The Invited(26)

    “I say we take the rest of the day off,” Nate announced, and Helen was thrilled.

“Uh-oh,” Nate said, noticing a place where the roof leaked—water dripping through the thin, stained boards that made up the ceiling. He grabbed a bowl and put it beneath. Just then, Helen noticed another drip splatter onto the peeling linoleum floor. She got a saucepan. Soon, the two of them were doing a strange dance, hurrying to put vessels beneath quickly multiplying leaks.

“Better hurry up and get the second floor and roof done,” Nate said. “I don’t know how much longer this place is going to last.”

Helen smiled in agreement. She couldn’t wait to be out of their tiny sardine can of a trailer.

Nate settled in on the couch with a book on bird behavior. He turned on the lamp on the side table and the kitchen light flickered. Helen opened her laptop and checked her email to find a note from her friend Jenny, saying only: How are things going in the Great North Woods? You ready to come back home yet? I’ve got martinis waiting…

Helen looked around at the containers catching drips in the leaking trailer and tried to formulate a witty reply, but her attempts just sounded pathetic. She’d write Jenny back later.

The rain pounded the tin roof, adding to the percussive music of the steady drips into the pans, bowls, and cups scattered around the trailer.

Helen decided to don her rain gear and go into town. It had been three weeks since they’d arrived in Hartsboro, and she had been busy with building and starting the garden, and honestly, it felt a little selfish to take time off for research when there was so much work to do each day. And by the time work ended each day, she was too sore and exhausted to do much more than settle in with a glass of wine and early bed.

“I’m going to take advantage of the rainy weather to go check out the town hall and library and see what I can dig up on our property and local history,” she announced. “Want to come?”

Nate shook his head, eyes focused on his bird book. “I think I’ll stay in and catch up on some reading,” he said, clearly pleased to have the afternoon to himself to read. “Have fun,” he added when she paused to kiss the top of his head on the way out.

    Helen stopped into Ferguson’s General Store to pick up a loaf of bread. It sold everything from hunting rifles to fresh pies with labels that had clearly been made on someone’s inkjet printer (Nate called them “grandma pies”—bumbleberry was his favorite). There was a teenage boy with a crew cut and a blaze-orange camo T-shirt working the register. A police scanner was squawking from a shelf behind him: chimes, followed by voices uttering codes.

“Bad weather out there,” Helen said as she set her bread down to pay. There was a coffee can on the counter with a label on the front showing the photocopied faces of the three teens who had been killed in the bus accident a few weeks ago. The collection was for their families.

The kid nodded but didn’t look at her. “It’s been crazy. Three lightning strikes reported in town so far. One of ’em hit the old Hamilton place out on East County Road. Fire department’s up there now and it must be bad, because they’ve called in two other towns to come help.”

“Terrible,” Helen said. She paid for the bread, slipped five dollars from her change into the coffee can. The boy looked at her then, but instead of looking grateful or pleased by her donation, he scowled, said, “I know who you are.”

“Excuse me?”

“You bought the place out by the bog,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, smiling. “I’m Helen. My husband, Nate, and I bought the land. We’re building a house up there. We just love Hartsboro.”

The kid stared, silent.

“Well,” she said at last, “nice meeting you.” And she turned to go, clutching her bread in its paper bag to her chest, feeling his eyes on her back as she left the store.



* * *



. . .

The squat brick Hartsboro post office was right next to Ferguson’s. Helen stopped in there to check the PO box she and Nate had rented. The only thing in it was a flyer for an exterminator. No house to be infested with critters just yet. A little farther down Main Street stood her true destinations: the tiny stone library and the white clapboard building that housed the town clerk’s office. She tried the town clerk first, but the door was locked and had a CLOSED sign. There were no hours posted, no signs of life inside.

    The rain pounded down around her, blew in sheets, as she held up her umbrella to try to keep the worst of it away. She hurried next door to the library. The smell of old books comforted her as soon as she stepped through the door.

She stopped in front of the bulletin board in the entryway and closed up her umbrella. There were signs advertising firewood for sale, a day care, rototilling services, and a poster for the high school drama club’s performance of Into the Woods—she noticed the date was three weeks ago. There was an old poster for the vigil for the kids who were killed in the bus accident. Tucked into the left corner was a small square of white paper with an eye looking out of a cloud: HARTSBORO SPIRIT CIRCLE. LET US HELP YOU MAKE CONTACT WITH A FRIEND OR LOVED ONE WHO HAS PASSED. Then a phone number.

Helen stared, amazed. She’d moved onto land that supposedly had its own ghost and into a town with its own “spirit circle.” She definitely wasn’t in suburban Connecticut anymore.