Page 77 of The Midnight Hour
Daniel wipes his cheeks again. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He feels, with a surprising certainty, that they’re going to make it back. He will not let himself have done something so despicable as leaving a baby to die without it meaning something. He nods, makes himself turn to Sam and smile. “I’m fine, Sam,” he says, and then he sets his face toward the road, the future, bleak as it seems, and keeps driving.
TWENTY-NINE
ALEX
It takes me three weeks to decide. At first, I don’t even consider it. I’m not going to leave Mattie, it’s as simple as that, and she clearly won’t be moved. She tries to move me, but it turns out I’m just as stubborn as she is.
“Mom…it’s not like we’d be saying goodbye forever,” she huffs in exasperation, as we peel potatoes in the kitchen and outside it snows steadily. It’s March, and Kyle and Winn are leading the maple syrup making. “If the world is getting back to normal, at least in North Dakota, you’ll be able to come back or I’ll be able to visit. We might even be able to email, or, I don’t know, Skype.” She rolls her eyes, but I can’t share her certainty.
“You and Kyle,” I say instead, because it’s a conversation we need to have. “Is that a thing?”
“Athing? Mom. Ew.”
I put down my peeler. “Mattie, I’m serious.”
She stares at me for a moment. “Fine, then, so am I,” she says. “And yes, we’re a thing. But we’re not…like, don’t give methatlecture, okay? I don’t think I can take it.” She rolls her eyes again, even more theatrically. “It’s early days. And he’s not the reason I’m staying. I just…like it here. I liked it at the cottage,too. And I really, really don’t want to live in North Dakota.” She gives me a glimmer of a smile then, along with a tilt of her chin, and I realize my defiant Mattie is still there; she’s just choosing something different. Something right.
And I need to, too. I talk to Sam, who has been on the radio with Vicky and has learned about the college that is starting, with six hundred students.
“Sixhundred,” he marvels, and I realize how hungry he is for socializing, for friends.Ruby, too, loner that she’s been, lights up at the thought of a school with real grades, a science class, an art room. Things we thought were gone forever but have now—maybe—been given back to us.
It occurs to me then that maybe I’m being selfish, insisting that we stay because I don’t want to lose Mattie. And maybe I won’t lose her even if I go. The thought is terrifying, but it also feels weirdly right. I can almost hear Daniel whisper his encouragement, spurring me on.
Another week passes, of sleepless night and anxious days, wondering whether I’m the worst mother in the world, or just a pragmatic one, or maybe even a noble one. Vicky gets more reports on the radio about the new settlements in North Dakota—they will be self-sustaining in terms of food; they already have a lignite coal mine back in production. The internet is up, too, and the water and sewer systems are working. Everything feels like a miracle. “It’s like pioneers,” I told Vicky, “but with infrastructure.”
I ask Mattie again if she’s sure she wants to stay.
“Yes, I’m sure.” She sounds exasperated, almost amused. “Mom, come on. Stop nagging me.”
“I haven’t exactly been nagging?—”
“I really won’t be mad if you go.” Her voice gentles. “I think you should. And Sam and Ruby, too. They want to. I know they do.”
I’m still sitting on the fence about it all when Stewartapproaches me. I’m down on the dock, staring at the lake, which is now breaking up from the ice, the loud cracks of it echoing across its expanse. Dark water swirls and surges and huge chunks of ice bob in its eddies.
I smile a cautious greeting because, even though Stewart took Daniel’s funeral and was so kind about it, I haven’t really gotten to know him. Maybe I’m keeping my distance for a reason; I don’t want his pious sympathy, and I also don’t want to be pushed into anything, which says more about me than him, I know, but I still feel it.
“I’ve heard you have a big decision to make,” he remarks, his kindly face creasing into a smile, as he comes to stand with me on the edge of the dock.
I eye him a little warily. “Yes…”
“If you want to talk about it…” He leaves that suggestion open, and I manage to give him an apologetic smile.
“I’m not sure how much there is to say. I’m still thinking about everything.”
He nods equably, not quite taking it as the brush-off I meant it to be. “There’s a speech by Martin Luther KingJr.,” he remarks after a moment, which seems to come completely out of left field. “A sermon, actually. He gave it in Chicago to the Women’s Auxiliary.”
“Okay…” I wait for more, because clearly he must be going somewhere with this.
“It starts with him declaring that it’s midnight in our world today.” He pauses, his face tilted toward the sky, and then quotes, “‘Man is experiencing a darkness so deep that he can hardly see which way to turn. The best minds of today are saying that our civilization stands at the midnight of its revolving cycle.’”
“I’d say that’s pretty much true today,” I remark after a pause when he seems as if he isn’t going to say anything more.It’s certainly a dark and dangerous world out there. Midnight, as it were.
“He goes on,” Stewart continues, “to say that it is midnight in the social order, the psychological order, the moral order. And in this midnight hour, the darkness is interrupted by a knock on the door.” Another pause. “King was talking about the world knocking on the door of the church. But I see it another way, too. The only way out of that darkness, any darkness, is to open the door…to whatever is there, waiting for you.”
I stare at him for a moment, trying to figure out what he’s trying to say. “So you think I should go to North Dakota?” I finally ask, surprised he’d give me such one-sided advice. What about the community here? What about Mattie? And Kyle and Phoebe too, and even Nicole and Ben, who are both choosing to stay? I’d be leaving them all behind, and for what?
“I think,” Stewart responds, “you should open that door.”
