Sleepwalker

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  At least the open door is a good sign—it means the house probably isn’t full of carbon monoxide fumes.

  And the fact that the car is here doesn’t necessarily mean Phyllis didn’t go out. A friend could have picked her up, right? And she could have forgotten her cell phone, or lost it somewhere in the house . . .

  No, she doesn’t have a sticky-fingered, phone-crazy baby to contend with, but people lose their phones all the time, right?

  Allison makes her way to the front door and rings the bell. She promised Bob she’d check on her, and she’s going to keep that promise.

  After about twenty seconds, she rings it again. Waits.

  Rings it again.

  Worried, she fits her key into the lock.

  Maybe there are fumes even though the garage is open. Maybe that wasn’t enough ventilation.

  Hurriedly, she unlocks the door and pushes it open.

  “Phyllis?”

  The house is completely still. She sniffs the air, smelling nothing, but carbon monoxide is odorless, right? That’s what makes it so dangerous.

  “Phyllis!” she calls again.

  Silence.

  Now what?

  Allison props the door open, steps inside, and opens the nearest window, letting more cold, fresh air into the house. Then she pulls her cell phone from her pocket and quickly dials Phyllis’s number.

  Immediately, she hears a faint ringing sound from someplace upstairs.

  Okay, so the cell phone is here.

  What if Phyllis is, too, and is somehow incapacitated?

  “Hi, this is Phyllis. Leave me a message, and I’ll—”

  Allison disconnects the call and quickly dials her home number. Hudson answers on the first ring, with the efficiency—if not the accent—of a British butler.

  “MacKenna residence.”

  “Huddy, it’s Mom. Is everything okay there?”

  “Everything’s fine and you better hurry. You have less than thirty seconds left,” she reports, and Allison can just picture her looking at her watch.

  “I’m going to be another couple of minutes. I just wanted to make sure you guys were all right.”

  “We are. Are you going to be one more minute, or two?”

  “Two. At the most.” I hope.

  “Okay. Bye, Mommy. Don’t worry about us. I have everything under control.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  Hanging up, she flips on a light by the door. The overhead fixture floods the foyer with bright, harsh light.

  “Phyllis?” she calls again, poking her head into the living room, dining room, kitchen, study, opening every window as she goes.

  The house, a center hall Colonial, is laid out the same way as Allison’s own, but on a much grander scale. She’s been here plenty of times be—

  Wait a minute.

  The reason she’s been here is to feed the Lewises’ cat.

  Every time she opens the door when they’re away, Marnie comes running, purring and rubbing against her legs. She’s an indoor cat—so where is she now?

  And where is Phyllis?

  “Phyllis!”

  Silence.

  “Marnie!”

  Heart pounding, hand clammy on the polished wooden banister, Allison starts up the steps, calling for the cat, calling for Phyllis, trying not to think of Kristina Haines.

  She’s never seen the second floor of the Lewis house. She finds herself standing in a wide hall lined with doors—one of which is closed. Based on the layout of her own house, she assumes it’s the master bedroom.

  She stands staring at it for a moment. Then she takes a deep breath and forces her feet to carry her toward the door. In her mind’s eye, she’s in a tiny Manhattan apartment, walking toward another bedroom door . . .

  But Kristina’s door was open.

  This is closed.

  That was then.

  This is now.

  Allison’s hand trembles as she reaches for the knob, turns it, pushes.

  Whatever she’s going to find on the other side of this door isn’t going to be good. She can feel it, deep down inside. Phyllis is going to be there, in her bed. She knows it.

  Maybe it was carbon monoxide, or a stroke, or a heart attack . . .

  But it isn’t good. She only hopes there’s still time . . .

  Please, God. Please . . .

  But it’s too late for prayers.

  Too late.

  There, on the king-sized bed, is Phyllis Lewis.

  Dead.

  Allison knows that as surely as she knows that it wasn’t carbon monoxide, a stroke, a heart attack . . .

  It was the Nightwatcher.

