The Night Visitors

by Carol Goodman

  “You must be Alice,” she says, getting stiffly to her feet. “We talked on the phone last night.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Doreen, right? Thanks for your help and all, but we gotta go.” I hold out my hand for Oren and he looks up at me.

  “Look who I found,” he says, holding up the Yoda. “Remember I said he had gone back to Dagobah? He was waiting for me in the swamp all along!”

  He’s beaming at me, not mad anymore. It’s like finding his lost toy—or one like it—has made up for everything that happened.

  “That’s great, buddy. Let’s pack up your things now. We’ve bothered these nice ladies long enough.” I’m trying to calculate how much time we have. The number from the pharmacy would have shown up on Scott’s phone just now. And even if it didn’t, all Davis would have to do is call back to find out that I’d called from a CVS in Delphi, New York. He could be driving here right now . . . in fact, he sounded like he was already on the road.

  I look at Mattie and see her wipe her eyes. What’s gotten into her? Doreen is also giving her a strange look, but then she looks back at me. “No bother at all. It was a treat to take a break from all this boring paperwork”—she waves her hand at a very messy desk—“but I did have time to look up a shelter west of here in Oneonta.”

  “How far is that?” I ask. “Can we take a bus there?”

  “It’s about an hour more on the same bus you were on. I think there’s one leaving at four thirty.”

  “Sister Martine has already made arrangements to have them moved tomorrow,” Mattie says. Her voice is strange—flat somehow—and she keeps her eyes on Oren and that silly green Yoda toy.

  “I think we’d better leave before that,” I say. “We’ve taken up enough of your time. Only . . .” I feel sick when I realize what I’ve got to ask. “I—I don’t have the bus fare.”

  “We can get you a voucher for the trip,” Doreen says. “Can’t we, Mattie?”

  Mattie tears her eyes away from Oren and blinks at Doreen. What’s wrong with her? She looks like she’s high.

  Before she can answer, Oren chimes in. “I don’t think the buses are running anymore. On account of the storm.”

  “What storm?” I say, but when I look out the window I see what he means. Curdled gray clouds are massing over the mountains to the west.

  “We are supposed to get a storm tonight,” Doreen says, putting on a pair of glasses that dangle from a beaded chain around her neck. “A nor’easter. Let me call Trailways.”

  She takes out a cell phone and taps at the screen. While she’s doing that Mattie leans toward Oren. “Tell me again how you found Yoda.”

  Really? I want to demand. That’s what you want to know while we’re running for our lives? When Davis could be driving up the Thruway right now?

  “I told you,” Oren says, his voice edging toward impatience. “I used the Force.”

  I roll my eyes. Ever since we watched those movies that’s been Oren’s explanation for everything. How did you get away from those bullies? I used the Force to distract them. How did Davis’s beer bottles all explode in the cooler? I used the Force to break them so he wouldn’t get drunk again.

  Mattie seems to be taking him seriously, though. “And how does that feel?” she asks. “When you use the Force?”

  Oh, for God’s sake. I go over to the window, where Doreen is listening to her phone. I hear Oren’s answer, though. “Sometimes I just feel like a . . . tingle and things . . . happen. Or sometimes I hear a voice.”

  I feel a tingle myself, but it’s only the chill leaking in through the old wooden window casements. It’s gotten colder since this morning. The thought of getting on a bus and heading west into those mountains, under that leaden sky, makes me want to crawl into a hole.

  “Did you hear a voice telling you where this Yoda was?” Mattie asks.

  My ears prick at the question. Is she asking Oren if he hears voices? Does she think he’s psycho? I look down at the cluttered desk, at the titles of the books stacked there. Mental Health First Aid USA. Choosing to Live: How to Defeat Suicide Through Cognitive Therapy. These women have been trained to detect mental illness. They probably spend all their free time just hoping to make a juicy diagnosis. Does Mattie think that Oren is crazy?

  “Yes, I heard—” Oren begins.

  “Oren has a very active imagination,” I cut in. “He likes to pretend, don’t you, baby?”

