Remember Me (38 page)

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.

B
Y
M
ARY
H
IGGINS
C
LARK

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?

B
Y
M
ARY
H
IGGINS
C
LARK AND
C
AROL
H
IGGINS
C
LARK

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)