The Invited(27)

Helen walked in, expecting an antiquated library with an old-fashioned paper card catalog. But there were three computers on the left with instructions above for searching the online catalog. There was also a poster explaining that e-books and audiobooks were available electronically. She said hello to the woman behind the desk and did a quick walk through the library: periodicals, audiobooks, reference, nonfiction, and then fiction.

There was a mom with a toddler playing at the train table set up in the brightly painted children’s area, but they were the only other patrons. Helen went back to the computers and searched the online catalog for books about Hartsboro. The only titles she found that focused on Hartsboro itself were the VFW Ladies Auxiliary cookbook (which involved lots of maple and bacon) and a book about the flood of 1927.

She walked up to the desk. “Excuse me. I’m looking for books on Hartsboro history.”

The librarian, a middle-aged woman in a Snoopy sweatshirt, told her she should check out the Hartsboro Historical Society.

“Where’s that?” Helen asked, thrilled to hear such a place existed.

    “A couple of doors down on the left, in the basement of the old Elks Lodge. But they’re open funny hours—like every second Saturday or something. You’ll want to call Mary Ann Marsden. She runs the place and she’ll open it up by appointment. I’m sure I’ve got her number here somewhere.” She tapped at her boxy computer. “Here it is!” she chirped, sounding thrilled with herself. She copied the number down on a piece of scrap paper.

“You looking for anything in particular?” the woman asked. “I’ve lived here my whole life and know a thing or two about the town.”

“My husband and I just moved to town and I was hoping to learn a little local history. I’m a—I mean, I was a history teacher. In my old life.” Helen laughed, but she thought, Yes—this is my life now. “Anyway, we’ve bought land out by the Breckenridge Bog and I’d love to find out whatever I can about the area.”

“The Breckenridge place?” The woman smiled, showing small pearly-white teeth. “You bought it from George Decrow, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.” Helen nodded.

“Poor George, such a sweet man. How is he?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. We never actually met him. Apparently, he’s not in great health and lives out of state.”

“Don’t blame him for not coming back. Not after what happened.”

Helen gave her a blank look. “What happened?”

“The accident, I mean.”

“I didn’t hear anything about it,” Helen admitted.

“Well,” the librarian went on, “his wife, Edie, she nearly drowned in the bog.”

“Oh no,” Helen said, thinking of what Nate had said—it was spring fed, could go down very deep.

The librarian nodded. “George pulled her out, did CPR. He brought her back, but she was never the same. Brain damage.” She shook her head. Clucked her tongue. “Never woke up, poor thing. After a week or so, George had them turn off the machines, let her go peacefully.”

Helen’s mind flashed to the table in the trailer laid out for dinner, of the two empty wine glasses. The dusty bottle of wine that still sat on the top shelf of their kitchen cabinet.

“How horrible,” Helen said.

    “An accident, they said, but George, he went around saying that it was no accident.” The librarian waited a beat, looked around, then lowered her voice and whispered, “He said it was Hattie.”

Helen felt a chill start at her neck and creep all the way down to her tailbone.

“I’m sorry, Hattie? Who—”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about Hattie yet,” the woman in the Snoopy sweatshirt said in a sort of chortling way, as if Hattie were some dowdy old woman who walked around town in funny hats.

“No. I don’t know that name.” Helen swallowed hard. Because she did know the name, didn’t she? Somehow.

Be a historian, she told herself. Gather facts. Leave your emotions out of it. “What can you tell me about her?”

“Oh, I guess you’d say Hattie Breckenridge is the most famous resident of Hartsboro. There are all kinds of stories. People said she was a witch. Some said she was the bride of the devil himself. Spoke in tongues. Knew what was going to happen before it did.”

“And she lived by the bog?”

“Oh yes, in a little cabin she built herself after her parents’ house burned down. All that witch mumbo jumbo—I don’t know about that. But she did live in a little house by the bog and that’s a true fact.”

“My husband and I found the remnants for an old foundation out by the bog,” Helen said.

The librarian nodded. “That’d be Hattie’s place. Folks called it the ‘crooked house,’ because Hattie wasn’t much of a carpenter and nothing was straight or level.”

Helen nodded, thinking of the arguments she and Nate still had sometimes when a measurement was off by a fraction of an inch. Would their house turn out crooked, too? She shook the thought away, remembering the beautifully straight and plumb downstairs walls they’d just finished today.

“What time frame are we talking about here?” Helen asked.