The Night Visitors(61)

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 she 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 . . .”