The Invited(123)

An in-between place.

Nate had gone out to do errands: get the oil in the truck changed, pick up bar and chain oil for the saw.

“Come with me,” he’d said. “You don’t need to stay and watch.”

    But he was wrong.

She did need to stay.

She needed to watch Lori’s body be pulled out.

Olive and Dustin weren’t watching, either. They were back at the hospital, waiting for news. Dustin had regained consciousness on the way to the hospital and had been diagnosed with a concussion, but no fracture, and admitted for observation. Olive hadn’t left his side.

“I hate to think that my mother’s been down there this whole time,” Olive had said when Helen was with her in the hospital cafeteria last night. “It just seems so…so lonely.”

But Helen didn’t think so. No, she didn’t think Lori would be lonely down there at all.

Because she wasn’t alone down there.

Be careful of the bog, Nate always told Helen. Stay close to the edge.

But the bog always drew her in.

Come closer, it seemed to whisper. Come share my secrets.

It had such an acidic, rich, mesmerizing smell—a primordial scent, she imagined. And it was such an otherworldly place, a landscape unlike anything she’d ever seen.

Some nights, she just sat at the edge, watching, listening, imagining she could see lights, the vague outline of the old house that once stood on the other side.

Hattie’s house.

The past and the present, all that had happened and all that was happening now—she felt it all layered in this place; not just layered but deeply entwined, like the roots of the biggest trees.

She thought of everything that led her here: her father’s death, Nate’s belief and determination, a dream. A dream of a place where she’d feel she belonged. Where she was meant to be.

And she’d found it.

Maybe with a little help, but she’d found it.



* * *



. . .

Another searcher in a dive suit who’d been floating around in the pool at the center of the bog waved his arms. “There’s something else down here!” he called. “More remains. Skeletal.”

Others closed in, moving toward him slowly, carefully.

    And Helen wanted to scream, to warn them. To say, Leave those bones alone. They belong here. They’re as much a part of this place as the bog itself.

A man beside her mumbled something into a radio.

Another, a volunteer fireman she recognized from the general store, said, “It ain’t safe in that bog. Not with Hattie’s ghost out there.”

Helen turned away, knowing Hattie’s ghost wasn’t out in the bog.

She knew just where the spirit of Hattie Breckenridge was.

She was back at Helen’s house with the others, waiting.





CHAPTER 53



Olive





JUNE 8, 2016

Olive was back near the old foundation of Hattie’s house. She didn’t come out to the bog much these days. It was too hard to come and think about Mama. About what had happened to Mama.

But still, even though she stayed away from the bog, the bog was with her. It filled her dreams, her waking thoughts, too.

Especially after Dicky Barns came to visit her last week. He brought a note from Aunt Riley, who was safely locked up at the women’s correctional facility up in South Burlington. “Your aunt asked me to deliver this to you,” he said.

“My daddy says I’m not supposed to have any contact with her. Our lawyer says so, too,” Olive said.

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Dicky said, handing her the paper, then turning to go. He stopped a minute, turned back. “I had no idea, you know. None of us did. We all thought Lori had run off with a man, like Riley said.”

Olive had heard all of this in court. She’d heard how Riley had taken Dicky’s gun without Dicky knowing. And how Riley had taken Mama’s diary, brought it back to the group of people who made up Dicky’s circle, hoping it might have clues about where the treasure might be. But then, when Olive went to Dicky’s and started asking questions, Dicky panicked and asked Riley to put the diary back. That was when she’d written the last passage, the one meant to incriminate Daddy.

Dicky looked down at his pointy-toed boots now. “Olive, I’m so sorry for all of this. Your mother, she was a special lady. She had a lot of gifts, but I guess you don’t need me to tell you that.”

Olive watched him walk away, shoulders slumped, looking so much smaller than he usually did. And gone was the gun in the tooled leather holster. The gun Riley had taken from Dicky and used to kill Olive’s mother.

    She read Riley’s note:

    Dearest Ollie,

The treasure is real. You know that, right?

It’s in the bog. It has to be. Your mother was going to show it to your dad that night. She asked him to meet her there.

Don’t stop looking. You deserve to find it.

I’m sorry. More sorry than you will ever know. There’s no real explanation or excuse for the things I’ve done. What happened with your mother—it really was an accident. I never intended to shoot her. I just wanted…I guess I wanted impossible things. I wanted to be the one that Hattie chose. I wanted to see her, to hear her voice, to taste her power. I thought maybe if I had the treasure, it would make me close to her, too. But that wanting, that need—it was blinding and it made me lose everything I ever cared about. Including you.