The Night Visitors

by Carol Goodman

  I told her I knew that.

  Then she showed me Caleb’s birth certificate and where she’d written in my name. No matter what, she told me, you’re his mother. Don’t ever forget that.

  I told her I never would.

  When she asked me if she should write down a name for the father, I told her no. She thought it was because I didn’t want to put my rapist’s name down. I let her believe that.

  I slide my hand under the mattress and pull out the gun, just as I hear a violent crash from downstairs. I freeze, listening for footsteps, then take the safety off and walk carefully across the floor, avoiding the loose floorboards. Too bad I don’t avoid Dulcie’s paw. She whines as I crush it beneath my foot and I crouch quickly down to soothe her. Did Frank hear? Downstairs I hear his footsteps halt at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Mattie,” he calls, his voice soft and tentative. I haven’t heard him say my name like that for thirty-four years. It’s how he said my name that night we met at the hollow.

  Mattie, he’d said when he saw me come down the path, his face lit up in the moonlight, you came. In that moment he looked like the boy he’d been before, and all I’d wanted was that boy back again. That summer, the summer Caleb was ten, we’d both been in Delphi for the first time since we were both sent away, and for a little while it was like we were fourteen and sixteen again. We’d spent the hot days swimming in the hollow and playing games in the woods with Caleb. Caleb had brought out the boy in Frank again, the boy who’d coaxed and sweet-talked me into the back of his father’s car. I’d gladly given myself to him when I was fourteen and again when I was twenty-five. I could tell that boy about Caleb. I could tell him we could raise Caleb with Caleb’s little sister.

  I knew the baby I was carrying was a girl. I’d known since two weeks before Christmas, but I’d been afraid to see Frank because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Keep the baby? Give it up the way I’d given up Caleb, only worse, to strangers? I didn’t even know if that would be worse than watching Caleb grow up under my mother’s critical harping and my father’s hard sense of justice. He was even harder on Caleb than he’d been on me. Maybe because he was a boy, or because he thought he was the child of a rapist. Would he have been easier on him if he’d known I was already pregnant when I was raped? That Caleb was Frank’s? Maybe. But he wouldn’t have been easier on Frank.

  Maybe, though, it would have made a difference to Frank. Maybe he would have grown up differently if he’d known Caleb was his.

  The night I went to meet Frank at the hollow I thought I could fix things. He’d called me and asked me to meet him. That had to mean he still cared. And when I saw that lit-up look on his face, and heard the soft way he said my name, I was ready to tell him everything. Frank had already taken his police exam and been hired as a deputy by the town. I would have my MSW in the spring and I knew that I could get a job at the youth center in Kingston where I’d interned. We could manage. And if my parents fought me on Caleb I had that birth certificate. I’d fight them until he was mine. I would never leave him again.

  It may have been that determination that Frank saw on my face as I came into the moonlit hollow. He might have read it as defiance and Frank never did well with defiance. It awoke something contrary within him. I could see his face harden against me.

  I didn’t think you were coming, he said.

  Of course I came, I should have said, I love you.

  But I have always had a streak of the contrary myself. (You’d argue that the sky was gray on a sunlit day, my mother would say. My little lawyer, my father would call me with pride—until I argued with him.)

  I said I would, I told Frank instead. Did you think I’d break my word?

  You’ve been avoiding me since you got home from college. It’s your father, isn’t it? I know he disapproves of me.

  I’m not a child anymore, I said, irked that he thought I was that weak-willed. I don’t have to do what he says. I’m getting my MSW in the spring.

  I only meant that I could get a job and support myself—and our child—but my going away to college and then graduate school had been a sore point. Two years at Ulster Community had been good enough for him.

  I suppose you’ve found a new boyfriend there. A college boy—

  That’s right, Frank. He gave me his letter sweater and everything. Honest to God, I’m sick of the attitude around here that anything that doesn’t come from this godforsaken backwater is suspect. God forbid anyone take advantage of New York City—

  Then why don’t you go back there?

