The Invited(124)

Find the treasure, Ollie. Ask Hattie. She’ll show you. I have no doubt.

All my love,

Riley



Now Olive stood by the old foundation, looking out over the bog.

Birds and dragonflies darted through the air. Frogs sang. The pink lady’s slippers were plentiful this year, as if Hattie had been dancing in circles around the bog.

On the other side, she saw the path that led up to Helen and Nate’s house, finished now. Helen was probably out working in the garden. And Nate off at work at the Nature Center. Last week, when they’d had Olive and her dad and even Mike over for dinner, Helen had shown Olive her new tattoo: a delicate pale pink lady’s slipper on her forearm. Her tribute in ink to Hattie.

Mike loved the tattoo. And Helen and Nate loved Mike.

“Cypripedium reginae,” Mike said when he saw it. Olive rolled her eyes but smiled at him, feeling weirdly proud of her smart, dorky best friend.

“Where have you been hiding this guy?” Nate asked, and Mike made a quirky response about hiding in plain sight, which led to a long discussion between Nate and Mike on all the animals that used camouflage and the different forms of camouflage, both of them throwing around terms like “disruptive coloration,” “background matching,” “countershading,” “mimicry.”

    Mike’s hair had grown out from the buzz cut he’d worn his whole childhood, and he’d grown half a foot in the last six months. Even Olive’s dad seemed to be looking at Mike in a whole new way, calling him “son” and inviting him to stay for dinner most nights after Olive and Mike had been working on homework together.

Olive and her dad, with Helen and Nate’s help, had finished the renovations of their house. They’d put up the final drywall, laid down flooring, painted, and put away all of their tools. Sometimes Olive saw her dad looking at the walls and could tell he was thinking about changing things again. She’d take his hand, walk over to the framed photos they’d put up of Mama: the three of them on holidays and birthdays, Mama and Daddy on their wedding day. Nothing they did—changing the house, finding the treasure, even—would bring her back. But she was with them still. Olive felt it. She knew her daddy did, too.

“Mama would have loved this house just the way it is,” Olive would say.



* * *



. . .

Olive stood in the bog now, wearing her mother’s necklace—Hattie’s necklace. The door between the worlds.

She took it off, let it dangle on the thin leather cord.

“Show me, Hattie,” she said. “It’s time.”

And she felt it. Felt it in her heart. That it really was time. That Hattie was ready to show her now.

And the silver pendant started moving, pulling to the left. She walked a few steps, then the necklace changed direction and so did she. Step-by-step, she followed the path the necklace laid out. Hattie’s path. She stepped over the pink lady’s slippers that seemed to be leading the way. The path, accented with the wild pink orchids, led right to the back corner of Hattie’s house. Then the necklace began to twirl in fast clockwise circles.

“Here?” she asked.

    Yes, the necklace said. Yes.

Maybe it was another trick; she’d dig up another ax head, an old pot or sink maybe.

She laid the necklace down on the ground, began pulling back rocks. Tested with her metal detector and got a strong signal.

She kept digging, moving rocks.

Until her shovel hit something hard.

She reached down, felt a piece of wood and, behind it, the edge of a heavy metal box.

Beside it, Hattie’s necklace glinted up at her in the sunlight, the eye in the center watching.

I see all.