  Mack hears the sirens in the distance as he steps off the train at the Glenhaven Park Station, accompanied by Nathan Jennings and a few dozen other commuters.

  He’d recognized his former colleague when he boarded back at Grand Central Terminal. Like his wife, Zoe, Nate’s experienced a physical metamorphosis since the old agency days, having grown leaner, better-looking, and—if possible—taller. Or maybe weight loss and an expensive suit can just make it seem that way. His hair is still blond, still parted in a swoop across his forehead that, should his hair grow any thinner, will officially become a comb-over.

  Mack quickly took a seat several rows away, though there were plenty of empty ones around Nate. He had far too much work to do on the train to risk getting caught up in small talk. He shouldn’t have left the office as early as he did, but he still felt guilty about leaving Allison and the kids alone in a cold, dark house yesterday and then missing Halloween—rather, non-Halloween—last night. He’d worked straight through lunch today, not that skipping a meal is a bad thing, since he could stand to lose a few pounds, and anyway, Allison is making his favorite dinner.

  Now, as Nate talks about the freak snowstorm and power outage, Mack makes all the right comments, but the sirens have carried him back in time.

  Every time he hears that familiar wail, he still thinks of September 11 and Carrie. When he inhales, he swears he can smell the acrid industrial stench of burning jet fuel, and if he were to close his eyes, he knows he’d see a fireball exploding out of the south tower, just below his wife’s office.

  Of course, he didn’t see it happen in person that day. He was in his own office uptown, going through the motions of his job and thinking that the worst had already happened that morning, when he told Carrie he was leaving.

  “I’d love to meet your wife,” Nathan is saying, and for a split second, Mack thinks he’s talking about Carrie. His immediate instinct is to make up an excuse for her, because Carrie never wanted to meet anyone.

  But then he remembers. It’s not Carrie. Carrie is dead.

  Nate is talking about Allison.

  “Ben says she’s a great girl.”

  Definitely Allison. No one ever said Carrie was a great girl.

  Mack forces a nod and a smile. “She is great. I’m sure she and Zoe would like each other.”

  Yes, Allison likes just about everyone, and vice versa.

  How can one man in one lifetime have loved two women who were so very different?

  But then, it doesn’t even feel like one lifetime. It’s as though the old Mack died on September 11, and a new Mack was born.

  No . . . it’s not like that, either. It’s more that the old Mack died when he married Carrie—and was reborn on September 11.

  He feels guilty whenever he thinks of it that way—that he’d only come alive again after Carrie died. But she’d robbed him of so many things—so many people—he’d once held dear. She’d isolated him from his old life . . .

  Come on. You were a grown man. You isolated yourself. For her sake, yes—but that was a choice. You can’t blame her for everything.

  Maybe you can’t blame her for anything.

  Again, he remembers Ben and Randi’s doubt about Carrie’s extraordinary past. Again, he wonders if there’s a way to find out the truth.

  Again, he wonders why it matter
s now.

  “We should get together,” Nathan is telling him. “How about Friday night?”

  “Friday . . . uh, Fridays, I’m usually pretty useless after the work week.”

  “Saturday, then. Hey, this snow is supposed to be gone by the end of the week. Do you golf?”

  “ ‘Do you golf’ isn’t exactly the right way to phrase that question,” he says wryly. “ ‘Can you golf’ would be better.”

  Nathan grins a familiar grin. “Got it. Can you golf?”

  “Yes, I can. Do I? No. Who has time with three kids, a house, a job . . .”

  “I hear you, bro.”

  Mack isn’t big on middle-aged men who call each other bro. It’s like they’re trying too hard to be young, hip, casual . . .

  Having known Nathan when he was—when they were both—all of those things, and more, Mack is only reminded that the good old days are long over. It’s depressing—and his low blood sugar and those sirens aren’t helping matters.

  “Listen, how about Saturday night, then?”

  You just aren’t going to let it die, are you.