  “I’m not a baby,” he says, annoyed. Davis used to use that nickname for him.

  “Well, he was right about the buses,” Doreen says, putting down her phone. I’m relieved I’ve distracted Oren from telling Mattie about his imaginary friends. All we need now is for her to get it into her head that he’s crazy and try to have him put away. “Trailways has suspended service for the rest of the day and there’s a weather alert for Ulster, Greene, and Delaware Counties. High winds and accumulations up to twenty-four inches.”

  “Wow!” Oren says, his eyes lighting up. “That’s a lot of snow to shovel. We’d better get back to your house now, Mattie.”

  “We have an arrangement with the Best Western in Kingston,” Doreen says. “We can put you up there for the night.”

  “That’ll be a lonely, cold place in a storm, Dory,” Mattie says. “I can keep them one more night.”

  Doreen frowns. “Maybe Alice and Oren would like to go down to the food pantry and pick up some supplies,” she says in a pinched voice.

  “We could use some more pancake mix,” Oren says, getting up. He tucks the Yoda in his coat pocket and shoulders his backpack. “And chocolate chips.”

  Mattie grins at him. “See if you can get us some canned beans and tomatoes. I’ll make you my four-alarm chili for dinner.”

  Oren smiles back at her and then turns to me. “Make it three-alarm. Alice doesn’t like it too spicy.” He reaches out to take my hand and something melts in me. He’s excited at the idea of hunkering down for a big storm in a big old house full of good food. This is why we were leaving Davis: so we could take pleasure in ordinary things again without the fear of his tantrums hovering over us.

  I take Oren’s hand and squeeze it. “Sure, buddy, let’s stock up. We’ll get on the road tomorrow.”

  What choice do we have? I tell myself that if Davis does make it up here, he only knows we were at the CVS. He doesn’t know where Mattie lives. How would he ever find us way out in the woods? I tell myself that and try to believe it.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mattie

  AS SOON AS Alice and Oren go downstairs I turn to Doreen. “I know what you’re going to say. We never take a client home. It’s not good for us and not good for the client and it never ends well. That’s what we teach our volunteers.”

  “Oh good, I thought you’d forgotten all the training protocols,” she says sharply. “I thought I had to dig up the manuals.”

  “But you and I both know there are exceptions.”

  “That’s not fair,” she says, a quaver in her voice. “That was different.”

  “It was different because I was pretty sure if I didn’t take you home that night you would have killed yourself,” I say.

  Doreen is right. It’s not fair to bring up that night sixteen years ago, when I found Doreen drinking herself to death at the Reservoir Inn out by Route 28. She’d just found out that she’d lost custody of her eleven-year-old son, Gavin, to her ex-husband, Roy, even though Doreen had testified in court that Roy had hit her multiple times (and Gavin once, which was all it took for Doreen to finally leave). The fact that Doreen had two DUIs, no job, and a twelve-year-old misdemeanor for marijuana possession worked against her, and Roy—bank manager and upstanding citizen of Rensselaer, remarried with a stay-at-home mom ten years younger than Doreen—had looked like the more stable parent. Doreen had been given every other weekend visitation and alternating Christmases.

  “I told Gavin he’d never have to go back there,” she’d said—or slurred, rather. “How am I supposed to tell him that he ha
s to because Mommy’s a pothead and a drunk?”

  I told her she could re-sue for custody, that I would help her. I told her Sanctuary could help her find a job—heck, she could come work for Sanctuary. She’d been volunteering there since she’d landed in the Kingston shelter a year ago. I told her that even if she saw Gavin only every other week she could still be a positive force in his life.

  She listened to everything I had to say and thanked me. She went on to thank me for all I’d done for her over the last year and asked me to thank Frank Barnes, who had intervened six months before when Roy showed up to take Gavin back and had testified as a character witness at the custody hearing. She asked me to thank Kate Rubin, who had represented her at the hearing pro bono. She asked me to thank all the volunteers at Sanctuary.

  “Shit, Doreen,” I said. “You’re either making your Academy Award acceptance speech or you’re planning to off yourself. Which is it?”

