Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(120)
But at the time, her objective was to get out quickly--in the immediate aftermath of September 11, no less, when public transportation was at an inconvenient standstill. Had she been trying to enter the U.S., she’d have been out of luck, given the sudden, intense border scrutiny on incoming travelers.
But she only wanted to leave—and hitchhiking was the only way to go, from truck stop to truck stop, down the East Coast. Riding high in the cabs of eighteen-wheelers along an endless gray ribbon of interstate brought back a lot of memories. Good ones, mostly.
As she made her way to Florida, she perfected her cover story: she was supposed to meet her terminally ill fiancé in the Caribbean to marry him that Saturday.
People were in a shell-shocked, help-your-fellow-American mode. Every time she mentioned that she’d escaped the burning towers in New York, strangers bent over backward to help, giving her rides, food, money.
Eventually, she encountered a perpetually stoned, sympathetic trucker who was more than happy to connect her with a man who was willing to help her complete her so-called wedding journey. For a steep price—one she could easily afford, thanks to years of stockpiling cash—she was quite literally able to sail away on a little boat regularly used for smuggling illegal substances into the country, as opposed to smuggling people out of it.
She’d chosen Saint Antony for its relatively close proximity to the United States and for its unofficial look-the-other-way policies when it comes to just about everything. She figured she’d stay a while—six months, a year, maybe two—and then move on. Once she was here, however, complicated post–9/11 security measures made it a challenge to return to the States.
She could have gone elsewhere—Europe, maybe, or the South Pacific—but she wasn’t really interested in doing that. America was home, and someday, she might want to go back.
As always, she’d done her homework and figured out how she would eventually be able to get around the new security obstacles. She came up with the perfect plan, but she wasn’t in any hurry to put it into action. Maybe she’d stay here forever. Maybe not. It was just good to know she could escape if she wanted—or needed—to.
She didn’t, until the morning six months ago when she turned on her television and was blindsided by her own face staring back at her. There she was, in an old photograph that accompanied a news report from suburban New York.
“So do you like bartending?” the woman at the bar, Molly, asks her. “I bet you meet a lot of interesting people.”
“Sure do,” Carrie agrees, but of course that’s another lie.
These people don’t interest her. At times, they just bore or frustrate her, but mostly, they merely remind her that there’s a world beyond this island. A world Carrie is ready to rejoin at last.
A generous shot of rum splashes into the blender, and then another for good measure, along with ice, mixer—and the powdered contents of a packet Carrie surreptitiously pulls from her pocket, where it’s been waiting for months now. Waiting for just the right opportunity . . .
This is it.
Carrie reaches for the blender switch. It’s sticky; everything here in the bar—and everyone, for that matter—is sticky, and damp.
Oh, it’s going to feel so good to escape the looming Caribbean summer, with its oppressive humidity, daily rainstorms, and hurricanes lining up out in the Atlantic like steel balls in a pinball shoot. Disembarking in the States tomorrow morning—yes, even Miami—will be a literal breath of fresh air.
Her stomach fluttering with excitement at the thought of it, Carrie flips the gummy switch. The contents of the blender erupt, sucking the white powder into a frothy vortex. Carrie lets it whirl for at least thirty seconds before filling the waiting glass with frozen slush the color of the Caribbean sky at dusk—her favorite time of day.
I’m probably going to miss those sunsets, if nothing else, she acknowledges. But I’ve seen enough to last a lifetime.
She’s spent more than ten years in this barefoot, rum-and-ganja-laced, easy-living part of the world, where no one bats an eye or asks too many questions of a newcomer. Ironic, Carrie has always thought, that countless people come to the sunny Caribbean to slip into the shadows. Here, they can escape their past; maybe—if they’re lucky—erase it altogether.
But last November, when Carrie saw her own face in that news report about her ex-husband and his new wife, she was swept by a fierce, unexpected wave of emotion. Resentment swirled up from the murky depths of her memory, churning renewed frustration and rage.
It’s been six months since that day. Six months of planning and plotting. Six months of growing obsession, just like before—years ago, when she was little more than a girl and developed the fixation that would consume her life.
I couldn’t help it then, and I can’t help it now.
It’s time to go home, confront the past, battle the demons she’d left behind. Time to make things right at last, the way she couldn’t the first time she’d tried, because something got in the way: an unexpected yearning for a so-called normal life, a glimmer of hope that she might somehow achieve it.
I should have known better.
Ah, but she did know better.
Maybe you were right after all, Daddy. Maybe I knew much more than I thought. But she’d gotten sidetracked, caught up in desire. She’d been foolish. Human.
And now?