Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(69)

“Sometimes I just think the worst, you know?” Randi cocks her head, listening as Ben answers the intercom.

“I know.” Allison sips her drink again, not wanting to point out that the worst can—and does—happen.

But not to us. Please, God. Not to us.

In the other room, Ben’s voice and a staticky voice are conversing over the intercom.

“Who do you think that is?” Randi whispers, as if Allison might have some idea.

Allison shrugs, not caring, as long as it’s not an emergency of any sort—and it doesn’t sound like one.

“I’ll be right back. I’m going to go see.”

Randi leaves Allison to sit sipping her drink, thinking about Phyllis’s family, and her own. Thinking about what it would be like for her children, and for Mack, if something were to happen to her. Thinking about what it would be like for her if something were to—

No. I can’t bear to think of it. I can’t.

In the hall, male and female voices mingle with Ben and Randi’s, and she hears footsteps approaching.

The Webers appear in the kitchen doorway, accompanied by an attractive, vaguely familiar-looking couple.

The pale-haired man is dressed in the suburban weekend uniform: chinos, loafers, button-down, and jacket. The brunette woman, in a black coat and dress and holding a Saran-wrapped platter, could be coming from a funeral or going to a party. Her hair is pulled straight back from her face in a long ponytail, a style that would be unbecoming on a less attractive woman . . .

Like me, Allison reminds herself, thinking of all the slap-dash ponytail days when J.J. was in the height of his hair-pulling phase. But the style serves to accentuate the woman’s high cheekbones and large dark eyes.

Ben calls for Mack to come into the kitchen as Randi takes the couple’s coats and turns to Allison.

“You remember Nathan and Zoe Jennings.”

She doesn’t. Should she? Is it the booze?

Crossing to them, feeling a little unsteady on her feet, she forces a smile. Her drink sloshes a bit over the rim of her glass onto her right hand as she goes to transfer it to her left, realizing the man is extending his own hand in greeting.

She quickly wipes on the side of her own black dress—as well cut as Zoe Jennings’s, she’s certain, yet somehow not flattering her own figure nearly as much—and shakes both her hand and her husband’s.

“We were so sorry to hear about your friend,” Zoe tells her.

“Thank you.” Allison sets down her glass on the nearest surface, trying to place the couple.

“Zoe made some brownies. She thought the kids might want a treat,” Nathan says. “But don’t worry, they’re the healthy kind.”

“I use organic oat flour and pureed spinach. No nuts,” Zoe adds. “My kids don’t like them, and I figure your girls probably don’t, either.”

Allison’s first thought is that she’s right—the girls don’t like nuts, but they don’t like spinach in their brownies, either.

Her next thought is that Zoe somehow knows that she has daughters, that she lost a friend—and, obviously, knows Mack, because when he appears in the doorway, Zoe makes a beeline over to hug him.

“I was so looking forward to getting together tonight,” she tells him.

She was?

“When I called Ben and Randi to invite them to join us, too,” she goes on, “Randi told me what had happened. We’d heard about it, of course, but we had no idea she was your neighbor. Randi said you were staying here until . . . well, until everything blows over.”

“We tried to call earlier and see if it was okay to stop by, but we couldn’t get ahold of you,” Nathan puts in.

“We just came from the wake.” Randi puts the platter of brownies on the table and peels back the plastic wrap.

“Was it awful?”

No, it was absolutely delightful, Allison finds herself wanting to say to this Zoe person who apparently made Saturday night plans with Mack and puts spinach in brownies and has now taken off her coat to show off a killer body. No cleavage—the dress is conservatively cut—but it’s slinky enough to reveal that she’s either had a boob job, or is wearing the world’s most invisible bra.

Allison can’t help but check to see if Mack is looking at Zoe’s figure, but he’s not. He catches her eye and his mouth quirks a little, not a smile, not a frown, but an expression she can easily decipher after all their years together.

Sorry about these people, he’s saying. I know you’re not in the mood to socialize with strangers.

He’s right about that.

Suddenly, she longs to be home, despite everything. Home with her husband and children, where they belong. Home where she’ll feel more like herself and Mack will act more like himself and everything will be back to normal . . .

Except, how can it ever be normal now?

“I’m sorry we had to meet under these circumstances,” Nathan is saying, and Allison realizes he’s talking to her.

“Oh . . . I . . . so am I.”

“We’d still love to have you guys over,” Zoe tells her, “after the dust settles.”

After the dust settles—an awkward thing to say after a funeral, but the irony seems to escape Zoe, making Allison like her even less.

Again, she looks at Mack.