The Night Before by Wendy Walker

Author:Wendy Walker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

TWENTY-FOUR

Rosie. Present Day. Saturday, 8:30 a.m. New York City.

Rosie sat at a small table, a fresh cup of coffee in front of her.

“Do you take milk?”

Laura’s roommate, Kathleen, worked as a graphic designer for a marketing firm downtown. Laura had found her through an advertisement. They had not been friends, but there had been no complaints, either. They shared a two-bedroom walk-up on Jane Street. Laura worked long hours. She rarely ate at home. Kathleen had a boyfriend in New Jersey and was gone most weekends. That was all Laura had said about it. Rosie had been there a few times before when she’d come to visit her sister, and every time her roommate had been gone.

“Yes, thanks,” Rosie answered.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday. It didn’t sound urgent—your message,” Kathleen said apologetically as she walked back into the kitchen.

“I didn’t know what was happening. I wasn’t sure … and I didn’t know how close you were to my sister. That seems strange now—that I didn’t know. You were never here when we came to visit her.”

Rosie could see Laura’s room through the small living space next to the kitchen. The door was open. The room bare.

“Did she take everything when she left?” Rosie asked. The day she’d picked Laura up, the boxes had already been packed and moved to the street.

Kathleen returned with a pint of milk and she sat down. Her eyes followed Rosie’s through the adjacent room to the open door.

“She did,” Kathleen answered. “That’s how I knew she wasn’t coming back. The furniture is mine. Just a bed and a desk. The closet has built-ins so she didn’t need a dresser. You can look if you want, but I went through it after a few days. I’ve been showing it again.”

“If you don’t mind—I might just walk through.”

Rosie’s hand was shaking when she picked up the coffee. She set it back down, drew her hands to her face.

Kathleen looked at her with caution, as though she didn’t want to be pulled into the storm. “So what’s happened, exactly?”

“I don’t know what’s happened. That’s the problem. She went on a date with a man she met online and she never came home.”

“How long has it been?” Kathleen asked. “She used to leave for days at a time. I never knew when she would be here, when she was coming home. She worked long hours. And she traveled. She was covering industrial chemicals, she said. Took the train to Pennsylvania, Upstate New York. Sometimes she flew. She wasn’t one to…” Kathleen couldn’t find the right words, so Rosie finished the thought.

“I know—she wasn’t one to be considerate of other people in her life. People who might worry about her or wonder where she was.”

Kathleen looked at Rosie and nodded. “I got used to it. I never worried about her.”

“It’s different,” Rosie said. “She had my car. She knew I would worry if she didn’t come home, or call, at least.”

“You’re right,” Kathleen said. “I didn’t mean to imply that she was inconsiderate.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.