Shadowkiller (7 page)

“I just haven't gotten around to it. I will.”

“You'd better. We can't take any chances on another four years with Dubb'ya.”

“What makes you think I wouldn't vote Republican?”

His eyebrows shot even higher. “
Would
you?”

“If I liked what the candidate had to say,” she told him, mostly to get a rise out of him. “I have strong Republican roots, you know.”

Her maternal grandfather, Thurston Downing, had been a staunch conservative who'd held some kind of high-profile public office in Nebraska long before she'd been born. She didn't know the details; nor had she ever bothered to look them up—though now, sometimes, she thought about using the World Wide Web to see if she could find out more about her mother's parents.

She'd never met them, had no idea whether they were alive or dead, or if they even knew she existed. Probably not.

Whenever her curiosity got the better of her and she thought seriously about searching for them—or her father—she stopped herself.

If her grandparents hadn't disowned their only child, Mom might still be here.

And if her father had never walked out on his wife and child, Mom might still be here.

So, no. She wasn't interested in finding anyone, even if it was just a matter of hitting a few keys on the computer. No, thank you.

“You're a Republican?” Luis was asking.

She forced away thoughts of the past and laughed at the look on his face. “What?”

“You said—”

“I was just busting your chops. And don't worry . . .
babycakes
. I'll register between now and November.”

“I'll hold you to it. So are you ready to go?”

They were taking an accessory design class together on Tuesday evenings, down at the Parsons School of Design.

Allison looked at her watch. It was ten of six. “We don't have to leave for at least another half hour.”

“I know, but since it's so nice out, I was thinking we could walk down to class tonight instead of taking the subway.”

“Walk? From Thirty-seventh Street to Thirteenth Street? In these?” She lifted her foot to show him the four-inch Louboutins she was wearing.

“Definitely not in those. What size are you?”

“Nine.” She cleared her throat. “And a half.”

He eyed her foot and raised a dubious eyebrow.

“All right,” she conceded. “More like a ten. Why?”

“Be right back.” He disappeared for less than a minute and reemerged wearing a smug expression and holding a pair of black flats. “Try these.”

She took them, looked them over, read the label. “Really?”

“What do you want, Chanel? They're free.”

“Do you
have
Chanel?”

“In a ten? And a flat?” He rolled his eyes. “Sorry, Sasquatch. Wedge those giant dogs of yours into these shoes and let's go.”

She grinned, already unbuckling the ankle straps on her Louboutins.

Five minutes later, they were strolling south on Fifth Avenue.

C
arrie was so caught up in what Mack was saying that, for the first time since she'd arrived in New York City, she'd forgotten all about Allison Taylor.

Mack.

His name was
Mack
.

She still couldn't believe it. If only she could tell him what the name meant to her. But of course, she couldn't. So she focused on listening to him talk, wondering what it would be like to connect—really connect—with him.

Granted, her experience in that area was pretty limited. She was almost thirty and reasonably attractive; she'd gone on a handful of dates over the past decade or so.

Never anything serious, of course, because she'd learned the hard way that you can't trust even the person you love more than anything in this world; the person who claims to love you in just the same way. She would never, ever let anyone get close to her. Never again.

Not even if someone ever came along who seemed to
want
to get close to her.

This guy—Mack, with the easy smile and quick laugh that belied the hint of sadness in his eyes—hadn't indicated that he was interested in anything more than company for his walk up Fifth Avenue. If he were, she didn't know
what
she'd do. A date with someone to whom she was this physically attracted might be dangerous.

But for the moment, it was nice to have someone to talk to about something other than the weather and the stock market.

The protesters in the park had spurred a conversation about politics that then meandered to travel, and on to food, and movies. The discussion turned to books when they reached the famous stone lions in front of the public library. As they made a left onto Forty-second Street, Mack asked Carrie what she was reading now.

“
Harry Potter
,” she said after a moment's hesitation, selecting a title she'd seen open on countless strangers' laps on the subway lately.

“Isn't that a kids' book?”

Was
it?

She had no idea. She shrugged, said, “I like it,” and prayed he wouldn't ask her anything specific about the story.

What he asked, though, was even harder: “Do you have kids?”

“No,” she said, so sharply that he glanced over at her.

“Not big on kids, huh?”

“What? Why do you say that?”

“Just . . . never mind. It was stupid.”

Yes. It was stupid
, she thought, enraged.

It wasn't that she didn't like kids, it was . . .

But
that
was none of his business.

Even which books she liked to read was none of his business, which was why she'd lied. She wasn't about to tell him about the stack of titles on her nightstand. Definitely not after the way he'd reacted to
Harry Potter
.

“What are
you
reading?” she asked Mack, as much to defuse her own anger as to break the awkward silence.

“If I said
Harry Potter
, would you believe me?”

“No.”

“You'd be right.”

Yes. I'm always right.

He reached into his briefcase and held out a book.

She slowed her pace to see the title, reading it aloud. “
Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying.
”

“Just a little light reading.” He tucked it back into his bag.

She didn't know what to say. Whatever she'd been expecting—this wasn't it. Now she understood the sadness in his eyes, although not entirely.

Who was dying? Someone close to him?

Was
he
dying?

That would be horribly unfair.

The thought was immediate, and struck her as bizarre.

Unfair to whom? To him?

Yes, of course.

But maybe also . . . to me? Because I actually like him?

“I'm actually not reading it yet,” he told her. “I just bought it at lunchtime. It was recommended to me by the hospice nurse who's going to be taking care of my mom.”

