Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(18)

“More like a pickpocket. You’re lucky your kids are past this stage.”

“I won’t argue with you.”

“That reminds me—can you do me a favor? Do you have your iPhone in your pocket?”

Of course she does. She pulls it out immediately, asking, “Who are we calling?”

“We’re not calling, we’re using the GPS locator to find my phone. It’s not in my pocket and I’m hoping it’s either out in the car or that I forgot it at home, because for all I know J.J. grabbed it and threw it on the ground someplace between my house and here.”

“What do I do?”

Allison directs her to the application and instructs her to type in the cell phone number.

Randi does, then looks up. “I need your password.”

“It’s HUMAMA.”

“Who-mama? How’d you come up with that? Like, Who’s your mama?”

Allison laughs. “No—like, Hudson, Madison, Mack. First two letters of each of their names.”

“What about J.J.?”

“He wasn’t born yet when I got the phone. I remember thinking I’d probably never need to use this locator app, but . . . I pretty much need it every day.”

Smiling, Randi punches the password into her own phone, waits for a moment, then shows Allison the screen. It shows a map, with a big, pulsating blue dot sitting over their address on Orchard Terrace.

“Okay, as long as I know it’s home. But with this guy, I can never be sure.” Allison sighs. “I should probably get going.”

“It’s still early. Do you want some more salad?” Randi gestures at the bowl.

“No, thanks—I’m full.”

Not really. The mix of organic baby arugula, goat cheese, and seared red peppers didn’t really hit the spot today. Sometimes lately, when she’s feeling low, Allison finds herself craving good old-fashioned, bad-for-you comfort food. Right now, she wouldn’t mind a salami sandwich on white bread with yellow mustard—or even a wedge of iceberg lettuce with bottled blue cheese dressing and synthetic bacon bits, which passed for salad in her distant small-town past.

“Are you sure? Did you not like it?” Randi asks. “Because I won’t feel bad if you didn’t. It’s not like I made it.”

Allison knows she’d bought the salad mix in a plastic container at David-Anthony’s, the gourmet café in town, then tossed it with a shallot vinaigrette—also from David-Anthony’s—in an enormous hand-carved wooden salad bowl that probably cost more than Allison had paid for her first car back in Nebraska.

“No, it was great,” she assures Randi. “I’m just not that hungry.”

“What about dessert? Look what I got!” Randi leaps up and grabs a white bakery box stamped with the gold David-Anthony’s seal. She opens the lid to reveal a dozen oversized, frosted sugar cookies that cost seven-fifty each.

Allison knows that because she herself made a rare venture into David-Anthony’s on the first day of school last week, thinking it might be nice to pick up a treat for the girls. She picked out two individually cellophane-wrapped cookies, an intricately decorated school bus and a red apple, and was halfway to the register when she noticed the price stickers.

She put them back.

It isn’t that she can’t afford to spend fifteen dollars—but for two cookies? Given the current state of the economy, she has to draw the line somewhere. Always in the back of her mind is the threat that Mack might lose his job, like so many colleagues in his fickle industry. If that happens, they will be, as Mack recently said and an eavesdropping Hudson later colorfully quoted, up a certain creek without a paddle.

Allison knows only too well what it’s like to be laid off without warning. But at least when she lost her job at the magazine, she and Mack were childless newlyweds, and he could support them both on his salary—with a nice cushion in the bank, thanks to his dead wife.

For the first time in her life, someone was taking care of Allison, and it felt good.

Most days, it still does. Stay-at-home motherhood is fulfilling. But once in a while, she longs for something a little more stimulating. Unlike Randi and most of the other women she’s met here in the affluent suburbs, she isn’t into yoga, golf, manicures, or day spas.

Then again, whenever she’s around petite, striking Randi, who has a thick mane of dark red hair and a tanned, Pilates-toned body, Allison wonders if she’s let herself go.

She rarely wears makeup these days, and this isn’t the first time she’s gone too long between dye jobs at the salon, resulting in a streak of dark roots along her part line. Plus, her once-willowy frame isn’t quite as taut as it used to be.

This morning, realizing the weather had gone from summer to fall overnight, she’d pulled on a pair of jeans—faded Levi’s, as opposed to Randi’s dark-wash 7 For All Mankind. After an active summer with the kids—wearing shorts and sundresses that have a lot more give than denim—the jeans feel snugger than she’d expected; the last ten pounds of her third pregnancy weight gain are conspicuously drooping over the top button.

She reinforces her no to the dessert Randi is offering but says yes to a cup of coffee—black—and lingers to sip it as Randi chatters on and J.J. delightedly turns a seven-dollar pumpkin-shaped cookie into sugary sludge.