The Night Visitors(63)

“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.

You’ve just added trespassing to your crimes, young man, I said.

I plan to plead insanity. You’ve driven me crazy, Mattie Lane.

I punched him in the arm and told him that was the corniest thing I’d ever heard. But I couldn’t stop smiling the whole way up that rutted unpaved road. It felt like we were the only two people in the world, alone on that road with the trees arching over us as if they were shielding us from the rest of the world.

And then suddenly the road opened up. Frank braked and we came to a squealing stop just feet away from a sheer drop. In front of us lay a dark expanse like the void of outer space. Then Frank killed the headlights and that void filled with a million stars. It felt like we were in a spaceship gazing out on the far reaches of the universe. It felt like we were the first two people to step foot on the continent. It felt like Frank Barnes had just handed me my own private galaxy.

I knew when I saw it I had to show it to you, Frank said. It’s like—

The best present anyone has ever given me, I said.

Frank didn’t say anything for a minute and when he did his voice was hoarse. I wanted you to remember this . . . in case my father makes good on his threat to send me to military school—

He won’t! I’ll make my dad convince him not to.