The Night Visitors

by Carol Goodman

  This is what comes of sticking your nose in other people’s business.

  Not now, I practically say out loud, which is just what Alice needs to hear: me talking to myself. She’s already stomped through Stewart’s, looked in the restroom, and cross-examined Atefeh as if she thought she was holding Oren in the broom closet.

  “Did you see him come in here?” I ask Alice for the second time.

  “No,” she says, her eyes darting back and forth, looking anywhere but at me. “I—I didn’t see where he went. I—I just closed my eyes for a second and fell asleep. When I woke up he wasn’t in the car.”

  She’s lying. I can tell by the way her eyes shift up to the left, a tell Doreen taught me about. “Were you fighting?” I ask.

  “NO! I just told you, I was asleep . . . Fuck this! We have to find him.” Her eyes get big and she looks at me. “Unless you took him? Did you decide that I wasn’t good enough to take care of him and take him away?”

  I ignore the fact that I have been wondering if Alice is able to take care of Oren and practice one of the techniques we learn in counseling instead: reflect back what you hear the client saying. “Why would I think that?” I ask. “Are you worried that you’re not able to take care of Oren?”

  Like many of the techniques we learn in counseling, this one doesn’t fly so well on the ground. Alice looks like she’d like to smack me. I automatically shift my right foot back so I can pivot away from the blow if she does. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Atefeh tense behind the counter. Loud angry voices are triggering for her.

  Looking at Alice, I consider what Frank said: There are things about this case you don’t understand. I’m beginning to think he’s right. I’ve made the mistake I caution my interns not to make: I’ve made assumptions. I’ve assumed that Alice is the victim because she’s the woman. But what if she’s the abuser? What if she killed her husband and fled with Oren because he’s a witness to her crime? I recall how Oren flinched when Alice touched his arm last night—and then this morning she grabbed him so hard she dislocated his shoulder.

  I’ve made a terrible mistake. I should call Frank immediately, but if I give any indication that’s what I’m going to do, Alice will bolt. Then Frank won’t be able to question her. I have to keep her calm—and I have to find Oren.

  “I bet he just went exploring,” I say with a calm I don’t feel. “Oren’s an adventurous boy. Let’s take a walk through the village. We can stop by Sanctuary and get one of my colleagues to help—”

  “I don’t want any more of you people involved,” she cuts in.

  “All our volunteers are pledged to confidentiality”—unless the client presents a threat to self or others, I think but don’t add—“and it’ll just be Doreen, who talked to you last night on the phone.” I’m hoping that Doreen will be there. I can park Alice with her and call Frank.

  “But what if he comes back here looking for me?” she objects, but in a much weaker voice. I can tell that she’s running out of steam.

  “Atefeh will keep an eye out for him. Won’t you, Atefeh?”

  Atefeh nods eagerly, obviously relieved that the yelling has stopped. “That I will,” she says. “And I bet Ms. Lane is right. The boy has gone adventuring. My little boy is always running off, scaring me half to death, but he always comes back.”

  Alice gives Atefeh a tight nod and then turns to me. “Shouldn’t we split up? We’ll cover more ground.”

  I was afraid she would suggest this. “You don’t know the town,” I say. “I know the places a boy would hide.”

  She gives me a strange look. “Is that because you had a little brother?”

  Although I’ve prepared myself for a physical blow, I am completely unprepared for this. “How did you know about Caleb?” I demand.

  Alice flinches as if I’m the one who’s out of control. “I—I saw his picture—and you have a lot of boy stuff in the house. What happened to him?”

  “We’re wasting time,” I say. “Let’s start walking toward Sanctuary.”

  I walk out quickly, not caring for the moment if she follows me or not. It’s been years since anyone asked me about Caleb and it feels like a violation. There’s something wrong about this woman . . . something . . .

  And then it hits me. The picture of Caleb she said she saw. The only picture I have of Caleb is in my bedroom. What was this woman doing in my bedroom?

  ALICE IS RIGHT that the reason I know where a boy would hide is because of Caleb. He was always running away.