  Doreen is fond of saying in our suicide awareness training sessions that this is not the way you’re supposed to ask someone if they’re planning to kill themselves. You’re supposed to reflect back the “invitations” they have provided (I hear that you’re feeling hopeless and you’ve expressed a lot of negative feelings about yourself . . .) and then ask them directly, “Are you thinking about suicide?” You’re not supposed to say, “You’re not thinking about doing anything stupid, are you?” Or make cracks about the Academy Awards. But what I said that night worked. First she nearly fell off her barstool laughing (a testament less to my wit than to how many Jack Daniel’s shots she’d knocked back), and then she started crying, and then she admitted she had a stash of Vicodin from her last root canal back in her rented room and was thinking of washing it down with some vodka.

  Protocol would have suggested I keep her talking and then, if I still thought she was a suicide risk, call one of the suicide intervention services available in the county. Instead I drove her home to my place and we sat up the rest of the night eating popcorn and talking. I told her about the year I spent in JD when I was fourteen and I told her about Caleb. I told her the truth about what happened the night my family died. She was the first—and last—person I ever told the whole story. Sometime around dawn, when we were both falling asleep on the big couch in the parlor, I asked her if she was still thinking of killing herself, and she said, “No, I think you’re a bigger suicide risk than I am. I’ll stick around as long as you need me.” We made a pact then that if either of us was ever thinking about killing herself she’d tell the other first.

  “Are you telling me,” I ask her now, “that it was a mistake to take you home that night?”

  “No,” she admits. “You saved my life. But I worry about this woman and boy—”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the boy,” I snap.

  “Noooo—” She draws out the word. “He’s a sweetheart. Smart as a whip. He reminds me of Gavin . . .”

  Her voice trails off and I see that there are tears in her eyes. Of course, I think, Oren’s brought it all back up for her. The way her son changed in the following years. The problems in school, the drugs, rehab, juvenile detention, and then rehab again. She hasn’t heard from him in over a year.

  “You wouldn’t want Alice to lose him,” I say. “You wouldn’t want Oren to end up in JD.”

  It’s not fair to use the threat of JD, a threat my parents held over my—and later Caleb’s—head all my life. It’s not fair but I can see right away that it works. She shakes her head. “No, no, of course not. But let me call Frank. You’ll all be in danger if the father comes looking for them.”

  “He won’t,” I say quickly, relieved that Doreen hasn’t heard about the dead man in New Jersey—or if she has she hasn’t connected him to Alice and Oren. “He doesn’t know where they are.”

  Doreen looks skeptical. “You know how many times we’ve had a woman call her ex and tell them exactly where they are.”

  “She doesn’t have a cell phone,” I say. “And it’s only for one night. Where else are they going to go?” I look out the window and see that it has begun to snow. Heavy feathery flakes fill the air with silver light. When I look back at Doreen I see that silver light showing up every line and shadow on her face. I wonder when she last slept. “You should take the night off,” I add. “Let Alana and the Bard student man the phones.”

  “I could come back with you,” Doreen offers.

  I don’t want her there, I realize. I want Oren to myself. I want him to tell me about that voice he heard, the one that told him where to find Yoda.

  “I think you should go home and get some sleep,” I say. “We’ll talk in the morning. Okay?”

  Doreen nods, her eyes on the falling snow. “Sure,” she says, “just . . .”

  “I know,” I say, already turning away, anxious to beat the storm back to the house. “I’ll be careful.”

  I pick up my poncho from the floor. When I turn back Doreen is still standing at the window, a dark silhouette against the swirling snow, looking as insubstantial and spectral as the ghost I’m seeking.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Alice

  ALL THE WAY back, through the heavy snow, Mattie listens uncomplaining to the long complicated game Oren has dreamed up. It’s something to do with Yoda and Luke having to save Han Solo from the ice caves before Darth Vader gets him. From what I remember of the movie this isn’t exactly what happens, but it’s not unusual for Oren to make up his own story. Scott said that Oren was “working through” his issues by playacting these stories, that Darth Vader stood in for Davis. Sometimes I’m Princess Leia, but today he’s decided that Mattie is the older Princess Leia from the new Star Wars movie and I’m Rey, the kick-ass heroine. That’s okay with me. There have been whole afternoons when I had to pretend to be Chewbacca.