  I will. Maybe I’ll go right now—

  As I turned to go he reached out for me, but I could already feel tears stinging my eyes and I didn’t want him to see me cry. If he did I would end up telling him I was pregnant. And then he would “do the right thing” and it was suddenly clear to me that we weren’t right for each other. We couldn’t go five minutes without bickering. We’d end up like my parents, fighting like cats and dogs every day of our lives. What good would that do Caleb? What chance would it give the baby I was carrying?

  I wrenched my arm out of his grip and ran out of the hollow. I ran all the way home, through the woods so I wouldn’t meet him on the road. I saw his truck pass by, looking for me—

  To stop me from coming back while his father killed my family, I realize now. When he didn’t find me, he must have driven ahead to warn his father. Maybe he really did plan to save Caleb and me, but when it came to a choice between my knowing what his father was doing and saving Caleb, he hit me over the head. How could he have been sure he wouldn’t kill me?

  Clearly he’s ready to kill me now. But he hasn’t come up the stairs yet. I listen for his footsteps, back braced against the wall, gun gripped in both hands. But I don’t hear any footsteps at all. All I hear is the wind.

  Coming from the open front door. He’s not coming after me; he’s gone after Alice and Oren in the barn.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Alice

  I KNOW YOU’RE up there . . . Alice, isn’t it? And Oren? There’s no need to hide, you know. Davis is dead. Maybe I shouldn’t have shot him, but you and I both know that even with two murders there was always a chance he’d get off. Our judicial system isn’t what it should be. A lot of these bleeding-heart judges let men like that go. You should know that, Alice. That’s why you had to run in the first place.

  “I don’t blame you for running and no one else will either. Nothing that’s happened here has to affect you. Tomorrow I’ll file a report that Davis followed you up here and tried to kill you and the boy, and I killed him to protect you. You can go home and file for custody of Oren. Mattie will help you; she’s good at that kind of thing.”

  He pauses. He’s a few feet in front of the hook, holding the flashlight beam on it as if he’s afraid to walk by it in the dark.

  “She’s a good woman,” he says, as if the silence had suggested otherwise, “but she’s . . . not entirely right in the head. She’s never been, not really, not since she was sent away to Hudson. It changed her. Those places do . . . well, you know that, Alice. I read your record . . . Oh, I know what you’re thinking, juvenile records are sealed. But my father taught me how to read between the lines, the gaps between foster homes, the petty crimes after you turned eighteen. I’m betting you spent time in Pleasantville . . . or Pine Crest. So you know what it’s like being locked up when you’re just a kid for doing something stupid that a million other kids do and get away with. The way they treat you in there—the lice shampoos and cavity searches—your body not your own anymore, your mind not yours either. For some of us, withstanding that makes us stronger, but for others . . . it breaks them. It broke Mattie. My father told me she was raped. She could never trust anyone after that, especially not men. We tried . . . the summer she came home . . . we tried . . .”

  He’s let the flashlight drop down by his side, creating a circle of light that surrounds him like a pool. His face, uplit, has softened, like Mattie’s did when s
he showed me the hollow and talked about teenagers making out there. That must be where they met. He’s thinking about it now and it’s made him look like a boy—not a man who just killed a man. Not a man who would hurt us.

  “I thought she had recovered. I thought she trusted me. I was going to tell her that night what my father was planning to do. And I was going to tell her that I was glad.” He looks defiant now. Like a boy still, but a boy who is ready to pick a fight. “Her father and mother deserved to die for what they did to her—to us. She would be free without them. Caleb would be better off without them . . .” His voice trails off as a flicker of doubt crosses his face, a furrow in his brow. “. . . I never, ever meant for Caleb to die,” he says fiercely. “I loved him . . .”

  “Like he was your own.”

  He spins around and aims the flashlight at the doorway. Mattie is standing there. She’s holding a gun in her hand but it hangs by her side. His gun hangs at his side too.

