The Invited(119)

“Okay,” she said. “So which way is back?”

“This way, I think,” Nate said, starting to walk.

“But didn’t we come from the other direction? Didn’t we pass that huge leaning tree on the way here?”

“No, it’s this way,” he told her.

So Helen followed, knowing that they were getting more and more lost with each step.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, Helen following Nate, her eyes on his back, his pale T-shirt leading the way.

But she was letting the wrong person guide her. She understood this. She dropped back a bit from Nate.

“Hattie,” she whispered. “Help me. Help us. Help us find Olive.”

    She took in a deep breath, tried to clear her mind, to listen for a voice, a signal.

Come on, Hattie, don’t fail me now.

But the only voice that came was Nate’s from up ahead.

“Helen,” Nate said, voice low. “Look!”

He pointed out ahead of them into a stand of trees growing close together, looking darker than the rest of the woods.

And there, standing just in front of it, watching them, looking almost as if she’d been waiting, was Nate’s white doe.

She was full-sized and her fur was bright white, her eyes dark and glittering as she watched them, her ears perked, listening. She held perfectly still and seemed to give a silvery shimmer in the moonlight. She was like a creature from a dream.

“Oh, Nate,” Helen said in a trembling whisper. “She’s beautiful.” She said it as if the deer were something Nate himself had created: a work of art he was sharing with her.

“Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “She wants us to follow her.”





CHAPTER 49



Olive





SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

“Mama?” Olive said, lowering her gun, taking a step toward the woman in the mask and her crumpled, motionless father.

“Oh, Olive,” the woman in the deer mask cried, pulling the mask away from her face, letting it fall to the ground.

“Riley?” Olive said, blinking at her aunt in disbelief.

“You’re okay now, Ollie,” Riley said, coming forward, gently taking the gun from Olive’s hands, laying it on the ground beside the white deer mask before encircling her in a tight, almost crushing hug. “Thank God you’re all right!”

Olive pressed her face against her aunt’s shoulder, her nose mashed against the stiff fabric of her white dress. She smelled like the incense that had been burning at Dicky’s hotel.

“It was you?” Olive asked. “Back at the hotel.”

“Yes,” Riley said.

“But I don’t understand,” Olive said, the disappointment hitting her like a wall, knocking all the air out of her. “Where is Mama?”

The hug got tighter. “Oh, Olive, I think I know. Maybe I’ve known all along but haven’t wanted to believe.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”

Riley broke away from the hug but still held Olive’s arms tight. She looked into her eyes. “I think so, Ollie.”

“And Daddy…” She could hardly bring herself to say the words. “He…he killed her?”

Riley nodded slowly.

“But why?”

“I don’t know, Ollie,” she said, studying Olive’s face in the moonlight. “Maybe because he found out she was having an affair?” She paused. “Or maybe she told him she was going to leave him?” Riley said. She brushed the hair away from Olive’s face. “I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure.”

    “She found the treasure,” Olive said.

Riley seemed to hold her breath. “She did. And I think he knew it. But she wouldn’t tell him where it was. Maybe that was the last straw.”

Olive said nothing, just tried to imagine the scene as it might have unfolded: Mama and Daddy arguing, him accusing her of being unfaithful, her saying she was leaving, that she could afford to now. And he’d want to know how and maybe she’d told him, told him just to piss him off, to prove that she’d been right all along—the treasure had existed and she’d found it. So where is it? Daddy would have asked. Where is this treasure you’re going to use to start a new life with your new boyfriend? And she wouldn’t tell him. And then…then what? Had he struck her? Shot her? Strangled her? Had it been an accident somehow, a shove that he hadn’t meant to be so rough with? Or had it been cold, premeditated murder?

Olive thought of the fight she’d heard early that morning. How it had ended with a crash. Had she heard her mother’s voice again after that?

Olive looked at her father’s crumpled body on the ground behind them. He looked like a small and ruined thing. Hard to believe he’d been capable of such a horrific act.

“Do you know, Ollie?” Riley asked. “Did your mama tell you where she hid it?”

She put a hand on Olive’s shoulder, squeezing gently at first, but then a little too tight.

“You two were always so close,” Riley said, putting her second hand on Olive’s other shoulder. “She must have said something. Or left you a note? A sign.”

Olive shook her head. “No,” she said, her throat growing dry.