The Night Visitors(51)
“Yeah, whatever, you women always worry about shit like that.”
I catch the hint of a smile before Mattie turns away with the lantern. She places it carefully on a counter two feet from the woodstove, then kneels beside the basket of wood and begins putting logs, paper, and kindling into the stove. Travis and Lisa had a woodstove and it was always a bitch to light, but Mattie’s got a real nice fire going in a few minutes.
“I could get the chili from the stove,” I offer, itching to move around.
“That’s nice of you, Allie,” Davis says, “but I feel better with only one of you gals up and about.”
“I’ll get it,” Mattie says, standing up and brushing wood shavings from her pants. “Is that okay with you, Davis? Can I go to the stove and get the chili?”
“Knock yourself out,” Davis says, grinning. He’s enjoying ordering around one woman while I sit captive beside him. He leans back, tipping the chair off its front two legs, resting his hand with the gun on the table.
“So,” Mattie says as she puts the chili on top of the woodstove and stirs it. “You certainly made good time getting here.”
“Ha!” Davis barks. “I was already on the Thruway when I got Allie’s call. I figured she’d head upstate. She was always yammering about the crap foster homes she lived in up here, so I figured she must have some connections. When I got into town I spotted that charity place on Main Street right off the bat and figured she’d have gone there. I went in, pretending to be shopping at the free store, and overheard a couple of college kids talking about Mattie Lane taking a DV case home. Did you know you can google a person and find their address on the internet?” He taps his forehead. “Smart, huh?”
Mattie nods. “I can certainly see where Oren gets his brains. He’s such a bright, sweet boy. I hated to see him land in a shelter.”
“You’re right there,” Davis says, thumping his chest with his hand. He’s left the gun lying on the table. “He sure as hell didn’t get his smarts from his idiot meth-head mother, who didn’t have enough brains to keep herself from OD’ing.”
“Oren mentioned his mother was away a lot. Rehab, I guessed. It must have been tough being left with a kid on your own like that.”
“Tough?” Davis slaps the table, the two front legs of his chair hitting the floor, the gun jumping a few inches in my direction. “You don’t know the half of it. Your lot were no help. When I signed up for the food bank I got a lot of nosy questions about bruises on Oren’s arms, like kids aren’t always getting themselves scraped up.”
“That must have been painful,” Mattie says gently, “to feel suspected of hurting your own child when you were only trying to do your best by him.”
“No shit, Sherlock!” Davis says, leaning back again. “You social worker types, you don’t trust men. A single mother, you’re all over her trying to help, but a single dad? You look at him like he’s a pervert.”
“I always tell my volunteers and interns to check their biases at the door, to give everyone who comes to us the benefit of the doubt. But it can be hard—seeing all the things we do—not to sometimes suspect the worst in people.”
“I get that,” Davis says, nodding his head. “Hey, you got any beer?”
Mattie turns from the stove and smiles. “I think I’ve got a couple of Coors stashed in the back of the fridge.”
“No kidding? I would have figured you for a white wine kind of gal.”
“Nah,” Mattie says, walking to the refrigerator and opening it. It’s dark inside and I’m hoping that she has a gun stashed there with all the bottles she’s rattling around. “I like a cold beer in summer and a snort of whiskey in winter. Here—” She pulls out a bottle and brings it into the light of the table, twisting the cap open and handing the bottle to Davis. While Davis leans forward to take it from her, Mattie cuts her eyes over to where the gun lies on the table and then to me. “I bet that chili’s real hot now,” she says to Davis, still looking at me. “Are you ready for a bowl?”
“Damn yes,” he says, leaning back in his chair, the front legs coming off the floor again. I always tell Oren not to do that because the chair could slip out from underneath him.
I look back at Mattie. She’s ladling chili into a bowl, steam rising up from it. It is hot. She’s going to throw the chili in Davis’s face to give me a chance to grab the gun. As she turns from the stove I nod at her to let her know I understand and that I’m on board.
“You know, Mattie,” Davis says as she approaches. “You’re not so bad—”
I lay my hand on the table and tense, ready to grab the gun.
“—it’s too bad your father was such a corrupt asshole.”
“What?” I say, and then curse myself for saying anything.
Davis looks at me and then at my hand. He rocks forward and snatches up the gun. “Your new friend didn’t tell you about that, Allie?” he says. “Her father was a corrupt judge. I found out while I was poking around his office before. He was being investigated for taking kickbacks to put juvies in a private detention center owned by one of his cronies.” Davis laughs. “Ironic, huh? He could have been one of the judges who locked you up, Allie. Only he killed himself and his family before the scandal could come out.”