Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(52)

“She’s not married. She lives by herself. She just doesn’t like me.” Jerry let out a moan. “I don’t want to be alone anymore. No one wants to be with me. Mama’s gone and now . . .”

“But you’re not alone. You have me.”

“No—not that. I want a girlfriend. I want love.”

Who doesn’t?

We all want love.

Some people find it over and over again. Some people never find it at all.

“It’s not fair,” Jerry wails.

“No. It isn’t.”

“It hurts so much. Make it stop hurting. Make someone love me.”

“I can’t do that, Jerry. You know that.”

“Yes, you can. You said when you came that you’d make things better.”

Yes. Better for Jerry.

And better for me.

“Are you sure this woman lives by herself?”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“Marianne.”

“Last name?”

“I . . . I don’t know. I just know where she lives.”

“That’s great, Jerry. That’s perfect. Don’t you worry about a thing. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go out and get you that cake I promised you. I’ll take care of you, just like I promised.”

And I’ll take care of Marianne.

And then I’ll take care of Allison.

It might be too late to keep her from telling the police about Jerry . . . but it’s not too late to punish her for what she did. No, it’s never too late for that.

Jamie’s mouth curves into a smile.

“Ma—it’s me,” Marianne says into the phone.

“Who?” her mother asks, as she always does. As if any other female voice would call her Ma. As if anyone else in the world calls her every single night, at ten on the dot.

“Me! Marianne!”

“Oh—Mare-Mare.”

Oh, for the love of . . .

Marianne hates the childhood nickname, but her mother clings to it as fiercely as she clings to Marianne herself.

“I’m just making sure you’re okay, Ma. Are you getting ready for bed?”

“Not yet. I’m watching the news.”

“Still? I told you earlier, you have to turn that off. It’s only making you more nervous.”

“I like to know what’s going on.”

“Nothing is going on. It’s over. You’re safe.”

Her mother doesn’t believe that. She frets, for a few minutes, about the terrorists and what they did and what they might do next. Then she asks Marianne what she ate for dinner.

“Soup,” she lies.

“From a can?”

“It was fine, Ma.”

“If you had come here, you could have had kakavia. Homemade.”

After all these years, her mother still thinks she enjoys fisherman’s stew. Rather than point out—yet again—that it’s her brothers who like it, not her, Marianne says simply, “I couldn’t come. I’m sorry. I told you, I had the repairman here, and I couldn’t leave.”

“I know. I’ll see you tomorrow. I still have leftover lamb from when you were here Monday night.”

Of course you do.

Her mother still hasn’t learned how to cook for just one person, or two. Everything she makes would easily serve a dozen people. That’s never going to change, Marianne thinks with weary affection.

“Don’t forget to call me in the morning,” her mother says.

“Do I ever?”

“All last week—”

“Ma, I was on a ship. Out at sea. Remember? I couldn’t call.”

“But now you’re home.”

“And your phone will ring at seven-thirty. Same as always. Okay?”

“Okay. I love you, Mare-Mare. You sound tired. Get some sleep.”

“I will,” she tells her mother glumly, and hangs up the phone.

No, she won’t. She’ll be lucky if she sleeps at all, with everything that’s gone on. The terror attack . . .

The move . . .

The nut job handyman who spooked her into barricading herself into the apartment—even closing and locking all the windows despite the polyurethane fumes . . .

Rae stuck halfway across the country . . .

And God only knows when—or if—she’s coming back.

Marianne looks at the sunrise photo they had taken on the cruise ship just days ago—arms around each other, laughing, in love. They spent their whole vacation talking about moving in together. How could things have changed so drastically since then?

The twin towers in the background are now, more than ever, a harbinger of disaster. The whole world has changed since Sunday morning. Everything about it. Everyone in it. Even Rae.

“I really do think you should move in with me when you get back,” Marianne told her earlier on the phone, before she called her mother.

“I don’t know, Marianne,” Rae said. “I’ve been thinking . . . I’m not sure I want to come back to New York.”

“What? What do you mean? You love it here. You moved here! You said you’ve been dreaming of living here since you were a little girl!”