The Night Visitors

Chapter Eleven Alice

THE BOHO CHICK with the pretentious name at the front desk tries to tell me that Mattie’s gone to find Oren, but I can tell she’s lying. Her eyes slide over toward a door with a STAFF ONLY sign on it and she might as well be pointing to where Mattie is. She pushes a clipboard with some forms on it toward me, but I ignore her and head toward the door.

“Hey!” Boho calls.

A bearded guy wearing a THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE T-shirt comes around from the desk and gets in between me and the closed door. “Can I help you?” he asks. His breath smells like ramen noodles; there’s even some stuck in his beard. He reminds me of Scott, always trying to help, always putting his nose where he shouldn’t. Like going around to the house to check on me and Oren. That’s what must have happened. Scott went to the house and found Davis injured and mad as hell that Oren and I had gotten away. Knowing Scott, he would have tried to help, and knowing Davis—

That’s why Davis has Scott’s phone. It’s not Davis whose body the police found at the house; it’s Scott’s.

The room spins and I feel faint. Ramen guy reaches out a hand to steady me but I bat it away.

“You can get the hell out of my way,” I say, angry at this guy for looking like Scott when Scott is dead, “so I can get my son and get out of here.”

The Scott look-alike holds up both hands. “I can hear that you’re angry . . .”

“Can you, asshole? I’m so glad your ears are working. What about your feet? Can they walk your skinny ass out of my way?”

Fake Scott blinks at me. He’s not used to being talked to like this. He must be new to the job. He probably grew up in a nice house where nobody yelled and went to a nice college where everybody talked about “safe spaces.” Like Scott. Well, there are no safe spaces in this world. Certainly this place isn’t, for all it’s called Sanctuary.

I lean closer to Fake Scott and shout right into his ramen-stinking beard. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE!!!” He’s so startled he jumps, and I use that moment to push past him and open the door, behind which I find a flight of stairs. I can hear Oren’s voice coming from above. I take the stairs two at a time, my heart pounding. Oren’s voice sounds happy, but I know that he’s able to pretend to be happy when he’s not. I’ve taught him that, after all.

I find Oren sitting cross-legged on the floor with Mattie and another woman. He’s got a toy Yoda in one hand and a Luke in the other. The Luke toy I recognize, but the Yoda’s unfamiliar. He lost his Yoda before Thanksgiving when he left it in his cubby at school and someone took it. He looks really happy, not faking-it happy. And Mattie is glowing. The other woman—a skinny librarian type with dark curly hair—looks a little more reserved. She’s the only one who looks up when I come in.

“You must be Alice,” she says, getting stiffly to her feet. “We talked on the phone last night.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Doreen, right? Thanks for your help and all, but we gotta go.” I hold out my hand for Oren and he looks up at me.

“Look who I found,” he says, holding up the Yoda. “Remember I said he had gone back to Dagobah? He was waiting for me in the swamp all along!”

He’s beaming at me, not mad anymore. It’s like finding his lost toy—or one like it—has made up for everything that happened.

“That’s great, buddy. Let’s pack up your things now. We’ve bothered these nice ladies long enough.” I’m trying to calculate how much time we have. The number from the pharmacy would have shown up on Scott’s phone just now. And even if it didn’t, all Davis would have to do is call back to find out that I’d called from a CVS in Delphi, New York. He could be driving here right now . . . in fact, he sounded like he was already on the road.

I look at Mattie and see her wipe her eyes. What’s gotten into her? Doreen is also giving her a strange look, but then she looks back at me. “No bother at all. It was a treat to take a break from all this boring paperwork”—she waves her hand at a very messy desk—“but I did have time to look up a shelter west of here in Oneonta.”

“How far is that?” I ask. “Can we take a bus there?”

“It’s about an hour more on the same bus you were on. I think there’s one leaving at four thirty.”

“Sister Martine has already made arrangements to have them moved tomorrow,” Mattie says. Her voice is strange—flat somehow—and she keeps her eyes on Oren and that silly green Yoda toy.

“I think we’d better leave before that,” I say. “We’ve taken up enough of your time. Only . . .” I feel sick when I realize what I’ve got to ask. “I—I don’t have the bus fare.”

