Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(39)

“Your turn,” he tells Allison, then takes a closer look at her, standing befuddled in front of the open drawer. “What are you doing?”

“I just . . .” She shakes her head and closes the drawer, then opens the next one over. “I’m looking for something.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” She moves around the socks in the drawer, then closes it and opens another. Maybe she put it away in the wrong place after she last wore it, which was . . . when?

At least a month ago. Maybe two.

“Al?”

She looks up to see Mack still watching her.

“What are you looking for? Maybe I ate it while I was wandering around feasting in my sleep.”

She can’t help but laugh at that, and so does he.

“What is it, your cell phone again?”

That went missing earlier in the week. She found it in a bin filled with toddler toys. Still obsessed with electronics, J.J. must have pickpocketed her phone when she wasn’t looking.

“Not my cell this time,” she tells Mack. “You know that champagne-colored silk baby doll nightgown you gave me on our anniversary last year?”

“I thought it was beige, but champagne-colored sounds better.”

“I was going to put it on and wear it to bed to surprise you . . .” She jerks closed another drawer after rifling through the contents.

“You have no idea how much I love that surprise.”

“Don’t love it too much, because it’s not going to happen. I can’t find it. It’s not in my lingerie drawer and it’s not in any of these, either.”

“Maybe it’s in the laundry.”

“Can’t be.” She opens a drawer filled with jeans. “I haven’t worn it in ages.”

“Yeah, don’t remind me. But I guess we both agree that I deserve to get lucky after tonight.”

“Oh yeah? What do you mean by that?”

“I went to that party for you.”

“Oh, come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

“It wasn’t that good.”

“Who was that woman you were talking to at the end of the night?” she asks, remembering. “The one who hugged you?”

“That was Zoe Edelman. I guess Zoe Jennings now—she married Nate Jennings. I almost didn’t recognize her, though. She looks totally different.”

“You means she wasn’t always drop-dead gorgeous?”

“You think she’s drop-dead gorgeous?”

Allison glances up from the drawer. “You don’t have to pretend you don’t think so, too, Mack.”

“She was all right.”

Allison rolls her eyes. “If she was ‘all right,’ then I’m barely adequate.”

“Come on, you’re the one who’s drop-dead gorgeous, Allie.”

“You’re just trying to butter me up so that you can have your way with me,” she accuses with a laugh.

“That is . . . absolutely true. But you are looking hot.”

“How did she wind up at the Webers’ party?”

“Zoe? Ben and I knew her years ago, Nathan, too, when we all worked together. I guess they just moved to town, so he invited them to the party.”

“That’s nice.”

Nothing but jeans in the drawer she just searched. Where the heck . . . ?

“Whatever.” Mack comes over and puts his arms around her. “Listen, who needs the nightie? Just come to bed.”

She can smell the bourbon mingling with minty toothpaste on his breath and is glad she insisted on driving home from the party, and then running Greta back through the rain-slicked streets to the Webers’. The bash was still in full swing and the band was playing again, but Allison was glad they’d left early this time.

It seemed everyone she’d talked to over the course of the evening wanted to discuss the local scandal of the week: how a fellow elementary school mom had written the obligatory note for her daughter to get off the school bus at a different stop to have a playdate at a friend’s house—without realizing the friend had stayed home sick that morning. Her daughter dutifully handed in the note, the driver dutifully left the child off at the different stop, and the little girl wandered the streets, lost, for a solid hour before a neighbor noticed.

The moms at the party had plenty to say about the situation: the girl’s mom should have called to confirm that her daughter had safely arrived at the playdate; the sick girl’s mom should have called the mom to say that her daughter would be absent and canceled the playdate; the bus driver shouldn’t have let a first-grader off the bus alone, regardless of what the note said . . .

Should have, shouldn’t have . . .

Lately, Allison is starting to feel like all these women ever want to do is criticize other people’s children and parenting skills, the school district policies, the teachers . . .

That, and offer unsolicited advice: about the kids, the house and landscaping, holiday plans, even Allison’s hair, which she’s decided to let gradually go back to its natural brunette shade. The only person who hadn’t offered advice at the party was her friend Sheila, who’d asked for some.

“Do you think Dean and I should start looking into adoption before we run out of money? These treatments are costing us a fortune, and there are no guarantees. At least with adoption . . .”