  He likes the attention, my mother would say when I called. But the summer I came back to stay, when Caleb was ten, it seemed to me that what he wanted was to disappear. No doubt it was because of the tension at home, which was worse than ever that summer. My father was always locked in his study poring over old case files, my mother scrubbing the kitchen floor until her knuckles bled. To get Caleb away I’d take him into town for an ice cream at Stewart’s, and when I turned around he would be gone. It scared me half to death the first time it happened; I thought he’d been kidnapped by a pervert trucker passing through town. I kept picturing his body discarded and broken at the bottom of a ravine—so I’d headed first for water.

  As I do now. There’s a path that leads from the back of the Stewart’s parking lot down to the creek and a little swimming hole—the hollow, we called it, growing up. I’m scanning the path for footprints when Alice comes up behind me. “There!” she says, her voice sharp and hysterical. She points at the snow at the edge of the parking lot. “Those are Oren’s prints. The boots you gave him have that pattern on the sole and he splays his feet like that . . .” Her voice catches. She does love him, I think, but then I’ve seen people do the worst hurt to the people they love.

  “So did Caleb,” I say, stepping off the asphalt into the snow. “My mother made him wear braces until he was ten.”

  “The doctor said that doesn’t work,” Alice says, following me onto the wooded path.

  “Your doctor is right,” I say. “But there was no telling my mother that. She liked things that she could control, things she could shape. Fastening those straps made her feel like she had Caleb in her control.”

  “She sounds like a piece of work.”

  The path is narrow, so we’re walking single file (Indian file, I grew up calling it, but Doreen has informed me the term is no longer politically correct) and Alice can’t see the grin on my face. A piece of work doesn’t begin to cover it. “She had her own bad history,” I say, and then I think that this might be a way to draw Alice out. “It’s not uncommon for victims of abuse to become abusers. It’s the only model they know—”

  “Why would Oren come down here?” Alice cuts in. Clearly she doesn’t want to hear the cycle-of-abuse speech. “How would he know this path is here?”

  “Maybe he saw another kid going down here,” I say, even though it’s clear that Oren’s are the only footprints in the snow. “This is kind of a local kids’ hangout. In summer it’s a swimming hole; during the year teenagers come here to smoke and make out.” I can hear my voice waver on the last part and I’m glad Alice can’t see my face. This isn’t just the place where I’d find Caleb; it was also the place that Frank and I used to meet.

  “In this weather? Jeez, I thought it was bad in the group homes but at least we had a rec lounge.”

  I’m surprised Alice offers this clue into her upbringing. Maybe she does want to talk about the cycle of abuse. I should follow it, draw her out, but we’ve come to the bottom of the hollow. The pool is frozen over, a perfect circle of ice surrounded by low overhanging pine and fir branches. I’ve been thinking about Caleb so much that I can almost picture him here. I can see him crouched by the edge of the pool, hiding one of his toys in the roots of an old hemlock.

  What are you doing here, buddy? I’d asked, squatting down beside him in the dirt.

  Luke is hiding from the stormtroopers, he’d said. He’d placed the little action figure of Luke in a hollow that had been scooped out bet
ween the roots. There was a green Yoda already there. We’d just seen the third Star Wars movie and I’d bought the action figures for him at a garage sale. They were secondhand, the paint chipped on Luke’s tunic and one of Yoda’s ears broken off.

  Well, I’m here to report that the coast is clear and it’s safe to return to the ship.

  I still remember how he’d looked up at me, his face full of trust . . . and then I’m remembering another face. Frank’s. The last night we met here. Instead of trust, though, he’d looked at me as if he knew I was lying to him. Which I was.

  “Could he have fallen through the ice?” Alice says, shaking my arm.

  “There aren’t any cracks in the ice,” I say, staring at the frozen pond. Though the snow is disturbed below my feet: flaked with moss and soil as if someone has been digging here. I step over the place in the snow where the roots of the tree are showing, remembering Caleb’s trusting face looking up at me. Let’s take Luke and Yoda home, buddy.

  Just Luke, Caleb had answered. Yoda lives here. We have to leave him here in case Luke needs to come back for help.