“We can get you a voucher for the trip,” Doreen says. “Can’t we, Mattie?”

Mattie tears her eyes away from Oren and blinks at Doreen. What’s wrong with her? She looks like she’s high.

Before she can answer, Oren chimes in. “I don’t think the buses are running anymore. On account of the storm.”

“What storm?” I say, but when I look out the window I see what he means. Curdled gray clouds are massing over the mountains to the west.

“We are supposed to get a storm tonight,” Doreen says, putting on a pair of glasses that dangle from a beaded chain around her neck. “A nor’easter. Let me call Trailways.”

She takes out a cell phone and taps at the screen. While she’s doing that Mattie leans toward Oren. “Tell me again how you found Yoda.”

Really? I want to demand. That’s what you want to know while we’re running for our lives? When Davis could be driving up the Thruway right now?

“I told you,” Oren says, his voice edging toward impatience. “I used the Force.”

I roll my eyes. Ever since we watched those movies that’s been Oren’s explanation for everything. How did you get away from those bullies? I used the Force to distract them. How did Davis’s beer bottles all explode in the cooler? I used the Force to break them so he wouldn’t get drunk again.

Mattie seems to be taking him seriously, though. “And how does that feel?” she asks. “When you use the Force?”

Oh, for God’s sake. I go over to the window, where Doreen is listening to her phone. I hear Oren’s answer, though. “Sometimes I just feel like a . . . tingle and things . . . happen. Or sometimes I hear a voice.”

I feel a tingle myself, but it’s only the chill leaking in through the old wooden window casements. It’s gotten colder since this morning. The thought of getting on a bus and heading west into those mountains, under that leaden sky, makes me want to crawl into a hole.

“Did you hear a voice telling you where this Yoda was?” Mattie asks.

My ears prick at the question. Is she asking Oren if he hears voices? Does she think he’s psycho? I look down at the cluttered desk, at the titles of the books stacked there. Mental Health First Aid USA. Choosing to Live: How to Defeat Suicide Through Cognitive Therapy. These women have been trained to detect mental illness. They probably spend all their free time just hoping to make a juicy diagnosis. Does Mattie think that Oren is crazy?

“Yes, I heard—” Oren begins.

“Oren has a very active imagination,” I cut in. “He likes to pretend, don’t you, baby?”

“I’m not a baby,” he says, annoyed. Davis used to use that nickname for him.

“Well, he was right about the buses,” Doreen says, putting down her phone. I’m relieved I’ve distracted Oren from telling Mattie about his imaginary friends. All we need now is for her to get it into her head that he’s crazy and try to have him put away. “Trailways has suspended service for the rest of the day and there’s a weather alert for Ulster, Greene, and Delaware Counties. High winds and accumulations up to twenty-four inches.”

“Wow!” Oren says, his eyes lighting up. “That’s a lot of snow to shovel. We’d better get back to your house now, Mattie.”

“We have an arrangement with the Best Western in Kingston,” Doreen says. “We can put you up there for the night.”

“That’ll be a lonely, cold place in a storm, Dory,” Mattie says. “I can keep them one more night.”

Doreen frowns. “Maybe Alice and Oren would like to go down to the food pantry and pick up some supplies,” she says in a pinched voice.

“We could use some more pancake mix,” Oren says, getting up. He tucks the Yoda in his coat pocket and shoulders his backpack. “And chocolate chips.”

Mattie grins at him. “See if you can get us some canned beans and tomatoes. I’ll make you my four-alarm chili for dinner.”

Oren smiles back at her and then turns to me. “Make it three-alarm. Alice doesn’t like it too spicy.” He reaches out to take my hand and something melts in me. He’s excited at the idea of hunkering down for a big storm in a big old house full of good food. This is why we were leaving Davis: so we could take pleasure in ordinary things again without the fear of his tantrums hovering over us.

I take Oren’s hand and squeeze it. “Sure, buddy, let’s stock up. We’ll get on the road tomorrow.”

What choice do we have? I tell myself that if Davis does make it up here, he only knows we were at the CVS. He doesn’t know where Mattie lives. How would he ever find us way out in the woods? I tell myself that and try to believe it.