Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(19)
Interrupting her tale of Lexi’s upcoming first high school dance to peer closely at Allison’s face, Randi asks, “Are you just quiet today, or am I boring you to tears and not letting you get a word in edgewise?”
Oops—I must have drifted.
Allison shakes her head. “I’m just quiet today.”
“Yeah? I think you’re just too polite to tell me to please shut up. Most people don’t have that problem. Ben sure doesn’t.”
Allison grins. “Mack doesn’t, either. With me, I mean.”
“Or with me,” Randi says wryly. She and Mack have long had a casual, brother-sister relationship. “Ben said he took a few days off this week. I thought maybe it was to make up for the three vacations he missed out on, but Ben said no.”
Three vacations . . . In addition to the curtailed July week at the beach and the September Disney trip they’d had to forgo, Mack and Allison had planned a late August getaway to a charming, family-friendly Vermont inn recommended by Phyllis next door.
But Mother Nature seemed bent on robbing them of any pleasure they might salvage from this all-too-fleeting summer. The day before they were supposed to leave—and just forty-eight hours after the freak earthquake—the unprecedented Hurricane Irene came barreling up the coast with New York in her crosshairs. Not only did the storm leave Glenhaven Park littered with downed trees and wires, but floodwaters swept the New England inn they were to visit.
“Don’t bother to come up here,” Phyllis Lewis advised over the phone, having driven to Vermont ahead of the storm. “It’s like a war zone. You’re better off just staying home.”
Ah, but the one comfort zone they could always count on—their Happy House—had been cast in perpetual shadow, unnervingly silent in the absence of reassuring electronic hums, with rotting food in the fridge and not even the promise of a hot shower to wash away the tension of a difficult day.
The Webers had a generator and Randi called to invite Allison, Mack, and the kids to come to their house until the power was restored.
“We have plenty of room,” she said, “and it’ll be fun. We never see enough of each other anymore.”
“I thought your in-laws were already staying with you.”
“I can always kick them out.”
“Randi!”
“I’m kidding. Sort of,” Randi added dryly. “Listen, no arguments. You and Mack and the baby can have the master suite, your girls can share Lexi’s room, and Ben and I will camp out downstairs.”
“We’re not going to put you out of your own bed. We’re fine at home,” Allison told Randi firmly. “I’m sure the power will be back on any second now.”
Famous last words. A full week elapsed before electricity was restored; a week Mack opted to spend back at work, leaving a homebound Allison to keep the kids fed and clean and entertained without appliances, lights, electronics, hot water . . .
Those strange, unsettling days had been hard on her. But they were even harder on Mack, she now realized. This year, not only was there no escaping the real world, but even the real world bore little semblance to its usual self. Home didn’t feel like home, yet the city wasn’t a refuge, either. Not with all the talk of the looming anniversary and the construction of the new Freedom Tower, rising one more story per week above the altered skyline.
Allison had detoured past the site early in the rebuilding stage, when there was little more to see than blue scaffolding, construction equipment, steel girders, and an American flag-bedecked “Never Forget” sign. Predictably, Mack wasn’t interested in seeing it then, and he isn’t now.
“Mack just couldn’t deal with being in the city on the ten-year anniversary, huh?” Randi asks.
“Is that what he told Ben?” Allison is surprised. It isn’t like Mack, ever the stoical Irishman, to share his feelings, even with his friends.
Randi shakes her expertly highlighted mane. “That’s what Ben and I guessed. I know this is always a hard week for you guys.”
“It is. I thought having him around the house would be nice, and the girls were so excited—you know how they are about Mack—”
“Daddy’s girls.” With a nod, Randi utters the phrase Allison so often uses to describe her daughters.
Randi has one of her own for J.J.: mama’s boy. It doesn’t sit well with Allison, in part because it’s overwhelming to be the only person who can comfort and care for her son so much of the time. Often, when Mack tries to help her out by taking him off her hands, J.J. fusses so much that Allison winds up taking him back.
“That’s just how it is—little boys love their mommies,” her sister-in-law, Lynn, observed, having two sons of her own.
Yes, but they love their daddies, too—especially when they get to see a lot of them.
This early childhood stage is going to be so different for J.J. than it was for the girls. Mack’s job wasn’t this demanding when they were little; he had more time to bond with his daughters than he ever will with his son.
Most nights, the baby is in bed long before he comes home, and though J.J. is an early riser, Mack’s daily dash out the door to catch the train doesn’t allow for father-son interaction.
“So it wasn’t good having Mack home this week?” Randi prompts.