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I didn't expect that, of course. For a moment it seemed as if some invisible person had opened it, some ghost. Surely, the sound of it opening would attract either Duncan or his mother, I thought, and I waited to hear footsteps or voices. There was nothing but the same deep, echoing silence.

"Duncan?" I called. "Are you home? It's me, Alice. Duncan?"

I waited and listened. At first I heard nothing and thought I should simply turn around and leave to go to the cafe. My aunt was probably wondering where I was by now. Suddenly though, I distinctly heard the sound of someone crying. It wasn't Duncan. It was a female, so I imagined it was his mother. Why was she crying?

I stepped a little farther into the house. Despite it being the late morning, it was very dark inside. All the shades were drawn closed on all the windows I could see, and there were no lights on anywhere inside. There was a sharp odor, the smell of strong disinfectants. From what I could see, there were no rugs or any carpets. The dull wood floors were surely the original, I thought. All the furniture 1 saw as I walked through the entryway and into the downstairs area looked as old as the house.

The loud gong of a grandfather's clock right beside me spun me around. I gasped and listened as it marked the hour and resonated throughout the house.

"Duncan?" I called again.

The sobbing was coming from upstairs.

I approached the stairway slowly. When I reached it, I heard this monotonous buzzing and looked down right to a small table in the hallway, where a phone sat, the receiver clearly off the hook.

"Hello?" I called up the stairway. "I'm looking for Duncan. Anyone here, please?"

The sobbing stopped. I waited, gazing back at the still-opened front door to make sure I had a quick avenue of escape when and if I wanted it. I could hear the floorboards above me creaking. I held my breath and waited, and then she appeared at the top of the stairway.

Duncan's mother had her dark brown hair tightly tied in a bun at the back of her head. She wore a light blue bathrobe but was barefoot. She looked barely five feet three or four and quite petite in the robe, which appeared to be a size too big or perhaps even a man's robe. When she stepped forward, the dark shadow over her face lifted, as if she'd been removing a mask.

"What do you want?" she asked me.

"I'm looking for Duncan," I said. "My name is Alice--"

"I know who you are. You're related to the people who own that cafe in town, the one he goes to."

"Yes. Is he at home?"

"No," she said, wiping her cheeks with a tissue. She started down the stairs and paused about midway. "He's gone," she said.

I can imagine why, I thought, but I dared to ask anyway.

"Why?"

She smiled weakly.

Here it comes, I thought. She's going to unload all the blame at me, send it cascading down the stairway in the hope it will drown me in guilt.

"He blames me," she said instead.

"He should," I fired up at her. "Why did you make me seem so terrible? Why were you so cruel? You don't know anything about me."

She stared and then continued her descent. As she drew closer, I saw she had a pretty face with diminutive features that actually made her look very young. There was nothing hard or coarse in her eyes either. They were a soft hazel brown.

"I don't know what you mean," she said. "I wasn't happy with his staying out all night at your relatives' home without at least calling to tell me, but I was happy that he finally found a friend."

I recoiled as if she had spit at me.

"What?"

"For a long time I've been worried and terribly concerned about Duncan. I tried getting him to socialize with young people at our church, but he refused. He wouldn't even talk to them, and he never wanted to do much with anyone at school. That's why I was so torn about his staying out all night and not calling to at least let me know where he was. I didn't want to discourage him from making a friend, but he shouldn't have done something so irresponsible.

"You're right. I don't know anything about you, but I know who your relatives are," she continued. "They're nice people, hardworking people."

I shook my head. What was she saying? "But when I called here for him the other day, you called me Satan. You said, 'Get thee behind me, Satan,' and yo

u hung up on me," I said.