Run for Your Life Read Free Page A

weariness, and I realized that she hadn’t just been my love — she’d been my life support. On nights like this, the really bad ones, she’d listen for hours if I needed to talk, and understand completely when I couldn’t.
    Right then, more than anything in the world, I longed to feel her fingers caress the back of my neck as she told me that I’d tried my best. That sometimes there’s nothing we can do. I would circle her waist with my hands, and her magic would make all my doubts and guilt and stress disappear.
    Maeve had been dead for almost a year now, and in all that time, I hadn’t found any new ways to cope with it — only new ways to miss her.
    I’d been at the funeral of a homicide victim one time and heard his mother quote a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It kept ringing in my ears lately, like a song you can’t get out of your head.
    Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender the kind …
     
    I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
    I don’t know how much longer I can live without you, Maeve, I thought. My head sagged, and I leaned my forearms on the counter for support.
    But I jerked back upright when I noticed that my left hand was resting in a pool of something sticky. I examined the stuff, sniffed it, then tasted it: grape jelly, Welch’s finest, covering not just my hand, but my whole suit jacket sleeve.
    Living without you isn’t the only thing that’s impossible, I told Maeve while I stood up on tired legs to search for a paper towel.
    How can I take care of all our kids the way only you could?
     
    Chapter 2
     
    I was hopeless on the domestic front, all right. I couldn’t even find a paper towel. I rinsed off the jelly with water as well as I could, and put the suit coat in a closet with some other clothes that were waiting to be dry–cleaned. My luck started looking better when I poked around inside the fridge. There was a Saran–wrapped plate of baked ziti on a shelf, and I dug up a can of Coors Light buried beneath half a case of Capri Suns in the drink drawer. I set the microwave humming, and I was just crunching open my Silver Bullet when a hair–raising sound emanated from the dark interior of my apartment — a sort of howling moan followed by a long, unholy splatter. Then it happened again, only in a different tone.
    As I slowly lowered my untouched brew, I was visited by one of those blink moments I’d read about. Though my conscious mind wasn’t sure what was causing those noises, some deeper instinct warned me that it signaled a danger that any sane person would flee with all his might.
    Against my better judgment, I staggered down the hall in that direction. Peering around a corner, I spotted a bar of light under the rear bathroom door. I tiptoed to it and slowly twisted the knob.
    I stood rooted there, speechless with visceral horror. My instincts had been all too correct. I should have fled when I had the chance.
    Not one, not two, but three of my children were projectile–vomiting into the tub. It was like looking at an outtake from The Exorcist while you were seeing triple. I reared back as Ricky, Bridget, and Chrissy hurled again, each one’s upchuck triggered by the previous one, like they were trying to puke a campfire round. Think Vesuvius, Krakatoa, and Mount Saint Helens all going off in musical succession.
    Before I could catch myself, I made the mistake of breathing through my nose. My stomach lurched precariously. I blessed my stars that I hadn’t had a chance to eat during the Harlem siege, or to get started on the ziti. Otherwise, yours truly would have chimed in a fourth eruption of his own.
    My Irish nanny, Mary Catherine, was right beside the kids, her golden ringlets bouncing out from beneath a red bandanna as she mopped furiously at the blowback they left. She had wisely put on elbow–length, industrial rubber gloves and covered her face with another bandanna, but I could see from her eyes — usually crisp blue, but now damp and faded