  “Come on over to the house. You and Allison. And I’ll invite Ben and Randi, too. Are you free?”

  “I think so, but I’d have to check about trying to get a sitter. It’s usually hard for us to—”

  “Bring the kids! They can play with ours. Caitlin is five and Harris is two. They’ll love it.”

  Apparently, it’s all settled.

  Mack isn’t sure how he feels about that. He always liked Nathan—and Zoe was a great girl—but bringing new friends into the mix isn’t usually his department. Allison is the keeper of their social calendar, and he’s just fine with that.

  Oh well. She might be open to meeting a new mom, considering that the ones she’s been hanging around with lately—in the neighborhood, at the girls’ playdates, and at her book club—have been getting on her nerves. Not Randi, of course—but they don’t see enough of each other anymore. Randi’s kids are older; she lives across town, travels in different circles.

  Things change.

  Sometimes for the better, but sometimes . . .

  Mack leaves Nathan with a promise to talk to Allison about Saturday night.

  As he makes his way to his car, he can hear a chain saw nearby; a crew working to clear fallen limbs from a neighboring street. His polished black wingtips crunch through what’s left of the weekend snow as he makes his way to his car; the musty scent of fallen leaves and sawdust mingling with wood smoke.

  Unless it’s raining or he’s running late when he leaves in the morning, he always tries to park the BMW in the farthest corner of the commuter lot. He’s found that he enjoys the stroll to and from his car—even that short time somehow adding to the buffer zone between the harried world of work and the comforting one of home.

  Although home, lately, has been just as harried.

  Three kids . . . he loves them dearly, but they can be overwhelming.

  “Do you and Allison seriously want to be outnumbered?” he remembers Ben asking him when he mentioned, almost two years ago, that they were thinking of trying for a third child.

  At the time, Mack laughed.

  Then J.J. came along, and there are some days that Mack and Allison seem to be outnumbered by far more than just one baby.

  Not, Mack thinks hastily—and a bit guiltily—as he unlocks the car, that I’d have it any other way.

  He rolls down the window to let the chilly air waft inside as he drives toward home, past heaps of fallen branches and toppled utility poles, and a cluster of political signs that somehow withstood the tempest. Election Day is still a week away, but with snow still heaped along the curb and shovels propped beside doors, it looks more like the holiday season. Already, several old-fashioned storefronts along Glenhaven Avenue have exchanged their rustic harvest-themed window displays for tinsel and silk poinsettias.

  Mack may not have welcomed the havoc wreaked by the early snowstorm, but he isn’t one of those people who consider early November much too soon to start thinking about the holidays. He’s always loved Christmas—but that’s not why. In his mind, the holiday season marks the end of the period that began around Labor Day with a barrage of haunting reminders of losing Carrie on September 11, and his mother the October before that.

  Tonight, there are sirens, and they grow louder as he draws close to home.

  It’s all right. Don’t get yourself all worked up for no reason.

  Maybe it’s just a leaf fire caused by a downed live wire—though he can’t smell anything burning now through the open window.

  Well, if something were wrong at home, Allison would have called him.

  But then, turning onto Orchard Terrace, he sees emergency vehicles, red lights flashing, parked in front of his house.

  He hits the gas, full speed ahead until a cop steps out in front of him, waving his arms and shouting, “Slow down! What do you think you’re—”

  “That’s my house!” Mack already has the car in park and is jumping out of the driver’s seat when he spots his wife.

  Allison is standing with a couple of uniformed cops on the sidewalk, over by the bushes that divide the property from the Lewises’ house next door. She’s crying—but not hysterically. Not the way she would be if something had happened to one of the kids—a thought so horrific Mack didn’t allow it to fully form until now that he knows it’s not true. It can’t be. The children are Allison’s whole world. She wouldn’t be standing there talking, because her legs wouldn’t be holding her up and she’d be incoherent if the worst had happened.

  Yet—something is obviously wrong.

  His mind flashes back to another day when he saw her flanked by police officers, and he rushes toward her.

