Shadowkiller

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  He reached for a glass of water on the bedside table, offering it to her.

  “No, thanks,” she sputtered.

  “Mom, please . . . it’ll help.”

  Reluctantly, she accepted the glass.

  “I would have helped you with the cooking,” he said as she sipped. “Maybe I could have left work early.”

  “Don’t be silly. We were fine.”

  Yeah, sure, and I’ll be fine and you’ll be fine and everyone and everything will be fine . . .

  Except it won’t.

  “I thought you were bringing a date tonight, Mack.”

  “I did. She knows you weren’t feeling well and she didn’t want to bother you, so she’s in the other room.”

  His mother would have raised an eyebrow if she still had them. “Which other room?”

  “Down the hall. My old room.”

  “It’s dusty in there. I haven’t gotten to it in weeks. Why isn’t she downstairs with everyone else?”

  He thought about saying that she was just shy, but opted instead to deflect the question. “I was just going to ask you the same thing.”

  “I was too tired to deal with a crowd tonight.”

  Too physically tired? he wondered. Or too tired of seeing the fear and sympathy in the eyes of everyone who loved her—including her own son?

  Stoical Maggie MacKenna certainly didn’t need Mack tiptoeing in here and treating her differently, too. She needed someone to treat her as though she still inhabited the land of the living. She needed to laugh, or at least smile.

  “By the way, I like your festive beanie,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and giving her turban a gentle pat.

  “Oh, sure you do.” She shook her head, but she was grinning. “But it’s not as festive as your corsage.”

  “This,” he said, looking down at the green-tinted carnation Aunt Nita had given him, “is a very manly boutonnière.”

  “Sure it is.”

  Ah, there was the old Maggie, busting his chops.

  “Hey, I’m on a date here, remember? I can’t afford to go around wearing a corsage.” Mack unpinned the carnation from his lapel and leaned toward his mother, carefully fastening it to her turban. “There. That makes your beanie even more festive.”

  “It smells like church on Easter morning when I was a little girl.” She inhaled deeply and smiled, eyes closed. “It seemed like Easter always fell on a miserable rainy day. Sometimes we even had snow. But every father in the neighborhood would get corsages for their wives and daughters to wear to Mass—just like Daddy always did for me and Lynn when you were little. And when you stepped into church and breathed in the scent of all those flowers, it was as if springtime had come after all.”

  She fell silent, lost in her memory.

  “When is Easter this year?” Mack fervently hoped there would be warm sunshine.

  Her eyes popped open. “Late. Not until April twenty-third.”

  “That’s good. The weather should be better by then.”

  Seeing the shadow that crossed his mother’s face, he remembered. She wouldn’t be better by then—she might be much worse. She might even be—

  No. Not that soon. When pressed, privately, by Lynn, the oncologist had guessed six months, so . . .

  September.

  That’s always been one of Mack’s favorite months of the year, even when it meant going back to school. Summers here were hot and sticky, while Labor Day literally brought a breath of fresh air.

  Now he would dread it.

  “Don’t leave your friend waiting,” his mother said. “It isn’t nice. Take her downstairs and have something to eat.”

  “I will.” He stood up again.

  “Be sure you tell your father he did a nice job with the cabbage.”

  “I will. I just hope he doesn’t ask me what cabbage is,” he added, his own black humor still intact.

  Maggie only sighed and shook her head. “He might. Poor Daddy.”

  Mack sighed too, and bent to kiss her pale cheek. She was right, he thought, catching a whiff of the carnation. It did smell like church on Easter. He fervently hoped they would all be together on April 23, just as they had been every Easter of his life.

  Just one more holiday. That’s all I want. Please, God. One more Easter.

  But that wasn’t all he wanted. It wouldn’t be enough. He wanted one more Mother’s Day, one more Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Year’s . . . one more year. One more lifetime . . .

  “What’s her name?”

  “What?”

  “What do you mean, what?” Ah, sassy old Maggie was back. “Your new girlfriend. What’s her name?”

  Again, he hesitated, and opted not to inform his mother that she wasn’t exactly a girlfriend. Yet, anyway. “It’s Carrie. Carrie Robinson.”

  “Carrie.” His mother nodded, and settled into her pillows. “I’ll meet her next time. She’s very nice, I’m sure.”

  “She is.” I’m sure.

  Pretty sure.

  “Good.” She started to close her eyes and then opened them again. “Mack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Make sure you tell Dad you like the food.”

  “I will,” he told her again. She wasn’t the kind of mother to nag and repeat herself.

  “And can you make sure he remembers to eat?”

  “Mom, the house is full of food. Every surface down there is covered in plates and bowls. Eating is one thing I’m sure even Dad can’t forget.”

  “Not just tonight. I mean . . .”

  He knew what she meant.

  His instinct was to pretend that he didn’t—denial was a seductive balm.

  Again, he thought about all the people downstairs who loved and pitied his mother, talking to her face about how prayer or modern medicine could work wonders, then weeping and grieving behind her back . . .

  She had always been a straight shooter who appreciated the same in return.

