Mike decides to fund Mattie’s custody defense

Mike’s decision to fund Mattie Devore’s custody defense converts personal concern into material and legal support at a moment when her ability to protect Kyra is under pressure. After a deputy serves him with a subpoena concerning the child’s well-being, Mike hires a lawyer specializing in custody cases and offers to pay for Mattie’s representation. His intervention gives her access to counsel she could not afford, but it also binds their lives more closely to a contested case shaped by wealth, courtroom procedure, and local influence.

The custody case and the subpoena

Mike’s involvement begins against the background of a dispute over who will have custody of Kyra. Mattie has already described the threat plainly: the old man wants the child. When Deputy Sheriff George Footman serves Mike, the document directs him to appear at Elmer Durgin’s Castle Rock office at ten o’clock on July 10, 1998. Durgin, appointed guardian ad litem for Kyra by the Castle County Superior Court, is to take Mike’s deposition about what he knows of her well-being. The subpoena specifies that the deposition is on behalf of the court and Judge Noble Rancourt, rather than either plaintiff or defendant. Mike agrees to appear, though the unfamiliar legal process leaves him feeling intruded upon.

John Storrow explains why the appointment matters. A guardian ad litem is a lawyer appointed to protect the child’s interests, but the role does not guarantee a neutral outcome: the appointee gives the case his own interpretation, and judges commonly follow that advice. Storrow also warns that the custody fight will not be fought on equal financial terms. Mattie fears that Max Devore can command many lawyers and sympathetic witnesses, while she cannot afford comparable representation. The legal dispute therefore reaches beyond the question of who can care for Kyra; it tests how a child’s interests are represented within a process in which money and influence can shape the account presented to the court.

Hiring counsel and offering to pay

Mattie says that Footman frightened her, though she tried not to show it. The encounter makes her angry as well as afraid, and she responds by calling her agent in New York and hiring a lawyer who specializes in child-custody cases. Mike’s own response is to explain the legal imbalance rather than conceal it. He tells her that Storrow has warned him that sexual equality could count against her before Judge Rancourt, and that Devore may be able to assemble lawyers and supportive witnesses while the court is not obliged to provide Mattie comparable help.

Mike also passes on Storrow’s request to speak with Mattie the next day. The financial stakes become explicit when she asks whether Mike is offering to pay for the lawyer. She cannot hire him herself: after Lance’s death she received $30,000 in insurance money, which helped her keep her trailer the previous winter, while her library wages amount to about $100 a week after taxes. Mike answers that she has understood correctly. His decision is not an abstract offer of sympathy; it addresses a specific barrier to her securing an experienced custody lawyer.

Mattie’s circumstances give the offer its weight. She is still living in a Modair trailer, cannot afford health insurance, and has relied on the County Nurse for much of Kyra’s vaccination care. Her parents died when she was fifteen, after a childhood marked by alcoholism and other forms of mistreatment. Her father drowned in Kewadin Pond; her mother died about six months later. Mattie’s brother and sister live out of state, and the brother’s offer to take her in after their mother’s funeral did not become a viable home for her. These details make clear that the money Mike offers is entering a life with little family or financial reserve, not simply easing the cost of a lawyer for a well-supported household.

Mattie’s question and Mike’s reasons

Mattie asks why Mike would hire an expensive New York lawyer for someone he barely knows. Mike struggles to explain, briefly wishing that his late wife, Jo, could supply the words, but ultimately answers for himself. He says that since his wife died he has done nothing that makes a difference, and that he does know Mattie and Kyra: he has eaten Mattie’s food, read Kyra a story, and had the child fall asleep in his lap. He also recalls pulling Kyra out of the road, acknowledging that he may have saved her life. For him, the possibility of having saved Kyra creates a sense of responsibility, and the offer is connected both to fairness and to his need to take part in something consequential after four years of grief and stalled work.

Mattie recognizes the moral logic before Mike fully articulates it. She responds that saving someone’s life makes a person responsible for them. The exchange turns his practical offer into a statement about responsibility: his relationship to Mattie and Kyra is no longer merely that of an acquaintance offering money. He has entered their struggle because he considers himself connected to their safety and because he wants his actions to matter.

Mattie is alert to how the offer might look from outside. She jokes that she appears to be a lucky woman who married into wealth and then came under the protective wing of another rich man. She immediately contrasts that appearance with her actual circumstances: she remains in a trailer, lacks health insurance, and is raising a child on a modest income. Mike tells her to stop, resisting the implication that financial assistance makes her fortunate or turns her into a dependent beneficiary. Her response shows that accepting help does not erase her awareness of how easily the community might recast support as evidence about her character or motives.

From support to renewed resolve

Mike’s offer does not settle the custody case, but it changes the immediate balance between helplessness and action. Mattie accepts Storrow’s contact information after describing an increasingly strong feeling that something is about to happen. She takes the number with gratitude, while her steady attention to Mike suggests that she understands there may be more to his motives than he can yet explain. The scene leaves both her fear and the legal danger unresolved, but it gives her a next step toward professional representation.

The practical consequences become visible after Mike has spent a night in a disorienting supernatural episode. Mattie calls him with news from Storrow: the lawyer will arrive the following day at County Airport, stay at the Lookout Rock Hotel in Castle View, and spend most of Friday discussing the case with her. Storrow has also found a lawyer from Lewiston to accompany Mike to his deposition. Mattie’s tone is now excited, and Mike recognizes that she has recovered her will to fight. Until that call, he had not understood how close she had come to believing she would lose Kyra. She tells him that he has helped bring about this change.

The funding decision therefore produces a chain of support rather than a courtroom victory: Mattie hires a specialist, Storrow arranges preparation and counsel for Mike’s deposition, and Mattie regains some determination to contest the custody challenge. The uncertainty remains. Mike still has to testify, and the evidence does not establish the final outcome of the case at this point. What has changed is that Mattie is no longer facing the legal struggle without a path to representation.

The cost of taking sides

Mike’s intervention also makes him more conspicuous in a close-knit community. Bill Dean later tells him that people are uneasy about his interest in Mattie and that some believe the two have a relationship. Bill frames life on the TR as a shared arrangement in which one restless person can keep everyone else from resting; Mike, in his view, has become that disruptive presence. His concern is not only private gossip: Mike is warned that his involvement is making it harder for him to remain on the TR.

The local pressure becomes more overt after Max Devore dies. Mike understands that some residents may blame him, though he knows that such suspicion would not be the majority view. At Buddy Jellison’s restaurant, an anonymous note left on his newspaper says, “GET OFF THE TR.” He never learns who wrote it. The message shows how quickly a dispute over a child can be recast as a challenge to local belonging, and how support for Mattie can make Mike a target of community resentment.

That pressure does not end with the custody proceedings. Much later, Mike describes the court system and the Maine Department of Human Services as exhausting bureaucracies. He says that Kyra has been in two foster-home situations since Mattie died, while Mattie’s aunt has shown no interest in taking her. The later account underscores the limits of Mike’s original decision: paying for a lawyer and helping Mattie fight could provide representation and renewed resolve, but it could not guarantee a stable outcome after her death. The action remains significant precisely because it is both consequential and incomplete: Mike accepts responsibility and intervenes, while the legal and social structures around Kyra continue to expose the fragility of that protection.