The Last to Know (39 page)
Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Suspense, #General
An Excerpt from
Chapter 1
September 10, 2001
New York City
7:19
P.M.
A
llison Taylor has lived in Manhattan for three years now.
That’s long enough to know that the odds are stacked against finding a taxi at the rainy tail end of rush hour—especially here, a stone’s throw from the Bryant Park tents in the midst of Fashion Week.
Yet she perches beneath a soggy umbrella on the curb at the corner of Forty-second and Fifth, searching the sea of oncoming yellow cabs, hoping to find an on-duty/unoccupied dome light.
Unlikely, yes.
But
impossible
? The word is overused, in her opinion. If she weren’t the kind of woman who stubbornly challenges anything others might deem impossible, then she wouldn’t be here in New York in the first place.
How many people back in her tiny Midwestern hometown told her it would be impossible for a girl like her to merely survive the big, cruel city, let alone succeed in the glamorous, cutthroat fashion publishing industry?
A girl like her . . .
Impoverished, from a broken home with a suicidal drug addict for a mother. A girl who never had a chance—but took one anyway.
And just look at me now.
After putting herself through the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and working her way from an unpaid post-college internship at Condé Nast on up through the editorial ranks at
7th Avenue
magazine, Allison finally loves her life—cab shortages, rainy days, and all.
Sometimes, she allows herself to fantasize about going back to Centerfield to show them all how wrong they were. The neighbors, the teachers, the pursed-lipped church ladies, the mean girls at school and their meaner mothers—everyone who ever looked at her with scorn or even pity; everyone who ever whispered behind her back.
They didn’t understand about Mom—about how much she loved Allison, how hard she tried, when she wasn’t high, to be a good mother. Only the one girl Allison considered a true friend, her next-door neighbor Tammy Connolly, seemed to understand. She, too, had a single mom for whom the townspeople had disdain. Tammy’s mother was a brassy blonde whose skirts were too short, whose perfume was too strong, whose voice was too loud.
Tammy had her own cross to bear, as the church ladies would say. Everyone did. Mom was Allison’s—hers alone—and she dealt with it pretty much single-handedly until the day it ceased to exist.
But going back to Centerfield—even to have the last laugh—would mean facing memories. And who needs those?
“Memories are good for nothin’,” Mom used to say, after Allison’s father left them. “It’s better to just forget about all the things you can’t change.”
True—but Mom couldn’t seem to change what was happening to them in the present—or what the future might hold.
“Weakness is my weakness,” Brenda once told a drug counselor. Allison overheard, and those pathetic words made her furious, even then.
Now Mom, too, is in the past.
Yes. Always better to forget.
Anyway, even if Allison wanted to revisit Centerfield, the town is truly the middle of nowhere: a good thirty miles from the nearest dive motel and at least three or four times as far from any semi-decent hotel.
Sometimes, though, she pictures herself doing it: flying to Omaha, renting a car, driving out across miles of nothing to . . .
More nothing.
Her one friend, Tammy, moved away long before Mom died seven years ago, and, of course, Dad had left years before that, when she was nine.
Allison remembers the morning she woke up and went running to the kitchen to tell her mother that she’d dreamed she had a sister. She was certain it meant that her mom was going to have another baby.
But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. In the kitchen, she found the note her father had left.
Can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. Good-bye.
God only knows where he wound up. Allison’s only sibling, her half brother, Brett, wanted to find him for her sake after Mom died.
“Well, if you do, I don’t want to hear about it. I never want to hear his name again,” she said when her brother brought it up at the funeral.
It was the same thing her mother had told her after her father left. Mom considered Allison’s deadbeat dad good for nothin’—just like memories. True as that might have been, Allison couldn’t stand the way the townspeople whispered about her father running off.
The best thing about living in New York is the live-and-let-live attitude. Everyone is free to do his or her own thing; no one judges or even pays much attention to anyone else. For Allison, after eighteen years of small-town living and a couple more in college housing, anonymity is a beautiful thing. Certainly well worth every moment of urban inconvenience.
