Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(17)
Just like old times.
Jamie retreats to the door and climbs out of the crawl space. Blinking in the sudden glare of sunlight, she realizes that it’s a beautiful day. The kind of day when the world is bright and shiny, full of promise . . .
A perfect day to make a fresh start.
Twenty minutes later, Jamie is driving away.
In the car trunk: a garbage bag full of bloody clothes and a hastily packed duffel filled with fresh clothes and toiletries, a laptop, and, of course, the laminated photographs of Rocky Manzillo and Allison MacKenna.
In the glove compartment: several big brown envelopes thick with cash—the money that had been saved to help Jerry, along with the thousands of dollars she’d just found in Roger’s attic. The old man had conveniently left a chair beneath the open trap door in the ceiling, igniting Jamie’s curiosity as to what might be up there. Nothing but cash—and porn. Sick old bastard. Now Jamie is carrying more than enough money to pay for motel rooms and food for weeks, at least—probably months. However long it takes. She also has two checkbooks—one of which belongs to Roger—and a handful of soon-due bills for both apartments. As long as the rent and utilities are kept up to date, no one is going to come sniffing around the building any time soon.
And on the front seat: a computer printout showing directions to Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York.
Chapter Three
Friday, September 16
“So things are finally back to normal now, know what I mean?”
“Definitely,” Allison tells Randi, who’s spent the last ten minutes talking about how relieved she is that her in-laws have gone back to their Florida retirement home after a three-week visit.
Both Mack’s parents are deceased, so aside from his sister, Lynn, Allison doesn’t have in-laws. But she can certainly relate to life finally being back to normal.
With the sunroom painted at last, Mack got back on his usual 7:19 commuter train yesterday morning, bleary-eyed as always, but at least having promised to start his new sleep medication over the weekend.
“I’m glad you made me go to see Dr. Cuthbert,” he said, kissing Allison on the cheek. “You were right.”
“I’m always right,” she replied with a smile, trying to hide the vague uneasiness she’s felt since Mack came home from his appointment on Wednesday with a prescription for something called Dormipram.
Allison immediately looked it up on the Internet. She wasn’t thrilled about some of the side effects, but the good news was that it was supposed to be nonaddictive. Anyway, the last thing she wanted to do was undermine Mack’s cooperation with the doctor.
If only she could ignore the troubling ghosts of her own past—a more distant past than the tragic events of September 2001. Her mother was an addict, not just street drugs, but prescription, too—and died of a sleeping pill overdose. It wasn’t accidental.
Suicide—that thought segues Allison right back to Jerry Thompson, but she pushes him from her mind. She’s been doing it for days now. He’s dead. It’s over.
Craving normalcy—and some female company—after dropping Madison at preschool on this sunny, unseasonably cool Friday afternoon, she drove with J.J. over to Randi’s three-story redbrick mansion for a late lunch.
“Anyway . . .” Randi wraps her perfectly manicured fingers around a baby carrot and dredges it through lemon-artichoke hummus. “Sometimes I wish we hadn’t gone all out with that huge guest wing upstairs. It makes it a little too easy for my in-laws to come and stay . . . and stay . . . and stay . . .”
“I can’t really blame them.” Allison has toured the luxurious guest wing: two large bedrooms, each with its own bath, connected by a large sitting area featuring a state-of-the-art entertainment system and a wet bar.
Until a few years ago, the Webers lived with their two children, Lexi, fourteen, and Josh, nine, in a regular suburban house a few blocks away from the MacKennas’. The two families used to walk back and forth for backyard barbecues and snowstorm game nights. They had a lot in common—parallel lives, Randi used to say.
Ben had launched his career in an ad agency bullpen alongside Mack right out of college. When he moved into the more lucrative sales side of the industry, he recruited Mack and was his boss for years.
Last year, Ben left the network to become executive vice president of sales and marketing at another. The Webers immediately moved to the “estate” side of town, where rambling mansions sit on woodsy lots beyond low fieldstone walls—and security fences and access-control gates.
At first, Allison worried that Ben going from a mid-six-figure yearly income to one that’s over seven figures would jeopardize their friendship. But it didn’t.
“We’re just one step ahead of you,” Randi said when it happened. Coming from her, it was somehow not insulting. “We had a head start, but we’re right where you guys will be in a couple of years.”
Allison isn’t sure that’s true, and she isn’t sure it’s what she wants. Ben seems to be home even less often than Mack is. And she loves the house they live in now. It’s the first place she’s ever lived that truly feels like home, and she envisions herself and Mack growing old together there.
Watching Allison pry a potentially deadly baby carrot from J.J.’s clenched, drool-covered fist, Randi comments, “He’s like a little octopus.”