The Invited(102)

“Got what?”

“A picture! Of the deer. I followed her into the woods, trailed her all morning, and at last, I caught up, got close enough to get some good shots.”

He turned the camera, pushed some buttons, looked down at the screen on the back. “Look,” he said.

His hands were trembling, just slightly. His nails, she noticed, needed trimming. There was dirt underneath them.

Helen peered at the tiny screen on Nate’s Nikon, trying to make out what she saw, which was little more than a white blur in front of trees—but a blur that didn’t seem deerlike at all. It was tall, narrow. As if he’d shot it from the front and the deer was coming right at him, charging him.

“It looks more like a person than a deer,” Helen said, squinting at the image, trying to make sense of the blurry white form. Were those ears? Or was that hair?

Nate jerked the camera away, looked at the image himself, puzzling over it.

“No,” he said, thrusting the camera at her again. “Look, it’s obviously a deer.” He forwarded to the next picture, this one even blurrier. In it, a white figure (or maybe just a flash of reflected light?) seemed to be darting behind a tree. Again, it was tall and narrow—not a deerlike shape at all.

“I believe you,” Helen said. “I believe you saw it.”

“I’m not asking you to take me at my word, Helen! I’m asking you to acknowledge the fucking proof right in front of your eyes!”

    His voice had an edge she wasn’t used to. The sound of a man at the end of his rope. Was this how Ann’s husband had sounded that last day?

Helen took a long swig of her beer and said nothing.

Nate let out a slow breath and said quietly, “Do you or do you not see a deer in this picture?”

She thought of lying, of saying, Yes, of course I see it. But that’s not what she said. “I see something. But really, Nate, it doesn’t look much like a deer to me.”

He hung the camera back around his neck and stomped down to the trailer, went in, and slammed the door hard behind him.

Riley stopped by not long after and Helen showed her the ax. Nate hadn’t come out of the trailer and Helen wasn’t about to go down.

“It was a gift from Olive. She found it with her metal detector out in the bog. We think it might have been Hattie’s.”

“Wow,” Riley said, picking up the ax, touching it almost reverently. “Hattie’s ax! What an incredible find!”

“Took me all day and a dozen YouTube videos to get it cleaned up and in working order, but it didn’t turn out half bad.”

“It’s beautiful,” Riley said, handing the ax back to Helen.

Helen nodded, asked, “Want to walk down to the bog?”

“Sure.”

Helen left the refurbished ax in the house, leaning against the wall under the beam between the living room and kitchen: her latest gift for Hattie.

It was dusk and the late-season crickets were chirping away as they made their way down the path, Helen in the lead. She loved going to the bog at twilight and how sometimes, now that it was getting cooler, like this evening, there was a layer of mist hovering over the water, and Helen was sure she could see it move as if it were taking shape, pulling itself into the form of a woman in a dress. They walked over to the stones of the old foundation and each took a seat. Riley pulled out a joint and lit it, inhaling.

“Is something up with Olive?” Helen asked. “She seemed a little…off when I saw her yesterday. She okay?”

“She’s real worried about her mom,” Riley said. “Has she talked to you about it at all?”

“No. Not a peep.”

    “She has this idea that maybe her mom didn’t run off with some guy like everyone says. That maybe something else happened.”

“Do you think that’s a possibility?”

“No…I mean, I don’t know.” She was quiet a second, eyes on the mist over the bog. “Maybe something scared her off.”

“What do you mean?” Helen asked.

“Olive said that just before her mom took off, she heard her parents having a really bad fight down in the kitchen. There was a big crash. Like it got physical.”

“What…you think your brother might have hurt her?”

“I can’t imagine it. He loves her so much. But years ago, when Dustin was drinking all the time, he was a mess. Sometimes he’d get kind of crazy. Never hurt anyone else, just himself, but…”

“Riley, if you think—”

“No,” Riley interrupted. “What I really think is that Lori took off with one of her boyfriends. Maybe Dustin found out she was cheating on him and they fought and that was the last straw for her. She got the hell out and didn’t look back.”

“Poor Olive,” Helen said. “It’s awful that she’s going through this.”

Riley passed her the joint, and they were silent for a minute, smoking, looking out at the bog.

“I still can’t believe she gave me that ax,” Helen mused.

“I love the ax,” Riley said at last. “But I’m not sure keeping it is such a good idea.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s just starting to worry me. You collecting all these things with such morbid histories.”