  “Allison?”

  “Mack!” She turns away from the cops.

  “What happened?”

  “Phyllis Lewis. Oh my God, Mack—he killed her.”

  “What? Who? Who killed her?”

  “Mrs. MacKenna,” one of the policemen puts a firm hand on her arm. “You don’t—”

  “He did,” Allison is focused only on Mack. “I knew it wasn’t Jerry. I knew it all along. Jerry’s dead, but he isn’t. He came back, and he killed her.”

  “Mrs. MacKenna, please!”

  “Allison.” Mack takes her hand; it’s cold, so cold. “You don’t know—”

  “Yes, I do,” she cuts in. “I do know.”

  “How?”

  Her next words slam into him like a runaway truck.

  “Because she was wearing my nightgown.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Come on, girls, let’s go show Mommy and Daddy how well you packed all your things,” Randi announces loudly from the top of the stairs, and Allison, sitting in the living room, knows she’s sending down a warning: You need to pull yourself together fast so your daughters don’t see you crying.

  She quickly wipes her eyes and gets off the couch, making her way to the front hall just as Hudson and Madison descend. They each carry a backpack and a favorite doll, trailed by Randi, who’s toting the monogrammed quilted Vera Bradley overnight bags she gave them one Christmas. Maddy’s is a floral pastel print, Huddy’s, a bright yellow paisley.

  In the moment before they spot Allison, the girls appear worried and vulnerable. But when they catch sight of her waiting at the bottom of the stairs, they simultaneously paste on brave smiles that tug at her heart and make her want to cry all over again.

  They’re protecting me, she realizes. They know I’m upset, and they don’t want me to know that they are, too.

  She’d told her daughters only that Mrs. Lewis died. They were shocked and horrified, of course, and Hudson immediately wanted to know what had happened.

  Allison’s gut instinct was to shield the girls from the awfulness; she lied and said she wasn’t sure.

  “I think it probably would have been better to just tell them the truth,” Mack said when he got home.

  Nerves frazzled
, she snapped something about his not having been here to decide how to handle it.

  “I’m sorry,” Mack snapped back, “I was at work.”

  “I’m sorry,” Allison told him quickly, and sincerely. “I’m just upset.”

  Mack pulled her close and stroked her hair, telling her he couldn’t bear to think about what she must have seen inside the Lewis house.

  Allison can’t bear to think of it, either, yet she hasn’t been able to stop.

  “We’ve got all our stuff,” Hudson announces.

  “And she means all their stuff.” Good-natured Randi pretends to stagger under the weight of the bags, making the girls giggle and Allison smile with gratitude.

  Thank goodness for Randi, who came immediately when Allison called to tell her what happened.

  “I’ll take the girls home with me to spend the night. No arguments,” she’d said, though Allison wasn’t about to argue. She wanted them out of here as soon as possible.

  Randi would have taken J.J. with her, too, but Allison was afraid to let him go. It’s not that Randi isn’t an attentive mother, and it’s not that she doesn’t have her au pair right there to help, but . . .

  No one can possibly understand what a handful her son can be. Allison would never forgive herself if something happened to J.J. because she let him out of her sight.

  It’s hard enough letting the girls leave—though of course she knows that they can’t stay here; not with cops and reporters and ghoulish onlookers encamped just beyond the front door.

  “Be good,” she tells her daughters with a lump in her throat, pulling them close, one at a time, for a hug and a kiss. “And make sure you help Aunt Randi around the house.”

  “We’re going to make cookies with Lexi,” Madison says excitedly.

  “She has a bake sale tomorrow at school,” Hudson puts in. “Right, Aunt Randi? Because her school doesn’t have laws against treats like ours does.”

  Both of Randi’s kids go to private schools, where they’re apparently not as vigilant about healthy snacks.

  Was it only a couple of days ago that Allison was irritated about the baby carrots that were served at the Halloween party in Hudson’s classroom? If only that were the biggest worry on her mind right now.