Fragments of her recurring dream of searching for Matthew came back to her. This time she had been in Central Park again, searching and searching for him, calling his name, begging him to answer. His favorite game had been hide-and-seek. In the dream she was telling herself that he wasn’t really missing. He was just hiding.
But he was missing.
If only I had canceled my appointment that day, Zan thought for the millionth time. Tiffany Shields, the babysitter, had admitted that while Matthew was sleeping she had positioned his stroller so that the sun would not be in his face and had spread a blanket on the grass and fallen asleep herself. She had not realized he wasn’t in the stroller until she woke up.
An elderly witness had phoned the police after she read the headlines about the missing toddler. She reported that she and her husband had been walking their dog in the park and noticed the stroller was empty nearly half an hour before the babysitter had told the police she had looked into it. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time,” the witness said, sounding upset and angry. “I just thought that someone, the mother maybe, had taken the child over to the playground. It never occurred to me that young woman could possibly be watching anyone. She was out like a light.”
Tiffany had also finally admitted that because Matthew was asleep when they left the apartment, she did not bother to strap him in.
Did he climb out by himself and then someone noticed he was alone and took his hand? Zan asked herself, the question dull with repetition. There are predators who hang around. Please, God, don’t let it be that.
Matthew’s picture had been in newspapers all over the country and on the Internet. I prayed that some lonely person might have taken him and then was afraid to admit it, but finally would come forward or leave him in a safe place where he’d be found, Zan thought. But after almost two years, there was not a single hint of where he might be. By now he’s probably forgotten me.
She sat up slowly and twisted her long auburn hair back on her shoulders. Even though she exercised regularly, her slender body felt stiff and achy. Tension, the doctor had told her. You’re living with it, 24/7. She slid her feet to the floor, stretched, and stood up, then walked over to the window and began to close it as she absorbed the early-morning view of the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor.
It had been that view that had made her decide to sublet this apartment six months after Matthew disappeared. She’d had to get away from the building on East Eighty-sixth Street where his empty room with his little bed and toys were daily arrows piercing her heart.
That was when, realizing she had to try to have some semblance of normalcy in her life, she had thrown her energies into the small interior design business she had started when she and Ted separated. They had been together for such a short time, she didn’t even know that she was pregnant when they split.
Before her marriage to Ted Carpenter, she had been the chief assistant to the famed designer Bartley Longe. Even then she’d been recognized as one of the bright new stars in the field.
A critic who knew that Bartley had left an entire project in her hands while he was on a lengthy vacation had written about her stunning ability to mix and combine fabrics and color and furnishings for a home that reflected the taste and lifestyle of the owner.
Zan closed the window and hurried to the closet. She loved a cold room for sleeping, but her long T-shirt was no protection from the drafts. She had deliberately given herself a busy schedule for today. Now she reached for the old wraparound robe that Ted had so hated and which she laughingly had told him was her security blanket. To her it had become a symbol. When she got out of bed and the room was freezing, the minute she put on the robe she was warm as toast. Cold to warm; empty to overflowing; Matthew missing; Matthew found; Matthew in her arms, home with her. Matthew had loved to snuggle inside it with her.
But no more hide-and-seek, she thought, blinking back tears, as she knotted the belt of the robe and wiggled her feet into flip-flops. If Matthew climbed out of the stroller himself, was that what he was trying to play? But an unattended child should have been noticed by other people. How long was it before someone took his hand and disappeared with him?
It had been an unseasonably hot day in June and the park had been filled with children.
Don’t get into that, Zan warned herself as she walked down the hallway to the kitchen and headed straight for the coffeemaker. It had been set to go at seven o’clock, and now the pot was full. She poured a cup and reached into the refrigerator for the skim milk and the container of mixed fruit she had bought at the nearby grocery store. Then, on second thought, she ignored the fruit. Just coffee, she thought. That’s all I want now. I know I should eat more than I do, but I’m not planning to start today.
As she sipped the coffee, she mentally ran through her schedule. After she stopped at the office, she was meeting the architect of a stunning new condominium high-rise on the Hudson River to discuss decorating three model apartments for him, a significant coup if she got the job. Her principal competition would be her old employer, Bartley, whom she knew bitterly resented her opening her own business instead of coming back to work for him.