  “I’ll take care of Dad,” he promised hoarsely. “And so will Lynn. We’ll look out for him, make sure he eats, make sure he takes his medicine, make sure he doesn’t drive . . .”

  “That’s not going to be easy.”

  None of this was easy.

  He shrugged. “I’ve got it covered, Mom. You don’t need to worry about Dad right now.”

  “Thank you, Mack. Go.”

  “I’m going.”

  He closed the bedroom door behind him and leaned against it with his eyes closed, thinking about what lay ahead.

  “Mack?”

  Startled, he opened his eyes and saw Carrie in the hall.

  “You look upset,” she said.

  Upset. Devastated.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked. “Someone recently told me that I’m a good listener.”

  He couldn’t help but smile at that. “It must have been a very wise man who said that.”

  “It was.”

  Mack was surprised to realize that he did want to talk to her about it. She’d told him, that first night they met, that she knew what it was like to lose someone.

  “We can go someplace quiet,” he decided.

  “There?” She pointed at his room down the hall.

  “No. Someplace quieter. I can’t do this tonight.”

  Visibly relieved, she nodded and held out her hand. She didn’t say she was glad to get out of here, and she didn’t say that everything was going to be okay.

  She didn’t say anything at all, and for that, he was grateful.

  Allison was smiling when she walked into her apartment just after midnight.

  Who’d have thought Justin the biologist would turn out to be such an accomplished kisser?

  Or that this blind date would lead to plans for Sunday?

  He’d actually asked her out for tomorrow night, but she told him she was busy, which was the truth. She didn’t elaborate, though. No reason to tell him that her plans involved seeing the new Julia Roberts movie, Erin Brockovich, with her b
est friend. Why not let him think he might have some dating competition?

  “How about the next day, then? Brunch?”

  “Sure,” she said, and after one last kiss, she sailed into her building.

  As she turned on a light and kicked off her shoes, she noticed that the answering machine was blinking across the room. She made her way over to the phone, shrugging out of her coat and draping it over a chair as she went.

  “You . . . have . . . three . . . new . . . messages,” the machine’s electronic voice informed her.

  She guessed that at least one would be from Luis, and she was right.

  “Allison, I cannot wait until tomorrow night! My friend Thomas just saw the movie and he said Julia is a-may-zing! I swear she’s going to win an Oscar for this one! Call me if you don’t get home too late!”

  This wasn’t too late by Luis’s standards, she knew, but after her pleasantly surprising romantic evening, she wasn’t in the mood to listen to him gush over his movie idol. She erased the message and listened to the next one.

  “Allison, it’s Brett.”

  Her brother? Why was he calling?

  All he said was “Give me a call when you can.”

  She erased that message, too, and moved on to the last.

  “Allison, it’s Brett again. It’s past ten o’clock. Are you there? . . . Allison? . . . No? Okay, I left you a message a couple of hours ago and I thought maybe you didn’t get it. Call me back.”

  It was definitely too late on Brett’s end, even though his time zone was an hour behind. He’d be getting up in a couple of hours to milk the cows, and would probably be eating lunch by the time she rolled out of bed.

  She toyed with the idea of returning the call now regardless of the hour, curious about what he might want to say.

  Then again, no one welcomed a wee-hour phone call.

  And he probably just wanted to rehash their conversation Tuesday about her trying to find her father. But what else could he possibly want to say about that? He’d advised her to forget about the search, and she’d agreed.

  A return call, she decided, would just have to wait until tomorrow. Why dredge it up now and ruin what was left of her afterglow?

  The all-night diner was just down the block from the PATH station, and crowded at this hour on a Friday night. There were groups of teenagers, couples, cops and senior citizens. Several limo drivers sat at the counter, chatting with the waitresses and each other—obviously regulars who came here to kill time while they were waiting for their customers to call for a pickup, or on their way to Newark airport and back.

  At a table in the very back of the restaurant sat a group of men. Most wore dark shirts under their suit coats, and some had on pinky rings or gold chains. They could have stepped off the set of The Sopranos, that new HBO series about Jersey mobsters.

  Sitting in a booth nearby with Mack, Carrie was still trying to absorb all that had happened this evening.

  She didn’t know which had caught her more off guard: Mack’s willingness to walk out of his parents’ house with her in the midst of the festivities, or her own reaction to what had happened there; not her utter dismay at the party pandemonium, but the fact that she liked this guy enough that she hadn’t bolted the moment that crazy lady pinned a green flower to her coat—or sooner.

  It had been bad enough when Mack was swallowed up by the crowd right after they arrived, leaving Carrie alone in a sea of strangers. But when that woman popped up shouting, “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! I’m Aunt Nita!” and stuck a corsage on her without asking . . .

  At first Carrie had merely been stunned. By the time she found the presence of mind to protest, Aunt Nita had moved on to assault someone else.

  What on earth am I doing here? Carrie wondered as she stood alone by the door, desperately scanning the crowd for Mack. She didn’t belong here in this house, with these people . . .

  And that meant she didn’t belong with him.

  Or did she?

