“I saw the Man Wolf, too,” said Susie. “I really did. My mom and dad don’t believe me.” There was a flash of anger in her small face, and she glanced uneasily at Pastor George who nodded to her.
“Ah, that’s how you were rescued,” said Reuben. “That’s how you got away from the man.”
“Yes, that’s what happened, Mr. Golding,” said Pastor George. She dropped her voice, glancing anxiously at the door. “It was the Man Wolf who rescued her. I saw him too. I spoke to him. Both of us did.”
“I see,” said Reuben. “But there wasn’t anything about it in the papers. I didn’t see anything on television.”
“That’s because we didn’t want anybody to know,” said Susie. “We didn’t want anybody to capture him and put him in a cage and hurt him.”
“Yes, right, I see. I understand,” said Reuben.
“We wanted to give him time to get away,” said Pastor George. “To clear out of this part of California. We wanted to figure some way not to ever tell anybody. But Susie needs to tell people, Mr. Golding. She needs to talk about what happened to her. And when we tried to tell her parents, well, they didn’t believe us! Either of us!”
“Of course she needs to talk about it,” said Reuben. “You both do. I understand. If anyone should understand, I should.”
“He’s real, isn’t he, Mr. Golding?” asked Susie. She swallowed and the tears came up in her eyes, and suddenly there was a listlessness in her face as if she’d lost the thread.
Reuben took her by her shoulders. “Yes, he’s real, darling,” he said. “I saw him and so did a lot of other people, downstairs in the big room. Many people have seen the Man Wolf. He’s real all right. You don’t ever have to doubt your senses.”
“They don’t believe anything I say,” she said in a small voice.
“They believe about the bad man who took you, don’t they?” he asked.
“Yes, they do,” said Pastor George. “His DNA was all over the trailer. They’ve connected him to other disappearances, too. The Man Wolf saved Susie’s life, that’s perfectly obvious. That man killed two other little girls.” She stopped suddenly and glanced at Susie with concern. “But you see, when her parents didn’t believe her about the Man Wolf, and others didn’t—. Well, she doesn’t want to talk anymore about any of it, not any of it at all.”
“He did save me, Mr. Golding,” said Susie.
“I know that he did,” said Reuben. “I mean I believe every single word you’re saying. Let me tell you something, Susie. Lots of people don’t believe in the Man Wolf. They don’t believe me. They don’t believe the people who were with me here, the other people who saw him. We have to live with that, that they don’t believe us. But we have to tell what we saw. We can’t let the secrets fester inside us. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, I know what it means,” said Pastor George. “But you see, we don’t want to trumpet it to the media either. We don’t want people hunting him down, killing him.”
“No,” said Susie. “And they will. They’ll get him and kill him.”
“Well, listen, honey,” Reuben said. “I know you’re telling the truth, both of you. And don’t you ever forget that I saw him too. Look, Susie, I wish you were old enough for e-mail. I wish—.”
“I am old enough,” said Susie. “I can use my mom’s computer. I can write down my e-mail address for you right now.”
Pastor George took a pen out of her pocket. There was a writing pad already on the table.
Quickly Susie began to carve out the letters of her e-mail, her teeth biting into her lower lip as she wrote. Reuben watched, quickly entering the e-mail into his iPhone.
“I’m e-mailing you now, Susie,” he said, his thumbs working. “I won’t say anything that anybody else would understand.”
“It’s okay. My mom doesn’t know my e-mail address,” said Susie. “Only you do and Pastor George.”
Pastor George wrote out her e-mail and gave it to Reuben. At once he recorded it and fired an e-mail off to her address.
“Okay. We’re gonna e-mail, you and me. And any time you have to talk about what you saw, you e-mail me—and look.” He took the pen. “This is my phone number, the number of this phone here. I’ll e-mail this to you too. You call me. You understand? And you, too, Pastor George.” He tore off the sheet of paper and gave it to the woman. “Those of us who’ve seen these things have to stick together.”
“Thank you so much,” Susie said. “I told the priest in Confession and he didn’t believe me either. He said maybe I imagined it.”
Pastor George shook her head. “She just doesn’t want to talk anymore about any of it now, you see, and that’s no good. That’s just no good.”
“Really. Well, I know a priest who’ll believe you,” said Reuben. He was still holding his iPhone in his left hand. Quickly, he texted Jim. “My bedroom upstairs now, Confession.” But what if Jim couldn’t hear his phone over the music downstairs? What if his phone was shut off? He was four hours away from his parish. He might have shut it off.
“She needs to be believed,” said Pastor George. “I can live with people’s skepticism. The last thing I want is the press on my doorstep anyway. But she does need to talk about all of what happened to her, and a lot—and that’s going to be true for a long time.”
“You’re right,” he said. “And when you’re Catholic, you want to talk to your priest about the things that matter most to you. Well, some of us do.”
Pastor George gave a little shrug and an offhand gesture of acceptance.
There was a knock at the door. It couldn’t be Jim, he thought, not this quickly.
But when he opened the door, Jim was there all right, and behind him Elthram stood leaning against the wall of the corridor.
“They said you wanted to see me,” said Jim.
Reuben gave a grateful nod to Elthram and let Jim into the room.
“This little girl needs to talk to you. Can this woman stay with her while she goes to Confession?”
“If this little girl wants the woman to stay, certainly,” said Jim. He focused intently on the little girl, and then nodded to the woman with a soft formal smile. He seemed so gentle, so capable, so effortlessly reassuring.