The Night Visitors(32)

“Good idea, buddy.” I get up and dump the two cans of beans in a big pot. I add canned tomatoes and a pound of frozen chopped meat, thinking through what Oren’s told me. If Alice was away in rehab he must be afraid of her leaving him again. “Don’t worry,” I say as I rinse the two cans. “We won’t get separated. No one’s going anywhere in this storm.”

Oren looks out the window above the kitchen table. The snow is coming down fast and hard now, the wind blowing gusts that completely obliterate the world outside. Drifts are mounding up along the bottom sills and condensation is creeping across the panes. It feels as if we are slowly being sealed off from the outside world. “I guess no one could get here either,” Oren says.

“Not unless they had four-wheel drive and a snow plow.”

“My dad has a pickup truck.”

So it’s his father he’s worried about, which means he doesn’t know his father is dead. Would it be better if he did? Before I can decide, Alice bursts into the kitchen. “Do you know that half the windows on the first floor don’t lock?”

“Is that so?” I ask in my calm counselor’s voice. Her pupils are dilated and she’s white as a ghost. Is she high? Did she disappear in town to score a fix? “I bet more than half of them don’t even open. It’s an old house, Alice. Wood swells. Metal rusts. Things break.” Shit happens, I’m tempted to add. “The last thing I’m worried about is locking the windows. We’re in the country. Folks don’t even lock their doors.”

“Well, folks are stupid,” she retorts.

“Mattie says no one can get here through the storm,” Oren tells her. “Not unless they have four-wheel drive and a plow.”

“So I suppose no serial killers or rapists have those?” she snaps back.

I raise my brows and cut my eyes over to Oren. The kitchen, which had felt warm and cozy a moment ago, suddenly feels cramped and airless. I listen to the furnace roaring below in the basement, the ticking of the water flowing through the old pipes, and the creak of the old house’s joints in the gusting wind. “No one’s coming up that road in this,” I say with more certainty than I feel. The fact is I’m beginning to worry that no one could make it up the hill. What if we need help? What if Alice OD’s? “What we do need to worry about, though, is losing power. I’m going to go check on flashlights and candles and wood for the stove. Why don’t you sit down, Alice, and help Oren peel potatoes. We’d better get dinner on while we’ve still got power.”

I hand Alice my peeler and she looks at me like she’d like to use it to gouge out my eye. Maybe I should have thought of a different chore for her. But then she sits down and begins swiping at a potato with shaking hands. She’s even worse at it than Oren. I leave them, hoping Alice doesn’t cut herself, and remind myself to check for first-aid supplies.

I find candles and flashlights in the dining room sideboard along with the first-aid kit. I check the kit for Narcan. I picked up the nasal spray when I did a drug awareness course in Kingston last fall. What have I gotten myself into? I sit down on the one chair without books on it. Seeing Oren with that stupid Yoda really rattled me. I was sure it was the same one Caleb buried thirty-four years ago. It had seemed like a sign—

Christ, I sound like one of the new age interns! A sign of what? That Oren is somehow in communication with Caleb? Have I brought Oren back here so he can contact Caleb? And what purpose would that serve? What would I say to Caleb after all these years?

And what would he say to me?

Of all the stupid reasons for bringing this woman and boy into my home—misguided charity, anger at Frank, making amends, liberal guilt, my problems with authority—this supernatural hoo-ha is the craziest. And the most pathetic.

It’s time you began thinking clearly and taking responsibility for your actions.

My father’s voice this time, so clear that I look toward his study door, expecting to find it open and him standing in the doorway. But of course the door is locked. As I told Alice, wood swells, metal rusts, things break. I’ve gleefully let this house rot around me, but I’ve carefully oiled and preserved the lock on my father’s study door. I keep it locked from the outside. To keep people out, I tell myself, but sometimes I wonder if it’s to keep something locked in.

I listen to the house. The furnace roars, the pipes tick, the joints groan . . . and two voices murmur in the kitchen. I get up, fish the key out of its crystal bowl, and open the study door. I shut it behind me and use the key to lock the door from the inside, then cross to my father’s desk and sit down in his chair. In front of me is the seal of New York pen set with its figures of Justice and Liberty. I reach into one of Justice’s scales and retrieve a small key that I use to open the bottom drawer. Inside, resting on a stack of file folders stamped with the same figures of Justice and Liberty that stand on my father’s desk, is my father’s Winchester revolver, which he inherited from his father.

I hesitate. Doreen would be appalled to know I even have a gun in the house, let alone that I’m thinking of taking it out of the only locked room. With a child spending the night. But then, if I need it . . .

I pick up the gun, startling at the coldness of it, and check that the safety’s on and put it in my cardigan pocket. I close the drawer and lock it.

Before I stand I notice the pattern in the dust on the top of the desk. This morning the mouse tracks looked like a random spattering of stars, but now they’ve become a constellation. A constellation I recognize.