Sleepwalker by Wendy Corsi Staub Page B

of blue tape he hands her. “You need to go see Dr. Cuthbert again.”
    â€œNot until November. I have an appointment on the twenty-fifth, remember?”
    She remembers. That’s the Friday after Thanksgiving, and she’s the one who scheduled it for him, well in advance. Mack’s office is closed that day, and since the doctor only sees patients on weekdays, there aren’t many dates that work.
    She’d suggested that he simply call in sick one day, and his response, predictably, was “I’m not going to lie and say I’m sick when I’m not.”
    No, lying—even the kind of white lie that everyone tells—just doesn’t mesh with his moral code. Usually, that’s a quality she admires in Mack, so different from her own father, whose whole life was a lie. But sometimes, her husband’s sense of honor makes things a lot more challenging than they have to be.
    â€œI mean you should see Dr. Cuthbert sooner than that,” Allison tells him now. “You’re home this week, and—”
    â€œWhy do I need to see him sooner? I did everything he said to do. I stopped drinking coffee after noon, I bought the Tempur-Pedic mattress that cost a fortune, I—”
    â€œI know, but none of that seems to be enough. You can’t go on like this, not sleeping at night, grouchy during the day . . .”
    â€œIt’s been this way all my life, Allie. You know that. I’m sorry I’m grouchy.”
    â€œI’m just worried about you.”
    â€œI’m okay. Some days—nights—are worse than others, but I’ll live.”
    â€œThere’s no reason to for you to suffer, Mack.”
    Something flashes in his eyes, and then is gone. She recognizes the expression, though.
    Guilt.
    â€œMaybe you don’t want to help yourself,” she hears herself suggesting. “Maybe you’re still trying to punish yourself.”
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œFor Carrie going off to work and dying on the very morning you told her you wanted a divorce.”
    The words are harsh, but true. How many times has she heard him utter them himself?
    She knows his story; knows that ten years ago on a rainy Monday night in September, Carrie told Mack she was putting an end to her infertility treatments, no longer interested in trying to conceive a child.
    Mack was devastated.
    The next morning, he told her their marriage was over. She walked out, and he never saw her again.
    That’s a hefty burden for anyone to live with. Is it any wonder he can’t sleep at night?
    â€œI had insomnia long before that happened, Allison,” he says evenly.
    â€œI know, but it’s worse than ever.”
    â€œIt’ll get better. This is the anniversary. When everything dies down—”
    â€œBut you and I both know that it’s never going to go away.”
    There was always something, it seemed, to bring back the pain.
    A few years ago, it had been the death in Iraq of a young soldier named Marcus. Mack had mentored him years ago through his volunteer work with the Big Brother organization, and they’d stayed in touch over the years, though Allison had never met him. Mack took the news that he’d been killed pretty hard.
    She had thought he might finally find some measure of closure last spring, when the mastermind behind his wife’s murder was killed in Pakistan. But Bin Laden’s death only seemed to unexpectedly dredge up the pain again, at a time when Mack was totally unprepared for it.
    Looking back, Allison knows that was when Mack’s latest bout with insomnia began.
    It only got worse last month when a freak earthquake struck the East Coast. Exactly like the terrorist attack just shy of ten years earlier, it hit out of nowhere on a sunny summer Tuesday. In the midst of a sales call on a high floor of the Empire State Building, Mack had—like countless other Manhattanites—flashed back to September