  “My father told me about what happened to you at Hudson . . . about the guard. He told me Caleb was yours . . . because of the rape.”

  Mattie shakes her head. “I was already pregnant when I was raped. Caleb was yours.”

  I can’t see Frank’s face but I can see his shoulders flinch as if she struck him. His voice cuts like steel through the dark barn. “You should have told me.”

  Mattie’s voice is tired. “You were gone for ten years, Frank. The few times you came home, you didn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

  “I couldn’t face you.” His voice cracks. He’s still angry but now it’s clear he’s angry at himself. “What happened to you happened because of me.”

  Mattie’s face crumples like a piece of old paper. “Oh, Frank, we were kids. None of it was our fault. It was my father and your father.”

  “I thought he’d made you hate me,” Frank says. “When you came home that Christmas you avoided me.”

  Mattie hesitates. “I did, but only because I was afraid. I had something to tell you and I didn’t know how you were going to react.”

  “You didn’t trust me,” Frank says bitterly. I don’t have to see the change from soft to hard in his face; I see it mirrored in Mattie’s.

  “I didn’t trust myself,” she says. “I didn’t know my own mind yet—what I wanted—and I had to know before I saw you. It wasn’t just about you and me. It was Caleb and . . .” There’s a pleading look on Mattie’s face, so naked that I want to look away.

  “And who?” Frank demands. “Who else mattered?”

  “Our daughter,” Mattie says. “I was pregnant. Again. Four months pregnant. I was afraid that once you knew I’d have to do what you wanted—keep it, end it. I needed to know what I wanted first.”

  Frank’s back is tense as a board. “But you never gave me a chance to weigh in.”

  “We fought. And then when I got back to the house . . . well, you know what happened. After, I wanted to tell you but you had left town.”

  “So you ended it,” he says, his voice flat.

  Mattie bristles. “As would have been my right—”

  “Are you going to give me a pro-choice speech now?”

  “—but as it happens, I didn’t. I went to St. Alban’s and had the baby, a little girl. Then I gave her up for adoption.”

  “Without letting me know?” Frank demands.

  “Without letting you know,” she says, looking contrite. “Which I can see now was wrong.”

  “Oh, can you? That’s very big of you, Mattea Lane. You were always . . . fair. I suppose you get that from your father. You get more and more like him, you know, as you get older. The same sanctimonious holier-than-thou superiority. Do you know that he pretended to my father that he didn’t know what was going on? All the cases my dad brought before him—scumbag druggies, trailer park meth heads, snotty professors’ kids—all those kids your father happily sent to Pine Crest Child Care, which was built on his land and which paid out dividends to your mother—”

  “To my mother?” I can hear the surprise in Mattie’s voice as well as distaste.

  “And mine,” Frank says impatiently. “That’s how it worked. The director of Pine Crest paid money into an account in both our mothers’ names. Your father pretended he didn’t know. He pretended he never inquired into his wife’s family’s money, that he left all that to his accountant. What willful blindness! As if he was Justice with a blindfold over his eyes. When what did it matter? It was all in trust for you anyway.”

  “But my mother had Alzheimer’s,” Mattie says. “She wouldn’t have known what she was doing.”

  “You tell yourself that, Mattie Lane,” he barks at her, his voice rising with pure anger now. “Your mother liked living in a big, fancy house and lording it over all the other women in the village. Do you think a judge’s salary was enough for that? She was happy to take the extra money and your father was happy to keep sending kids to Pine Crest. It was only when he thought the feds might be onto the scheme that he threatened to turn my father in.”

  “Oh, Frank,” Mattie says with a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, “my father spent a lifetime not paying attention to my mother. And as for sending those kids to Pine Crest, I think he honestly thought it was the best thing for them.” She wipes her face. “Don’t you see? We’re both victims of what our fathers told us.”

  I’d almost forgotten about Frank’s gun, so I startle when he raises his arm and points it at Mattie. “I’m no one’s victim.” His voice is so cold that I shiver and clutch Oren’s hand tight. My other hand, I realize, is empty.

