They walked her back between them, across Front, across Consaul, in the middle of the empty street under the streetlights, Aunt Yolie in her nightgown and the two boys in their pajamas, and halfway across Ossie looked up and saw his mother standing on the porch of the white house in her robe with both hands over her mouth.
Nobody said much that night. Teri got Aunt Yolie back into bed. Zoli stood on the bottom porch step and said, "She came to our yard, she was just in the yard," like he was apologizing for something, and Teri said, "Thank you, Zoli. Thank you. Go home, honey, it's late," in a voice like broken glass. Then she shut the door and turned around and looked at Ossie.
"You didn't wake me up," she said.
"I knew where she'd be."
"You didn't. You didn't know. She wasn't there, was she? She was somewhere else. She could have been at the river, Ossie. She could have been on the tracks. And you went running out by yourself in the middle of the night without telling me, and if she'd been somewhere else, I'd have woken up to two of you gone." She was crying now, not loud, the way she cried when she was too tired to do it properly. "This is why. Do you understand? This is exactly why. She can't be here. This house, this street, it's not safe for her anymore. It's not safe."
"It is," Ossie said. "It is safe, Mom. There's people. There's people everywhere. Zoli was right there. He heard her in two minutes."
"Zoli is fourteen years old."
"So? He's been doing it for a year. Before we even came. Him and everybody." He ran to the back room and got the notebook and came back and held it out to her with his hand shaking. "Look. Look at it. Just look."
Teri looked at him, and then at the notebook, and then, slowly, she took it.
She sat down at the kitchen table under the light and opened it to the map. She turned the pages. She read the names in the little houses, and the notes beside them in Ossie's careful small handwriting. Mrs. Bocskay, checks the stove. Halasz, knocks twice. Bakery girl, writes it down. Old men from the club, porch light, every night. Zoli, four o'clock. Ossie, four o'clock.