She surveys the traffic-clogged avenue through a veil of drenching rain, thinking she should probably just take the subway down to the Marc Jacobs show at the Pier. It’s cheaper, arguably faster, and more reliable than finding a cab.
But she’s wearing a brand-new pair of Gallianos, and her feet—after four straight days of runway shows and parties—are killing her. No, she doesn’t feel up to walking to Grand Central and then through the tunnels at Union Square to transfer to the crosstown line, much less negotiating all those station stairs on both ends.
Not that she much likes standing here in the deluge, vainly waiting for a cab, but . . .
Lesser of the evils, right?
Maybe not. She jumps back as a passing panel truck sends a wave of gray-brown gutter water over the curb.
“Dammit!” Allison looks down at her soaked shoes—and then up again, just in time to see a yellow cab pulling over for the trench-coated, briefcase-carrying man who just strode past her, taxi-hailing arm in the air.
“Hey!” she calls, and he glances back over his shoulder. “I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes!”
More like five, but that’s beside the point. She was here first. That’s her cab.
Okay, in the grand scheme of Manhattan life, maybe that’s not quite how it works.
Maybe it’s more . . .
if you snooze, you lose
.
And I snoozed.
Still . . .
She’s in a fighting mood. The Jacobs show is huge. Everyone who’s anyone in the industry will be there. This is her first year as—well, maybe not a Somebody, but no longer a Nobody.
There’s a seat for her alongside the runway—well, maybe not
right
alongside it, but somewhere—and she has to get to the Pier.
Now
.
She fully expects the businessman to ignore her. But his eyes flick up and down, taking in her long, blond-streaked hair, long legs, and short pink skirt. Yeah—he’s totally checking her out.
She’s used to that reaction from men on the street.
Men anywhere, really. Even back home in Centerfield, when she was scarcely more than a kid—and still a brunette—Allison attracted her share of male attention, most of it unwanted.
But as a grown woman in the big city, she’s learned to use it to her advantage on certain occasions.
Oh hell . . . the truth is, she made the most of it even back in Nebraska. But she doesn’t let herself think about that.
Memories are good for nothin’, Allison. Don’t you ever forget it.
No, Mom. I won’t. I’ll never forget it.
“Where are you headed?” The man reaches back to open the car door, his gaze still fixed on her.
“Pier 54. It’s on the river at—”
“I know where it is. Go ahead. Get in.”
She hesitates only a split second before hurrying over to the cab, quickly folding her umbrella, and slipping past the man—a total stranger, she reminds herself—into the backseat.
A stranger. So? The city is full of strangers. That’s why she moved here, leaving behind a town populated by know-it-all busybodies.
Anyway, it’s not the middle of the night, and the driver is here, and what’s going to happen?
You’re going to make it to the Marc Jacobs show, something you’ve been waiting for all summer.
After the show there’s an after-party to launch Jacobs’s new signature fragrance. It’s the hottest ticket in town tonight, and Allison Taylor is invited.
No way is she going to miss this—or arrive looking like a drowned rat.
She puts her dripping umbrella on the floor as the stranger climbs in after her and closes the door.
“I’m going to Brooklyn—take the Williamsburg Bridge,” he tells the driver, “but first she needs to get off at Thirteenth and West.”
“Wait—that’s
way
out of your way,” Allison protests.
“It’s okay. You’re obviously in a hurry.”
“No, I know, but . . .” Jacobs is notorious for starting late. She can wait for another cab.
“It’s fine.”
“Never mind,” she says, unsettled by this stranger’s willingness to accommodate her. What, she wonders uneasily, does he expect in return? “Listen, I’ll just—”
“No, I mean it. It’s
fine
.” He motions at the cabbie, who shrugs, starts the meter, and inches them out into the downtown traffic.
Alrighty then. Allison faces forward, crossing her arms across her midsection.
She tried to let this guy off the hook. It’s going to take him forever to get to Brooklyn with a West Side detour, but . . .
That’s his problem.