  “No,” Mattie says, bending her knees until she can place her gun on the floor. “You’re not a victim; you’re a survivor. You’re not your father and I’m not my father either. I don’t need to see you in jail for what you did with your father or what you did to Davis. I just need to see Alice and Oren survive this night and go on their way. Then you can do to me what you like.”

  “Always the martyr,” Frank says. “Do you think I haven’t seen what you do? All the good works, living like a church mouse, sacrificing yourself for your derelicts and battered women, drug addicts and runaways. All so you can feel good about yourself, so you can lord it over the rest of us.”

  A muscle twitches in Mattie’s jaw. I’m ashamed to think that this is what I thought about her only twenty-four hours ago.

  “You’re right,” she says with a defiant tilt of her chin. “I’m a pathetic, vain old woman who likes people to think well of her. I’d never want it to come out that my father took money to send kids away. I agreed to your father’s terms easily enough thirty-four years ago; I’ll agree to yours now.”

  Frank steps forward, jamming the gun in Mattie’s face. I hear a metal click that could be the sound of him cocking back the trigger. “And why should I trust a fucking word you say after all the lies you’ve told me?” he spits out.

  “Because,” Mattie says without a blink or a cringe, holding her ground while keeping her voice impossibly gentle, “look at the life I’ve built on not trusting.”

  A tremor goes through his whole body and I think, yes, she’s got him. But then he shakes it off like a dog shaking water off its fur and he cocks the trigger—really cocks the trigger, I realize; that sound I heard earlier must have been something else. In fact, I hear it again now, coming from over our heads. I look up, but there’s not enough light to see. I can smell oil and metal, though, and hear the ancient, rusted pulley moving the hook, which judders and groans like an animal being led to slaughter, and then, impossibly, it swings back.

  Mattie screams and tries to pull Frank out of the way, but he resists her, turning to face—

  I have one last glimpse of his face as he turns and then he drops the flashlight and I am spared what happens next. A horrible thunk and Mattie’s scream and the smell of blood and iron. Even though it’s too dark to see I close my eyes and clutch Oren to me. Frank must have seen Caleb in that last moment, or why else would his face have opened like he was
looking into the face of the person he loved most in all the world?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Mattie

  FRANK IS TURNING back to me when the hook hits him and he falls into my arms. I catch him like I can save him, but I heard that blow to his head and know I can’t. Still, I let him down gently to the ground, where the flashlight lies and shows me his face. There is still a flicker of life in his eyes—and the oddest expression. Not horror. Not surprise. But something I haven’t seen on Frank’s face since the night we got caught in his father’s car. Love.

  “Oh, Frank!” I cry. There’s so much I want to tell him, so much I want to explain, but his eyes are already clouding over and his weight settles heavier into my arms. He’s gone.

  But what is left is that boy he once was. The hard lines of the man he became fall away. His jaw softens, the scowl lines around his eyes vanish. I’m looking down at the boy who coaxed me into his daddy’s car forty-five years ago.

  When he pulled up in the Stewart’s parking lot in his father’s cruiser, I told him he was crazy. Your father is the police chief, Frank Barnes, and this is government property.

  Stop being the judge’s daughter for five minutes, Mattie Lane, and get in. It’s too goddamned cold for the hollow tonight.

  He was right about that. There’d been a sudden cold snap the way it happened sometimes in the Catskills, banishing summer in one fell swoop. The air smelled like woodsmoke and apples. School would start in a week, and then there’d be no nights at the hollow anymore. I’d be stuck inside with my carping mother and judgmental father and the cold that was between them.

  Frank’s smile, though, made me feel warm. I got in the car. Where are we going? I asked as he peeled out of the Stewart’s lot.

  A surprise, he told me.

  We drove up into the mountains on an old lumber road, one I’d never been on. Frank had to stop and get out to unhook a chain strung across the road. NO TRESPASSING, a sign on it said. STATE LAND.