  The truth is I’m grateful for Oren’s distraction. There’s no opportunity for me to talk to Mattie, to come clean about Davis. She’d definitely call the police, which is what we should do. Since Davis isn’t dead there’s less of a chance that Oren will end up in juvie for just a stab wound. It’s Davis who will go to jail for killing Scott.

  And Oren? Where will Oren go?

  “Alice? Earth to Alice. I’m talking to you!”

  I turn back to look at Oren. He’s waggling the green Yoda at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Weren’t you listening to me?” Annoyance is seeping back into his voice. I see Mattie flick her eyes toward me, suspicion and distrust etched on her face. She hasn’t trusted me since I pulled Oren’s arm back at the convent.

  “I was listening, buddy,” I say, making sure my voice is extra loving and patient. “Luke and Yoda have to save Han Solo from the ice caves while Princess Leia and Rey are marshalling the resistance.”

  “But didn’t you hear what I said about Darth Vader?” He kicks the back of my seat for emphasis.

  I swallow a curse. “What about Darth Vader? I thought the Emperor killed him.”

  “No! He was just pretending to be dead. He’s alive and he’s coming for Luke and Leia. He’s already killed Lando.”

  Something icy crawls down my spine. It’s just a story, I tell myself. Oren has no way of knowing about my phone call with Davis. “It’s all right,” I say automatically. “Darth Vader doesn’t know where Luke and Leia and Rey are and their location is . . . cloaked. Look”—I point out the window—“you think that’s snow? It’s really a cloaking device hiding Luke and Leia and Rey’s location.”

  I’m proud of myself for coming up with this colorful solution, but Mattie is staring at me and Oren looks dubious. He peers out the window as if trying to make out enemy Death Stars through the swirling snow. Mattie is watching him in the rearview mirror. We’re both, I realize, waiting for his verdict.

  “I don’t know if it will cloak us,” he says finally, “but I bet it will slow him down.”

  Mattie grins, but I feel the ice spread from my spine into my gut. “No one at Sanctuary would tell anyone where
we are,” I say to Mattie, “would they?”

  “Of course not,” Mattie says with a prissy little cluck of her tongue. “That’s the first thing we teach our volunteers. Everything about the client is confidential. Don’t worry. We’re safe as houses.”

  “Safe as houses,” Oren repeats to himself, obviously pleased with the phrase. “Safe as houses.” As he says it a second time, Mattie’s house looms out of the snow as if he has made it appear by magic. The way he made those tickets to Delphi appear. The way he made those footsteps appear in the maze. The kid’s creepy, Davis said to me once. It had shocked me that a father would talk about his son like that, but I’ve caught myself thinking the same thing sometimes.

  When I look out the rear window the road has vanished, as if the snow has swallowed up the rest of the world and all that’s left is this old house. I briefly wish that Oren and I had stayed at the convent or that Best Western. But it’s too late now.

  The moment Mattie stops the car Oren jumps out. He runs toward the house, kicking at the new-fallen snow, which is already filling in the path he shoveled earlier. How much more snow is going to fall? I wonder. How will we ever get out of here?

  “Is there anything you want to tell me, Alice?” Mattie asks.

  “What do you mean?” I snap back too quickly. She sounded so much like Davis for a moment. She’s staring at me with those unnerving lavender eyes as if she could see right through me.

  “It’s just you seem nervous.”

  “I’m homeless and on the run with a ten-year-old boy. Who wouldn’t be nervous?”

  “But the man you were running from is dead,” she says.

  I stare at her. Does she know that Davis isn’t dead? Did that policeman tell her something? Did he tell her something about me? But if she knew the truth about either me or Davis she would have turned me in already. Oren and I would be sitting at the police station back in town.

  “You know that’s not the only man I’m running from,” I answer finally. “Or have you already told the police that we’re here? You seemed pretty chummy with that cop.”