Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)(67)

It was four A.M. when she awakened, got up to go to the bathroom, and found Mom lying on the tile floor there, cold and still and rock-hard. Bloody vomit was caked around her mouth and her eyes were fixed, as they so often were, on something only she could see.

This time, Mom wasn’t going to blink and drift reluctantly back to the real world. This time, she was gone for good, and Allison was left alone in Centerfield to face the gossip, and the financial fallout, and the cops and the social workers who said they had only her best interest in mind.

Maybe that was true.

Maybe not.

Maybe everyone had an agenda. Maybe they still do.

But that doesn’t matter; they don’t matter. You’re the only one who does. You just have to take care of yourself; just keep going through the motions of living, every minute of every day, no matter what happens, until one day you realize you’re actually living again.

Allison stands up, brushes off her jeans—the same old jeans she keeps picking up from the floor and putting back on—and looks up at the building.

She notices the metal fire escape that zigzags down the brick face. It’s meant to save lives; there was no such escape for all those people who burned to death in the World Trade Center, and yet . . .

Did someone climb that network of narrow stairs in the dark and crawl through Kristina’s window? Would she be alive if not for that?

As Allison shakes her head at the irony, a human shadow falls across the steps in front of her. Someone is standing behind her.

It’s broad daylight and she’s outside on an urban street, but it might as well be the middle of the night—and the middle of nowhere—for all the comfort that brings. The skin on the back of her neck prickles with awareness, and she’s afraid to turn around, afraid of what—whom—she might find there. Afraid.

Dammit.

Slowly, she turns her head, bracing herself to come face-to-face with Jerry.

But it’s Mack.

He looks like hell. Yesterday’s five o’clock shadow has turned into full-blown scruff, his hair is wiry, and his blue chambray shirt is wrinkled and untucked from equally wrinkled khakis. His eyes are hidden behind dark glasses, but she can feel the gloom radiating from them.

“Are you okay?” she asks him, though the answer is obvious.

He shakes his head mutely.

“Where have you been?”

“At the Pierre, and . . . I, uh, registered.”

“Registered?”

“Carrie. Missing persons.”

As if his legs can no longer support his weight, he sinks onto the step at her feet and sits facing the street, hugging himself, shoulders hunched.

“I heard that they pulled some people out alive this morning,” she tells him. “Maybe Carrie—”

“No,” he says, “that was just a rumor.”

“But—”

“People were pulled out, but they were firemen who were part of the rescue effort.”

“Oh.” Deflated, she sits beside him. She sees that his hands are trembling, clasped around his bent knees.

“I have to get some hair from her hairbrush and bring it to the Armory later, for . . . DNA. It’s so they can . . . you know. It’s a long shot, but maybe they’ll find her. I mean . . . her body. Then at least I can bury her.”

Allison doesn’t know what to say to that. To any of this.

After a long moment, she reaches out and touches his arm.

He looks down at her hand resting on his sleeve, and then up at her face.

She can’t see his eyes behind the dark glasses. Maybe that’s a good thing, she thinks, and wishes he couldn’t see hers, either.

“What are you doing?”

Startled by Jamie’s voice, Jerry jumps back, away from Mama’s closed bedroom door.

“Nothing!” He shakes his head rapidly.

“I told you not to open that door, remember?”

“I wasn’t going to open it,” Jerry lies. “I was just looking at it.”

“Are you sure about that?”

He bobs his head up and down, feeling nervous and not sure why. “It’s just . . . it smells bad. I thought maybe she left food in there or something.”

Jamie doesn’t say anything about that, only, after a long pause, “Whatever you do, Jerry, don’t open that door. Ever. Got it?”

“Got it.” Jerry hesitates. “Can I have some cake?”

“Jerry, how many times do I have to tell you? You don’t have to ask me. Just take it. It’s for you.”

“Thank you, Jamie. That was so nice of you.”

Jerry goes to the kitchen. The Entenmann’s box is sitting on the counter. He opens it and sees just one small square of cake is sitting in the crumb-filled pan.

“Jamie? Did you eat my cake?”

“No. I told you, it’s for you, all of it. You must have eaten it and forgotten. You do that a lot. Your memory is bad because of your head injury.”

Yes. That’s right. Jerry’s memory is bad. Sometimes, he doesn’t even remember the head injury, but that’s fine with him. He just wishes he remembers eating the cake, because he loves cake.

He opens the silverware drawer. Something moves inside: a fat cockroach skitters toward the shadows and disappears through a crack.

Jerry recoils and slams the drawer closed. He’ll eat with his hands.