“Could he have fallen through the ice?” Alice says, shaking my arm.
“There aren’t any cracks in the ice,” I say, staring at the frozen pond. Though the snow is disturbed below my feet: flaked with moss and soil as if someone has been digging here. I step over the place in the snow where the roots of the tree are showing, remembering Caleb’s trusting face looking up at me. Let’s take Luke and Yoda home, buddy.
Just Luke, Caleb had answered. Yoda lives here. We have to leave him here in case Luke needs to come back for help.
I’d meant to come back later and rescue Yoda before some other kid took him, but I’d had a fight with my father that night and gone back to the city without finding Yoda or even saying goodbye to Caleb. He’d been so angry when my mother told him I was leaving that he’d run away the next morning before I left.
Okay, I’d shouted into the woods around our house, have it your way.
I shake my head of the memory and am glad to see a clue to the present-day missing child’s whereabouts. “Look—I see footprints going back up on the other side.” I walk briskly up the slope, ignoring Alice’s wheezing behind me. She’s a smoker, I guess, although I haven’t seen her light up since she’s been here. She must try not to smoke around Oren. I give her credit for that, but it’s got to be hard going without, especially given all the tension she’s under right now. She probably snuck off to have a smoke while I was in Stewart’s.
When we get to the top of the hollow we’re in the cemetery. I check the Lane family mausoleum with its niche where Caleb liked to hide. I pause only a moment beside the statue of the woman with the bowed head that marks Caleb’s grave, but Alice notices the name on the stone anyway. “Crap, is that your brother? He was only—”
“Ten,” I say.
“How did he die?” she asks, her voice hushed. As usual when people ask me how Caleb died, I can hear beneath the shock and pity a hint of prurient curiosity. How could you have been so unlucky and stupid to lose a ten-year-old boy? Tell me so I can be sure I never make the same mistake.
“Carbon monoxide poisoning,” I reply. “There was a leak while they were all asleep—my mother and father and Caleb. I was out . . .”
“That’s awful,” she says, and then, maybe realizing she and Oren are staying in the same house where it happened, “What causes . . . ?”
“A faulty furnace,” I reply, turning to her with my mouth stretched into a rictus grin. “But don’t worry. I had the furnace replaced afterward.”
I leave her gaping at Caleb’s grave and head across the cemetery toward Main Street, where I dodge a snow plow with obnoxious fake antlers on its hood. I climb the sagging, rotten steps of Sanctuary. When my father’s law offices were in this building he used to sit out here on the wide, elegant porch drinking bourbon and smoking cigars with his cronies—Hank Barnes, Frank’s father and the town chief of police before him; Maynard Clay, who owned most of the land in the county; Sam Abbott, the county medical examiner; Carl Shapiro, district circuit judge in Albany—and jawing about the sorry state of the world and kids today and permissive parents. All of those men are dead now, but I can still catch a whiff of bourbon and cigars and hear the old men’s querulous smug voices.
Now the porch is home to a sagging old sofa and bins of toys. The toys are there for kids to play with while their parents are inside filling out forms for food stamps, complaining about their spouses, or just taking a much-needed break. And when I open the front door the intern at the front desk—Arianna or Andrea or something like that—looks up at me and says, “Oh good, Doreen’s looking for you. Did you let your phone run down again? There’s a kid upstairs with her who says he’s staying with you?”
The upward lilt in Alana’s—that’s it—voice could be millennial speech or incredulity that I’ve violated Sanctuary’s protocol and taken a client home. I don’t care. I cross the wide-planked floor in three assertive strides and lean over the counter to speak in Alana’s ear. “There’s a woman right behind me who is looking for her son. Tell her he’s fine and that Mattie’s gone to get him. Sit her down and give her some forms to fill out.”
“Wh-which forms?” Alana asks, her kohl-rimmed eyes bugging out. Another volunteer, a young college student from Bard, looks up from the food pantry.
“Myers-Briggs personality tests for all I care. Just keep her busy.”
Alana smiles. The interns all love drama. She’s smart too, despite the multiple piercings, millennial speak, and name that sounds like a yoga pose; she’ll figure out a way to detain Alice.
I open the door that says STAFF ONLY. As I’m closing it I hear the front door open and Alice’s voice demanding where that woman Mattie Lane’s gotten to. I take the stairs two at a time. I should have just enough time to call Frank from the office phone (Alana is right; I did forget to charge my phone last night) and then Doreen will help me keep Alice and Oren here until Frank arrives. It’s for the best. Alice is clearly not stable. If Oren did stab his father and he’s tried as a juvenile, I can testify at his hearing. The juvenile detention centers aren’t as bad as they used to be. Doreen and I could make sure he ends up at one of the better ones, and Doreen will help me keep track of Oren in the system. Just because I’m turning him in to the police does not mean I am giving up on him. If I’d told Frank my suspicions about what was going on in my own home thirty-four years ago, Caleb might still be alive.
When I reach the top of the stairs I hear Oren’s voice. He’s happily telling a story about Luke Skywalker’s training as a Jedi. When I round the corner I find Oren sitting at Doreen’s overflowing desk, a plate of cookies and a glass of milk perched precariously amid casework files and training manuals. When Doreen looks up my heart swells. She’s in her late fifties with dark bags under her eyes, gray in her dark curly hair, and a stain on her faded sweater, but to me she looks beautiful. How did I ever think I could do all this without her?
“Here’s Mattie now,” she says in a bright, calm voice. Only I would hear the strain beneath its surface. “I told you she’d be here soon—sooner if she’d learn to charge her phone.”
Oren laughs—he’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine—and holds up his hand. He’s grasping a green toy in his fist. “Oh good, now we can go back to your house. We need to rescue Han Solo from the ice caves and I found someone who can help.” He waggles the toy in his hand.
As I walk toward him I feel as if I’m floating two feet off the floor. The toy in his hand is so old the green paint has flaked away and one of its long ears has chipped off. But I recognize it. A late-1970s-model Yoda. The same one that Caleb buried in the hollow thirty-four years ago.
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—