The Night Visitors(3)

“I could call Frank,” she says. I hear the hesitation in her voice. Has the woman told her something that makes Doreen think that it might not be a good idea to call our local chief of police—or has she just sensed that there might be some reason to keep the law out of it for now? Or maybe she’s just uneasy saying Frank’s name to me. Doreen has a theory that Frank Barnes has a crush on me. I’ve tried to tell her how wrong she is about that, but Doreen doesn’t buy it.

“I’ll pick them up and take them,” I say, already getting up and reaching for the light switch. The weight against my leg slides away as the light floods the room. Doreen is saying something to me, something about the woman that had troubled her or something that the woman had reminded her of, but I don’t catch it. I’m staring at the dog bed at the foot of the bed. I’d moved it there a couple of weeks ago because I kept tripping over Dulcie on my way to the bathroom. She’s lying there now. Fast asleep.

THERE’S NO TIME to dwell on the phantom pressure on my leg. Diabetic nerve pain? Menopausal hot flash? The early-onset Alzheimer’s that felled my mother by my age? More important, the woman and the boy will be arriving at the bus station in an hour. It’s only a fifteen-minute drive from the house, but that’s assuming the car starts and there’s no ice to scrape off the windows and the roads are plowed. While I’m pulling on leggings and jeans, thermal top and sweater, I go to the window to look out. The view of my backyard is a gray-and-white blur of ominous lumps and dark encroaching forest. I can’t tell if the snow in the yard is fresh or if the gray in the air is fog or falling snow. There’s no back porch light to catch the falling flakes. You should fix that, I hear my mother’s voice saying. You’re letting the place go to seed.

You should mind your own business, I tell her right back. She’s been dead for thirty-four years. When will her voice get out of my head?

Dulcie is up and shambling by my side by the time we reach the top of the stairs. One of these days we’re going to topple ass-over-teakettle together down the steep slippery wooden steps and one of us will wind up in rehab. I’m not laying any bets on who’ll survive the fall.

Downstairs, Dulcie heads straight for the back door to be let out as if it’s morning. I don’t like letting her out in the dark; the snow is deep out there and there are coyotes in the woods, but I don’t have time to walk her, so unless I want to come home to a puddle, I’d better.

“Stay close,” I tell her, as if she could still hear me, or would listen if she could. I step out with her and feel the sting of icy rain on my face. Crap. That won’t make for easy driving.

I turn on the kettle and get out two thermoses from the drying rack. There’s nothing but tea in my pantry and that won’t do for mother or son. There’s a box of donations in the trunk of my car, though, that I think had some hot chocolate in it. I should get the car started anyway.

I go out the front door and nearly slide right off the porch. I’ll have to salt that. Avoiding the broken third step on the way down is tricky (one of these days that will be the end of you, I hear my mother helpfully point out) and the ground below is white with newly fallen snow. There’s a good six inches on the car, all of it covered with a glaze of ice. The scraper’s in the trunk, which is also sealed by ice. I use my fist to break through the ice over the front door and dig through six inches of powder to find another coating of ice over the door handle. As if the weather gods had decided to layer their efforts to thwart me.

It’s not always about you, Mattea, says my mother’s reproving voice.

I go back inside, grab the kettle, and bring it back out to deice the car. It takes three trips to get the door open and another two for the trunk. When I turn the key in the ignition I hear the exasperated mutter of the fifteen-year-old engine. “I know,” I say, looking up at the religious medal hanging from the rearview mirror, “but there’s a boy and his mother waiting for us at a bus station.”

Whether from divine intervention or because the engine’s finally warm enough, the car starts. I turn the rear and front defrosters on high and thank Anita Esteban, the migrant farmworker who gave me the Virgin of Guadalupe medal fourteen years ago. When I told Anita that I didn’t believe in God she’d pressed the medal into my hand and told me that I should just say a prayer to whatever I did believe in. So I say my prayers to Anita Esteban, who left her drunk, no-good husband, raised three children on her own, went back to school, and earned a law degree. She’s what I believe in.

I get the box of donations out of the trunk and bring it back to the kitchen, where I find enough hot cocoa to make up a thermos. I’ll buy coffee at the Stewart’s. There are Snickers bars in the box too, which I put in my pack. Of course the sisters will feed them, but their larder tends to the bland and healthy. That boy will need something sweet.

I’m closing up the box when I spot a bag of dog treats. I take out two Milk-Bones and turn toward Dulcie’s bed . . . and see the open door. I feel my heart stutter: all this time I spent fussing with the car she’s been outside in the cold. I open the screen door to find her standing withers deep in the snow, head down, steam shrouding her old grizzled head.

“Oh, girl!” I cry, grabbing her by the ruff and pulling her inside. “I’m so sorry.”

Her hair is matted with ice. I wrap her in an old tattered beach towel, rubbing her dry, kneading balls of ice from her footpads. “Why didn’t you bark?” I demand, when what I really mean is How could I forget you? I rub her until the ice has melted and she has stopped trembling. Then I use the same towel to wipe my own face.