  So many possible scenarios had crossed her mind when she thought about what might happen to her in New York, but this—falling for Mr. Nice Guy who had a nine-to-five job and a big circle of friends and a close-knit family—this was not one of them.

  She wasn’t used to that kind of life, by any means. Growing up in the middle of nowhere, miles from the closest town, she’d gladly kept to herself. So, for the most part, had her mother. As for her father . . .

  What her father had done, or hadn’t done, didn’t matter.

  The point was, Carrie wasn’t comfortable in crowds. Not at parties, anyway. She was fine on the subway or on the city street, where people minded their own business and largely ignored each other. But when you were supposed to mingle with strangers who asked nosy questions that could lead to trouble . . .

  “Are you here with Mack?” a freckle-faced, ginger-haired woman about her own age had asked, right after he left her side.

  “Yes.”

  “From the city?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you grow up there? Or are you from someplace else?”

  It was none of her business where Carrie had grown up, and she almost said it. Instead, she just ignored the question and turned her back on the redhead.

  She knew she should get out of there, and fast—but she also knew that if she did, she’d never see Mack again.

  She should want that—should want to put as much distance as possible between them as possible, because this was dangerous territory. But she didn’t want it. She didn’t want to leave.

  Always listen to your gut.

  Her gut was telling her to stay, so she stood in the spot where he’d left her, avoiding eye contact with everyone else, waiting for him to find her again. Just when she’d all but given up hope—there he was. He took her arm, and suddenly, everything was okay again.

  Until he told her he wanted her to meet his mother.

  To his credit, he didn’t push her. Still, she immediately regretted going upstairs with him, too far from the escape hatch for comfort. Especially when he told her she wasn’t allowed to have a cigarette, which might have taken the edge off her nerves.

  A grown man who hid his smoking habit from his parents didn’t sit well with her. She’d taken it as a good sign that he didn’t live under his parents’ roof, but he might as well.

  Waiting there on the bed in his boyhood room as the minutes ticked by, she had grown increasingly uncomfortable. She reminded herself that she could still be out of the house—even down the block and back on the PATH train—in a matter of minutes.

  She was about to flee when suddenly, she spotted it.

  A dream catcher, just like the one her father had hung in her window when she was a little girl.

  “Only good dreams can get through that web,” Daddy had told her, and somehow, as she sat there on Mack’s bed staring at it, that was exactly what happened.

  A dream—just a daydream, a pipe dream, but it was definitely good—drifted into Carrie’s head. She saw herself with Mack. He had his arms wrapped around her from behind, holding her against him. It was so real she thought she could feel his heart beating against her back and feel his chin resting on her shoulder; so real she dared to think that it could actually come true.

  But of course, it couldn’t. He could never love someone like her.

  Why not? He asked you out, not once, but twice. He likes you. Like can turn to love. That’s how it’s supposed to happen, isn’t it?

  For ordinary people, maybe. People who didn’t have terrible secrets buried in their distant—and not so distant—past.

  Carrie would never be free of what had happened to her. What her father had done. What she had done.

  She stood up, walked to the door, stepped into the hall—and there, she saw Mack.

  The way he was standing, with his head tilted back against his mother’s bedroom door and his eyes closed, caused something to shift deep within Carrie.

  He seemed utterly alone, radiating emotional
isolation. That might have been off-putting to some, but to Carrie, it was a beacon. She had assumed Mack was vitally connected to all those other people, those insufferable, nosy people.

  But perhaps his life wasn’t irrevocably intertwined with the others’. His mother wouldn’t be around for much longer, and he’d mentioned that his father, too, was ailing . . .

  Maybe there was hope after all, she thought. If he wasn’t a package deal . . .

  Once again she was ensnared in the happy dream-catcher vision of her future.

  She might be able to handle a relationship. Just with Mack—as opposed to the many new ties she’d have had to make—or fake, or fend off—with his friends and family members.

  Yes. It could work, if it was just the two of them.

  Dipping his last French fry into ketchup, he said, “I’ve done all the talking here. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You have a lot going on.” He’d told her about his mother’s illness, and his father’s, and feeling as though his life was on the verge of changing forever.

  She had listened intently and made sympathetic comments here and there, but inside, she rejoiced. He was clearly coming to a crossroads.

  Just like I did, before I came to New York.

  Mack was going to have to build a whole new life for himself, whether he wanted to or not.

  Just like I did.

  But what about her new life?

  What about finding Allison and making things right?

  Somehow, that had mattered less to her these last few days. Why?

  Because she’d met Mack?

  Or because she’d met Ralph?

  Ah, Ralph. Maybe taking care of him had allowed her to get it out of her system—maybe for the long run, now that she’d found Mack and dared to dream of a future with him.

  Ralph’s body had been found, though it wasn’t yet identified. There had been a small article in yesterday’s New York Post, easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it.

  Carrie had been looking.

  She wasn’t worried. She had gone over every scenario—every possible way anyone could ever connect her to that crime—and come up with absolutely nothing. She’d covered her tracks well. Much better than the last time.

  But that was years ago. She was older now, much wiser. She’d done her homework.

  Thanks to you, Daddy.