Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(64)

She darts around him as he puts his foot on the first step. Fierce maternal instinct sends her quickly up the flight and into the baby’s room. J.J. is standing in his crib, both hands on the railing, crying his eyes out—just as he is every morning of his life.

The moment he sees Allison, though, he breaks into a big, wet smile, arching his little arms toward her.

She plucks him from the crib, holds him hard against her pounding heart, and looks toward the doorway, half expecting to see Mack there.

He’s not.

She can hear him at the top of the stairs, and walking down the hall, and then she hears the master bedroom door close after him.

J.J. strains in her arms and makes a frustrated grunting sound, as if to say, Why are we just standing around? Let’s get moving!

Allison shifts him to her hip and walks with him, past the girls’ open bedroom doors—an unsettling reminder that they aren’t here this morning, and of the reason for that.

She passes the closed master bedroom door, reaches the top of the stairs, and then backtracks.

At the door, she hesitates, wondering what she’s going to find on the other side. Flashing back to last night—outside Phyllis Lewis’s bedroom door—she hastily retreats again.

This time, she goes down the stairs as J.J. babbles, happy to have the action—any action.

In the kitchen, Allison sees the knife still lying on the floor. She picks it up, tosses it into the sink, and sets J.J. into his high chair. With trembling hands, she fumbles at the straps, finally managing to get him secured as he squirms unhappily.

“Stop, J.J.!” she says sharply, and immediately regrets it when his little face contorts with an unhappy howl.

“Shh, baby, it’s okay, it’s okay.” She presses a kiss onto his head and quickly grabs a sippy cup from the drying rack. She sets it on the counter, grabs the milk, and fills the cup. Beside it is the fruit basket, heaping with the Macoun apples she bought at the supermarket yesterday.

Mack had taken one out and put it back. Is that why he went for a knife? Was he going to cut an apple?

Probably. What did you think?

After several attempts, Allison threads the cover onto the sippy cup and hands it to J.J., who instantly stops fussing and starts gulping. She puts a handful of dry cereal onto his tray, telling him, “I’ll be right back, sweetie.”

Happily munching and sipping, he doesn’t give her a second glance as she leaves the kitchen.

All is silent overhead. She takes the stairs two at a time. This time, she doesn’t hesitate at the master bedroom door, but wrenches it open.

As she hurries across the threshold, banishing the memory of Phyllis Lewis—and of Kristina Haines—from her troubled mind, she can see Mack in the bed.

He’s lying on his side, facing her. His eyes are closed; his breathing rhythmic.

She stands watching him for a long time. This man is familiar, even though he’s sound asleep.

The man she saw downstairs with the knife . . .

With a shudder, she turns away, pulls the door closed, and heads for the stairs. Her legs are liquid, her skull is in a tension stranglehold, her shoulders burn. All at once, the physical effects of last night’s frantic stress—and sleeplessness—seem to have caught up with her.

I should have crawled into bed when Mack tried to insist.

Too late now.

She can hear J.J. down in the kitchen, and she can tell by the high-pitched note in his baby babble that he’s on the verge of tears.

He’s just a baby. He doesn’t know that his mommy is a nervous wreck and his daddy . . .

Why the hell did Mack have a knife in his hand?

Gripping the railing, she descends the stairs, nearly dizzy with exhaustion and anxiety.

Deal with one thing at a time. That’s the only way you’re going to get through this.

Coffee. She needs good, strong coffee.

She returns to the kitchen. Seeing her, J.J. throws his sippy cup with a gleeful squeal.

She picks it up, puts it back . . . and he promptly throws it again.

Allison wearily sidesteps it.

J.J. wails.

She sighs. A new day has begun.

Ironic, because she feels as though the nightmarish old one hasn’t yet drawn to a close.

Rocky shakes his head as he descends the wide stairway in Phyllis Lewis’s large Colonial, thinking of her poor husband. Bob Lewis is on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic, flying home to . . . hell.

Forget the outside—the property strewn with splintered branches, lush shrubbery flattened under the weight of October snow, the roof of the pool house smashed beneath a massive oak tree. That’s nothing compared to the aftermath of the storm that raged beyond the front door.

“This is some showplace,” Murph mutters, trailing a couple of steps behind. “Home, sweet home, huh, Rock?”

Rocky shrugs, thinking of the well-worn Bronx row house where he and Ange raised their three boys.

That’s home, sweet home . . .

But not without Ange.

The other day, restlessly sitting in the ICU waiting room while the nurse performed a suctioning procedure, Rocky picked up a pamphlet that was intended for long-married people dealing with a spouse with a debilitating illness, or facing widowhood. When he realized what it was about, his instinct was to toss it aside, but he found himself reading through it—at first relating to the advice, and then resenting it.