Chapters (73)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Prologue
- Part IAnnie
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Part IIHarry
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Part IIIAnnie
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Part IVHarry
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Part VAnnie
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Also by Linwood Barclay
- About the Publisher
Annie wasn’t the only one who’d suffered a devastating loss. Charlie had lost his father, and his sadness was more than she could bear. She had to be there for him, be strong for him. She had all the love in the world for him, but she lay awake at night wondering whether that would ever be enough. Charlie’d lost more than a father; he’d lost a role model. How would she be able to provide the intangibles that a dad passed on to a young boy?
As gently as she tried to explain to him that his father would never be coming home, he still stood at the window most days, watching pedestrians pass by on the Bank Street sidewalk, occasionally calling out to his mother, “I think I saw him!”
There were days when it was more than she could bear.
Even more alarming, Charlie’d had, since his father’s death, episodes of sleepwalking. Annie would hear padding about the house around midnight and discover Charlie wandering in a trance-like state. Once, she found him standing in front of an open closet door, peeing, as though he were standing in front of the toilet. She would gently try to wake him, getting on her knees and holding him by the shoulders and softly speaking to him. When he came out of it, he would be baffled to find he was not in his bed.
Annie believed his sleeping self was looking for his father.
She took him to the doctor, who advised her not to be alarmed. Many kids sleepwalked, and in all likelihood it was no more than a phase Charlie was going through. There were many factors linked to sleepwalking, fatigue and stress among them. The death of Charlie’s father had certainly taken its toll on Charlie in those areas. Whenever Annie and Charlie were out, and Charlie spotted a white van, he would ask if that was the one that had killed his dad.
John’s personal effects were eventually returned to Annie. They came to the door one day by courier. She was in such a daze when they arrived in a padded pouch she didn’t know whether they’d been sent by the funeral home or the coroner’s office.
Anyway, there wasn’t much. He didn’t carry a lot of stuff on him. There was the fucking phone, of course. There was his wallet. It still contained all his credit cards, plus eighty-five bucks in cash. There was his pair of glasses. There were two pens that he had tucked into the inside pocket of his sport jacket. There was three dollars and forty-five cents in change that had been retrieved from the front pocket of his black jeans.