And mine is solved.
Allison leans back, inhaling the fruity cardboard air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror and the faint cigarette scent wafting from her backseat companion. Unlike some reformed smokers, she doesn’t mind it. In fact, she finds the tobacco smell pleasantly nostalgic, sending her back to college bars and rainy, lazy, coffee-drinking afternoons in Pittsburgh.
Sometimes—wrong as it is, weak as it is—she finds herself craving a cigarette, even now.
When she first got to New York three years ago, she quickly went from mooching happy hour butts to a two-pack-a-day habit. Smoking helped mitigate job stress, city stress, love life stress—and kept her thin. In her industry, that’s crucial.
Then her old college roommate Becky came to New York for a job interview and they got together—Becky’s idea, of course. Though they’d been friends in college, Allison had closed that chapter of her life and wasn’t anxious to revisit the past. Nothing against Becky, but for Allison, moving on meant leaving people behind. It was an old trick she’d learned from her childhood friend Tammy, who certainly had the right idea. Life was just easier that way.
As they caught up over drinks, Becky watched Allison light a fresh cigarette from the stub of another, and said, “Wow, I always thought you were too much of a control freak for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean chain-smoking. Cigarettes can kill you, you know.”
Allison shrugged. “We’re all going to die someday.”
“Maybe, but—”
“
Maybe?
Not
maybe
, Becky! Everyone dies. It’s a fact of life.”
Becky gave her a long look, then shrugged. “Whatever. All I know is that you’re an addict if you smoke like that, Al. And addicts aren’t in control.”
She was right, of course. Jesus. The moment she heard the word
addict
, Allison made up her mind to quit.
But she waited until after Becky had flown home to Pennsylvania. Waited because she hates I-told-you-so’s, and waited because, yes, she likes to be in control. Likes, wants, needs . . . she
needs
to be in control.
Who’d blame her? After all she’s been through in her life . . .
“So . . . I’m Bill.”
She turns to look at the man who commandeered her cab—or vice versa, depending on how one chooses to look at it.
“Allison.”
“Nice to meet you, Allison. What do you do?”
“I’m a style editor at
7th Avenue
magazine. How about you?” she asks, noting that he has green eyes. Nebraska-field green eyes.
“Finance,” he tells her. “I’m an investment banker.”
Ah—forget the field. Those are money green eyes
.
This guy couldn’t be more
not
your type.
Allison has nothing against money, of course—but she’s completely clueless about finance. Then again, she also knows nothing about science, yet she was head-over-heels in love with a biologist for almost a year.
And look how that turned out.
Justin was the one person in New York who got to know the real Allison—at least, as much of herself as she’s ever shared with anyone. She’d dated here and there in college, but those relationships were superficial and physical.
With Justin, she eventually learned to let her guard down a bit. She shared things with him she’d never shared with anyone. Yes, and as soon as she was comfortable with the idea of someone having access to her past, her apartment, her innermost thoughts—
bam
. It was over.
Their June breakup was abysmal. Cheating, lies, accusations . . .
Thank God she’s finally over it. Over it, and moving on.
Just yesterday, while folding dryer-hot clothes in her building’s laundry room, she mentioned to her chatterbox neighbor Kristina that she’s ready to meet someone new.
“Yeah? Good luck with that.” Kristina, an aspiring Broadway actress, shook her mop of dark curly hair. “Do you know that it’s been almost six months since Ray and I broke up? Half a year. I figured I’d have replaced him by now—not to mention all the stuff he took when he moved out. But I’m not having any luck getting a new boyfriend, or a new espresso maker or CD player or—”
“Um,” Allison cut in, “it can’t be
that
hard to get a new CD player, can it?”
“It’s impossible when you’re flat broke. I can’t even afford a new Walkman. I haven’t had music in my apartment for months now, and it’s killing me. Meanwhile,” she went on, clearly following her own unique brand of logic, “I’ve figured out that the only available guys in this city are married.”
“Doesn’t that mean they’re
unavailable
?”
