Sleepwalker (Nightwatcher #2)(70)
Reading her mind, he says, “I forgot to tell you, Al— right before everything happened, I ran into Nate on the train and he and Zoe had invited us over for Saturday night—tonight.”
“That’s . . . nice.” But who the hell are these people?
“You’ll have to be sure and take that rain check,” Zoe says, “and I promise that when you do come, we won’t just talk about old times.”
“You’re the one who already dug out all those old pictures to show Mack and Ben,” her husband reminds her.
“I’m sure Allison and Randi want to see them, too.”
“Are they incriminating?” Randi asks Zoe, and Allison notes that her martini glass is almost empty. “Because I always like to see incriminating pictures from Ben’s past . . . as long as they were taken before he met me.”
“Well, I’m sure Nate has a few of those. The guys used to go to all the big media parties.”
“So did you,” Mack tells Zoe, with a grin.
For a brief, irrational instant, Allison resents it.
How, she wonders, can he be suddenly smiling after all that’s gone on the last few days? And at a total stranger—if only to Allison—who’s returning it with such ease; an outsider who came barging in at the least opportune moment, when Allison was ready to be alone with her friends and her husband and her thoughts and her good, stiff drink.
Oh please. It’s not about you, she reminds herself, picking up her glass and relishing another burning sip. Don’t be petty.
Still, she can’t help but feel wistful over Mack’s sudden jovial demeanor, given the darkness of his mood these last few days. Never one to share emotions—ha, understatement of the year—he seems to have retreated emotionally more than ever lately, whenever they’re together.
Which hasn’t been often. To Allison’s dismay, he went into the office on Wednesday morning for a few hours to attend his meeting, and back again on Thursday, after taking the first part of the day off to handle the alarm installation. Yesterday, he put in a full day at work.
“I have to go,” he told her when she protested, and reminded her that she and the kids are completely safe at Ben and Randi’s. The house is like a fortress. It isn’t even just the house; the property is surrounded by an electronic security fence and an access-control iron gate.
“I’d feel safer with you here,” she told Mack.
“Okay, but it’s not like you really are any safer, and it’s not like going to work is optional. Especially with everything that’s going on right now.”
He was talking about what was going on at the office, she knew—as if that could possibly hold a candle to the hell that had broken loose in their lives.
“You get personal days, though, Mack. Maybe—”
“I used them up in September when I stayed home to paint the sunroom, remember?”
“What about a bereavement day? You can take one for Phyllis’s funeral on Monday morning—”
“I only get those if an immediate family member dies,” he replied, and the words made her shudder inside.
“Someone did die. This is serious, and—”
“Allison, for the love of God! Stop! Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I want to go to work?”
Taken aback by his explosion, she just looked at him.
“I’m up to my eyeballs in problems right now and heads are already rolling! I can’t just take off right now because a neighbor passed away!”
“She didn’t pass away—she was murdered!”
“Do you think that makes any difference at all to my boss? My job is on the line here!”
So are our lives, she wanted to remind him—but when she noticed the irate look in his eye, she was afraid to. Suddenly, she was afraid of him.
Looking back on that conversation—as she has done many times since—she’s convinced herself that she overreacted. She used to have a corporate job herself; she knows the kind of pressure he’s facing. At least, she used to know.
Mack is just doing what he has to do: going to work, earning a living. She doesn’t need to make it harder for him; she’s always prided herself on being self-sufficient, perfectly capable of taking care of herself and the kids—and on not being one of those wives who spends her husband’s money without a care. She’s not like that. She knows how hard he works.
So why did you have to give him such a hard time? It isn’t like you.
No, and Mack wasn’t behaving like himself, either.
The pressure is getting to both of them.
With Allison’s self-loathing over her resentment of his obligation to his job has come a hefty dose of guilt—it’s not like you’re sharing the breadwinner burden—and, more than anything else, terror.
She jumps at every little noise, perpetually looking out the windows and over her shoulder, expecting to see . . .
Him.
The hooded figure who attacked her in her bedroom that night ten years ago.
The Nightwatcher.
God help her, God help them all; it wasn’t Jerry Thompson, who is safely dead and buried.
It was someone else, and he’ll be back, and how can Mack just be standing here right now in the Webers’ kitchen holding a beer and smiling like an idiot at this woman who won’t shut up?