His mom. Not him.

She was relieved—for his sake, she told herself, and not for hers, because after two more blocks, she was never going to see him again anyway.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “That must be hard.”

“Yeah. We just found out. The doctors say that nothing more can be done for her—they've run out of treatments, and so . . . she gets hospice. And I get to read this book to try to make it a little easier—at least, on me. I don't see how anyone's going to make it any easier on her. She's in a lot of pain, and nobody seems to be able to help with that.”

“I'm so sorry. Really.”

“Thanks. Me too. Really.”

No wonder his eyes were so sad. No wonder he wasn't in the mood to go out for drinks with his friends. No wonder he'd decided to go home, instead, to Jersey—to see his mom.

“Have you ever lost anyone?”

His question might have caught her off guard, but her answer was instantaneous:

“Yes.”

Maybe not in the way he meant, but loss was loss. Loss was devastating, no matter how it happened. Whether it struck out of nowhere like a sucker punch or crept in slowly and loomed with the inevitability of a funnel cloud on the prairie horizon, it was devastating. Anyone in its wake would be left raw and angry and alone, forever changed, forever fearful, forever haunted by nightmares . . .

Dream catcher, or not.

“You know what's funny? Not funny ha-ha, but funny strange?”

“No, what?” she asked.

“When I was a kid, I used to watch all these old reruns on TV—
My Three Sons
,
Courtship of Eddie's Father
,
Bonanza
—did you watch any of those shows?”

“Yes.” Growing up, she'd loved to escape into television. Even those ancient reruns. Especially those, actually, with their wholesome families and happy siblings.

The Patty Duke Show
was her favorite, about identical cousins. She knew the theme song by heart, with its lyrics about a pair of matching bookends being different as night and day.

“Those shows were all about mothers who'd died and left their boys behind to be raised by their fathers. And I'd worry—nothing against my father, but I'd worry that something would happen to my mother, and I'd pray to God that she'd stick around long enough for me to grow up,” he said, maybe more to himself than to Carrie.

Praying that someone would stick around . . . ha. She knew firsthand that didn't work.

“And she did stick around, and now I'm grown up, so I guess—” He broke off, cleared his throat. “But the thing is, I'm not ready to lose her. Are you ever? I mean, when you think about it, who can ever be ready for the worst to happen?”

She wanted to tell him that the worst could happen and even after it had, you'd still be left with the sense, forever after, that it could somehow happen again even though, of course, that was impossible.

When someone you loved was wrenched from your life, you'd lost them. You couldn't lose them again.

But you can lose someone
else, Carrie reminded herself,
if you let yourself care about someone else.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't know why I'm unloading all this on you.”

“You need someone to talk to.”

He tilted his head, then nodded. “You're right. I guess it is that simple. And you're a good listener. Women—they tend to be chatty, and interrupt, and fill all the space they possibly can. At least, most women I know. Like my sister, and . . . and a friend of mine. Ex-friend,” he added, and she got the sense that he might have just escaped a relationship with the kind of female he'd just described.

“But
you
,” he went on, “you wait until someone is finished speaking, and you don't jump right in to blurt out the first thing on your mind, either. You absorb it before you comment.”

As she weighed his words, he pointed at her, grinning. “See? You're doing it now. It's nice to talk to someone who doesn't just want to hear her own voice. Although . . .”

“What?” she asked, when he'd trailed into silence, wearing a wry expression.

“I guess that's kind of ironic for me to say, since I've been talking your ear off for miles. You probably can't wait to get rid of me, right?”

“Right,” she said, like she was teasing, but she half meant it. The sooner they went in opposite directions, the sooner things would be back to normal for Carrie. No more sparks of longing for things she couldn't have.

Yet there was that other part of her that didn't mean it at all; the wistful, foolish, lonely part that was reluctant to “get rid of him,” as he put it.

“I don't blame you,” he said. “I'm getting on my own nerves tonight, too. Good thing I changed my mind about going to McSorley's. My friends wouldn't have been up for listening to all this—that's for sure.”

“Maybe you need some new friends.”

“Nah, I've known these guys for years. It's just me. It's just . . . tonight . . .”

She nodded. She got it.

Tonight was different for him.

It was different for her, too.

What she didn't realize then was that things weren't ever going to go back to the way they were. Things had changed. For the better, she would soon come to believe.

A
llison shivered—again—and Luis interrupted his lament about the latest snakeskin trend to say, “If you're that cold, put on your coat! Who cares if it's ugly?”

Ugly?

She sighed inwardly. Leave it to Luis.

“I'm not cold—”

“Then why are you shivering?”

“—and this coat”—she gestured with the fake-fur-collared Escada slung over the crook of her arm—“is not ugly!”

“It's hideous.”

“It is not!”

“The poor dear is delusional,” he murmured to an imaginary companion. To Allison, he said, unconvincingly, “All right. It's not hideous.”

“It's not!”

“That's what I said.”

“But you didn't mean it.”

“Calm down, Sass.” He'd been calling her that—an abbreviated version of Sasquatch—since they left the building.

Affectionately, of course. Everything Luis did was offered with utmost affection. Even trashing the gorgeous designer coat she'd gotten for a song at a Saks end-of-season sale.

But right now, she wasn't in the mood.

“Stop calling me Sass.”

“Sorry.” He put an arm around her shoulder. “Apology accepted?”

Why did she always find it impossible to stay peeved at Luis? “Apology accepted.”

“And if you're cold, put on that . . . um . . .
attractive
. . . coat of yours.”