Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(32)

“I’ll help.” Maddy follows her sister to the sink with her milky bowl.

“You can tell me things, but you can’t write them down. I’m doing the writing,” Hudson informs her, and they head out of the kitchen.

As soon as the girls are out of earshot, Allison turns back to Mack, who’s busy making silly faces at a delighted J.J., the missing cereal box apparently forgotten.

Allison hesitates, wondering if she should even bring it up.

Maybe she’s wrong.

But as Mack bends over their son’s high chair tray, she notices the way his stomach rounds the front of his T-shirt, and she knows that she isn’t.

Mack has always been hard and lean, despite the fact that his only workout these days is dashing for commuter trains and scurrying around the city from his office to appointments.

She first noticed a bit of a paunch earlier this week, when she heard him muttering about the dry cleaner shrinking his suit pants and looked up to see him straining to button the pair he had on.

That was a day after she accused the girls of polishing off an entire bag of pretzels—which they denied—and the day before she noticed that a carton of butter pecan ice cream, which the girls would never touch because it has nuts in it, was missing from the freezer.

It had been there that afternoon. She was certain of that, because she was stuck on the phone for over an hour with her book club friend Sheila, who’s in the midst of an infertility crisis. As Sheila talked on and on, Allison found herself wandering around the kitchen, opening the freezer door repeatedly, giving the ice cream a longing gaze, and then forcing herself to satisfy her craving with diet iced tea, an apple, a tub of yogurt, and, of course, the ubiquitous baby carrots.

She’s been on a diet, hindered by the recent spate of unseasonable cold and rain that have kept her cooped up in the house for days now. The nasty weather is a grim reminder of the looming blustery season that is always unfairly accompanied by gravy and stuffing, eggnog and frosted cut-outs . . .

But this isn’t about that, or about her. It’s about Mack. And ice cream, pretzels, an entire box of Cap’n Crunch . . . for all she knows, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Food isn’t even the only thing that’s missing.

She can’t find her good chef’s knife—the one with the red handle—and a couple of bowls are gone, too. One, she found tossed in the garbage, along with soggy cereal, yesterday morning. The girls have been known to accidentally toss cutlery, but a bowl?

“Mack,” she says abruptly, “we need to talk.”

“About the sunroom?” he asks in a weary, not-again tone. They’ve been trying to come to an agreement about what should be done with the window treatments.

Tired of waiting for him to put the shades back up, Allison started to do it herself last week, then realized that the old shades look dingy next to the new paint. They’ve been talking about ordering new ones, or perhaps curtains or shutters, but haven’t been able to find the time to agree on what they want, let alone actually go shopping or place an order.

“No,” she tells Mack, “it’s not about the sunroom. Although—”

“Let’s not get into that now,” he says quickly. “Please.”

“Fine.” She shifts back to the more pressing matter at hand. “Have you ever heard of sleep-eating?”

“Hmm?” Holding his fingers at the sides of his cheeks, he wiggles them at J.J. and sticks out his tongue.

“Sleep-eating. I think you’re doing it.”

Mack turns away from J.J. to face her. “What are you talking about?”

She quickly explains about the missing food, only to have him laugh.

“You think I ate it in my sleep? And then chucked the bowl into the garbage?”

“Yes, I do.”

Before she can elaborate, he shakes his head, still looking amused. “You’re the one who’s on a diet, Al. Are you sure you’re not just—”

“It’s your medicine, Mack,” she cuts in. “The Dormipram. It’s one of the side effects. Didn’t you read the packet that came with it?”

“Not really.” He gratifies a fussing J.J. with another silly finger-waving face.

She shakes her head. Of course he didn’t bother to read the packet. That’s always been her department—the endless investigation into every medication that finds its way into their medicine cabinet.

“Well, I read it, Mack. Look at me. Come on. I’m totally serious here.”

“So you’re saying I’m . . .” He shakes his head incredulously. “I’m, what, sleepwalking into the kitchen at night and bingeing on ice cream?”

“Among other things.” She nods, giving J.J.—fussing loudly now that the clown show has come to an apparent end—a wooden spoon to bang on his tray. Above the commotion, she says, “It makes sense.”

Mack just looks at her, apparently not in agreement.

“You said yourself your suit pants were tight the other day,” she points out.

He immediately glances down at his stomach, then up at her—still not entirely sold, but she can tell he’s starting to believe it’s possible.

“Some medicine causes weight gain, you know,” he tells her. “Years ago, when Carrie was shooting herself up with all that medication trying to get pregnant, she gained a lot of weight. Dr. Hammond—that was our doctor at Riverview Clinic—said that it was from the hormones in the fertility drugs.”