  I’d meant to come back later and rescue Yoda before some other kid took him, but I’d had a fight with my father that night and gone back to the city without finding Yoda or even saying goodbye to Caleb. He’d been so angry when my mother told him I was leaving that he’d run away the next morning before I left.

  Okay, I’d shouted into the woods around our house, have it your way.

  I shake my head of the memory and am glad to see a clue to the present-day missing child’s whereabouts. “Look—I see footprints going back up on the other side.” I walk briskly up the slope, ignoring Alice’s wheezing behind me. She’s a smoker, I guess, although I haven’t seen her light up since she’s been here. She must try not to smoke around Oren. I give her credit for that, but it’s got to be hard going without, especially given all the tension she’s under right now. She probably snuck off to have a smoke while I was in Stewart’s.

  When we get to the top of the hollow we’re in the cemetery. I check the Lane family mausoleum with its niche where Caleb liked to hide. I pause only a moment beside the statue of the woman with the bowed head that marks Caleb’s grave, but Alice notices the name on the stone anyway. “Crap, is that your brother? He was only—”

  “Ten,” I say.

  “How did he die?” she asks, her voice hushed. As usual when people ask me how Caleb died, I can hear beneath the shock and pity a hint of prurient curiosity. How could you have been so unlucky and stupid to lose a ten-year-old boy? Tell me so I can be sure I never make the same mistake.

  “Carbon monoxide poisoning,” I reply. “There was a leak while they were all asleep—my mother and father and Caleb. I was out . . .”

  “That’s awful,” she says, and then, maybe realizing she and Oren are staying in the same house where it happened, “What causes . . . ?”

  “A faulty furnace,” I reply, turning to her with my mouth stretched into a rictus grin. “But don’t worry. I had the furnace replaced afterward.”

  I leave her gaping at Caleb’s grave and head across the cemetery toward Main Street, where I dodge a snow plow with obnoxious fake antlers on its hood. I climb the sagging, rotten steps of Sanctuary. When my father’s law offices were in this building he used to sit out here on the wide, elegant porch drinking bourbon and smoking cigars with his cronies—Hank Barnes, Frank’s father and the town chief of police before him; Maynard Clay, who owned most of the land in the county; Sam Abbott, the county medical examiner; Carl Shapiro, district circuit judge in Albany—and jawing about the sorry state of the world and kids today and permissive parents. All of those men are dead now, but I can still catch a whiff of bourbon and cigars and hear the old men’s querulous smug voices.

  Now the porch is home to a sagging old sofa and bins of toys. The toys are there for kids to play with while their parents are inside filling out forms for food stamps, complaining about their spouses, or just taking a much-needed break. And when I open the front door the intern at the front desk—Arianna or Andrea or something like that—looks up at me and says, “Oh good, Doreen’s looking for you. Did you let your phone run down again? There’s a kid upstairs with her who says he’s staying with you?”

  The upward lilt in Alana’s—that’s it—voice could be millennial speech or incredulity that I’ve violated Sanctuary’s protocol and taken a client home. I don’t care. I cross the wide-planked floor in three assertive strides and lean over the counter to speak in Alana’s ear. “There’s a woman right behind me who is looking for her son. Tell her he’s fine and that Mattie’s gone to get him. Sit her down and give her some forms to fill out.”

  “Wh-which forms?” Alana asks, her kohl-rimmed eyes bugging out. Another volunteer, a young college student from Bard, looks up from the food pantry.

  “Myers-Briggs personality tests for all I care. Just keep her busy.”

  Alana smiles. The interns all love drama. She’s smart too, despite the multiple piercings, millennial speak, and name that sounds like a yoga pose; she’ll figure out a way to detain Alice.

  I open the door that says STAFF ONLY. As I’m closing it I hear the front door open and Alice’s voice demanding where that woman Mattie Lane’s gotten to. I take the stairs two at a time. I should have just enough time to call Frank from the office phone (Alana is right; I did forget to charge my phone last night) and then Doreen will help me keep Alice and Oren here until Frank arrives. It’s for the best. Alice is clearly not stable. If Oren did stab his father and he’s tried as a juvenile, I can testify at his hearing. The juvenile detention centers aren’t as bad as they used to be. Doreen and I could make sure he ends up at one of the better ones, and Doreen will help me keep track of Oren in the system. Just because I’m turning him in to the police does not mean I am giving up on him. If I’d told Frank my suspicions about what was going on in my own home thirty-four years ago, Caleb might still be alive.

