For Allison, after eighteen years of small-town living and a couple more in college housing, anonymity is a beautiful thing. Certainly well worth every moment of urban inconvenience.

She surveys the traffic-clogged avenue through a veil of drenching rain, thinking she should probably just take the subway down to the Marc Jacobs show at the Pier. It’s cheaper, arguably faster, and more reliable than finding a cab.

But she’s wearing a brand-new pair of Gallianos, and her feet—after four straight days of runway shows and parties—are killing her. No, she doesn’t feel up to walking to Grand Central and then through the tunnels at Union Square to transfer to the crosstown line, much less negotiating all those station stairs on both ends.

Not that she much likes standing here in the deluge, vainly waiting for a cab, but . . .

Lesser of the evils, right?

Maybe not. She jumps back as a passing panel truck sends a wave of gray-brown gutter water over the curb.

“Dammit!” Allison looks down at her soaked shoes—and then up again, just in time to see a yellow cab pulling over for the trench-coated, briefcase-carrying man who just strode past her, taxi-hailing arm in the air.

“Hey!” she calls, and he glances back over his shoulder. “I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes!”

More like five, but that’s beside the point. She was here first. That’s her cab.

Okay, in the grand scheme of Manhattan life, maybe that’s not quite how it works.

Maybe it’s more . . . if you snooze, you lose.

And I snoozed.

Still . . .

She’s in a fighting mood. The Jacobs show is huge. Everyone who’s anyone in the industry will be there. This is her first year as—well, maybe not a Somebody, but no longer a Nobody.

There’s a seat for her alongside the runway—well, maybe not right alongside it, but somewhere—and she has to get to the Pier. Now.

She fully expects the businessman to ignore her. But his eyes flick up and down, taking in her long, blond-streaked hair, long legs, and short pink skirt. Yeah—he’s totally checking her out.

She’s used to that reaction from men on the street.

Men anywhere, really. Even back home in Centerfield, when she was scarcely more than a kid—and still a brunette—Allison attracted her share of male attention, most of it unwanted.

But as a grown woman in the big city, she’s learned to use it to her advantage on certain occasions.

Oh hell . . . the truth is, she made the most of it even back in Nebraska. But she doesn’t let herself think about that.

Memories are good for nothin’, Allison. Don’t you ever forget it.

No, Mom. I won’t. I’ll never forget it.

“Where are you headed?” The man reaches back to open the car door, his gaze still fixed on her.

“Pier 54. It’s on the river at—”

“I know where it is. Go ahead. Get in.”

She hesitates only a split second before hurrying over to the cab, quickly folding her umbrella, and slipping past the man—a total stranger, she reminds herself—into the backseat.