You may have taught me a lot, Zan thought, but boy that nasty temper of yours wasn’t anything I was going to be around again. Not to say anything about the way you came on to me. Then she closed her mind to that embarrassing day when she had had a breakdown in Bartley’s office.
She carried the coffee cup to the bathroom, laid it on the vanity, and turned on the shower. The steaming water took some of the tautness out of her muscles, and after she poured shampoo on her hair, she massaged her scalp with deep pressure from her fingertips. Another trick for reducing stress, she thought sardonically. There’s really only one way for me to reduce stress.
Don’t go there, she warned herself again.
When she was toweling dry, she picked up the pace, briskly drying her hair, then, back in her robe, she applied the mascara and lip gloss that were her only makeup. Matthew has Ted’s eyes, she thought, that gorgeous shade of dark brown. I used to sing him that song, “Beautiful Brown Eyes.” His hair was so light but I think it was starting to get some reddish tones in it. I wonder if he’ll get the bright red I had as a kid? I hated it. I told Mom that I looked like Anne of Green Gables, stick thin and with that awful carrot hair. But on him, it would look adorable.
Her mother had pointed out that when Anne grew up, her body had filled out and her hair had darkened to a warm, rich auburn shade.
Mom used to joke and call me Green Gables Annie, Zan thought. It was another memory not to be dwelt on today.
Ted had insisted they have dinner tonight, just the two of them. “Melissa will certainly understand,” he’d said when he phoned. “I want to remember our little boy with the only other person who knows how I’m feeling on his birthday. Please, Zan.”
They were meeting at the Four Seasons at 7:30. The one problem with living in Battery Park City is the traffic jams to and from midtown, Zan thought. I don’t want to bother coming back downtown to change, and I don’t want to bother dragging a different outfit with me to the office. I’ll wear the black suit with the fur collar. It’s dressy enough for the evening.
Fifteen minutes later she was on the street, a tall, slender young woman of thirty-two, dressed in a black fur-collared suit and high-heeled boots, wearing dark sunglasses, her designer shoulder bag in hand, her auburn hair blowing across her shoulders as she stepped down from the curb to hail a cab.
© BERNARD VIDAL
Mary Higgins Clark is the author of thirty suspense novels; three collections of short stories; a historical novel, Mount Vernon Love Story; a memoir, Kitchen Privileges; and a children’s book, Ghost Ship. She is also the coauthor with Carol Higgins Clark of five holiday suspense novels. More than one hundred million copies of her books are in print in the United States alone, and her books are worldwide bestsellers.
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COVER DESIGN BY JOHN VAIRO JR. • COVER PHOTOGRAPH © MAGGIE BRODIE/TREVILLION IMAGES
BY MARY HIGGINS CLARK
The Shadow of Your Smile
Just Take My Heart
Where Are You Now?
Ghost Ship (Illustrated by Wendell Minor)
I Heard That Song Before
Two Little Girls in Blue
No Place Like Home
Nighttime Is My Time
The Second Time Around
Kitchen Privileges
Mount Vernon Love Story
Silent Night / All Through the Night
Daddy’s Little Girl
On the Street Where You Live
Before I Say Good-bye
We’ll Meet Again
All Through the Night
You Belong to Me
Pretend You Don’t See Her
My Gal Sunday
Moonlight Becomes You
Silent Night
Let Me Call You Sweetheart
The Lottery Winner
Remember Me
I’ll Be Seeing You
All Around the Town
Loves Music, Loves to Dance
The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories
While My Pretty One Sleeps
Weep No More, My Lady
Stillwatch
A Cry in the Night
The Cradle Will Fall
A Stranger Is Watching
Where Are the Children?
BY MARY HIGGINS CLARK AND CAROL HIGGINS CLARK
Dashing Through the Snow
Santa Cruise
The Christmas Thief
He Sees You When You’re Sleeping
Deck the Halls
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1975, 1999, 2005, by Mary Higgins Clark
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First Pocket Books trade paperback edition August 2011
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ISBN: 978-1-4516-6256-6
ISBN: 978-0-7432-0611-2 (ebook)
Mary Higgins Clark, Remember Me
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