  When I reach the top of the stairs I hear Oren’s voice. He’s happily telling a story about Luke Skywalker’s training as a Jedi. When I round the corner I find Oren sitting at Doreen’s overflowing desk, a plate of cookies and a glass of milk perched precariously amid casework files and training manuals. When Doreen looks up my heart swells. She’s in her late fifties with dark bags under her eyes, gray in her dark curly hair, and a stain on her faded sweater, but to me she looks beautiful. How did I ever think I could do all this without her?

  “Here’s Mattie now,” she says in a bright, calm voice. Only I would hear the strain beneath its surface. “I told you she’d be here soon—sooner if she’d learn to charge her phone.”

  Oren laughs—he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine—and holds up his hand. He’s grasping a green toy in his fist. “Oh good, now we can go back to your house. We need to rescue Han Solo from the ice caves and I found someone who can help.” He waggles the toy in his hand.

  As I walk toward him I feel as if I’m floating two feet off the floor. The toy in his hand is so old the green paint has flaked away and one of its long ears has chipped off. But I recognize it. A late-1970s-model Yoda. The same one that Caleb buried in the hollow thirty-four years ago.

  Chapter Eleven

  Alice

  THE BOHO CHICK with the pretentious name at the front desk tries to tell me that Mattie’s gone to find Oren, but I can tell she’s lying. Her eyes slide over toward a door with a STAFF ONLY sign on it and she might as well be pointing to where Mattie is. She pushes a clipboard with some forms on it toward me, but I ignore her and head toward the door.

  “Hey!” Boho calls.

  A bearded guy wearing a THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE T-shirt comes around from the desk and gets in between me and the closed door. “Can I help you?” he asks. His breath smells like ramen noodles; there’s even some stuck in his beard. He reminds me of Scott, always trying to help, always putting his nose where he shouldn’t. Like going around to the house to check on me and Oren. That�
��s what must have happened. Scott went to the house and found Davis injured and mad as hell that Oren and I had gotten away. Knowing Scott, he would have tried to help, and knowing Davis—

  That’s why Davis has Scott’s phone. It’s not Davis whose body the police found at the house; it’s Scott’s.

  The room spins and I feel faint. Ramen guy reaches out a hand to steady me but I bat it away.

  “You can get the hell out of my way,” I say, angry at this guy for looking like Scott when Scott is dead, “so I can get my son and get out of here.”

  The Scott look-alike holds up both hands. “I can hear that you’re angry . . .”

  “Can you, asshole? I’m so glad your ears are working. What about your feet? Can they walk your skinny ass out of my way?”

  Fake Scott blinks at me. He’s not used to being talked to like this. He must be new to the job. He probably grew up in a nice house where nobody yelled and went to a nice college where everybody talked about “safe spaces.” Like Scott. Well, there are no safe spaces in this world. Certainly this place isn’t, for all it’s called Sanctuary.

  I lean closer to Fake Scott and shout right into his ramen-stinking beard. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE!!!” He’s so startled he jumps, and I use that moment to push past him and open the door, behind which I find a flight of stairs. I can hear Oren’s voice coming from above. I take the stairs two at a time, my heart pounding. Oren’s voice sounds happy, but I know that he’s able to pretend to be happy when he’s not. I’ve taught him that, after all.

  I find Oren sitting cross-legged on the floor with Mattie and another woman. He’s got a toy Yoda in one hand and a Luke in the other. The Luke toy I recognize, but the Yoda’s unfamiliar. He lost his Yoda before Thanksgiving when he left it in his cubby at school and someone took it. He looks really happy, not faking-it happy. And Mattie is glowing. The other woman—a skinny librarian type with dark curly hair—looks a little more reserved. She’s the only one who looks up when I come in.