The Invited(39)

“Right,” Olive said.

“So, you’re what—protecting Hattie’s land? Trying to keep it safe from outsiders?” Nate asked. He’d picked up the spotlight again and kept shining it right at Olive, blinding her, making her close her eyes. “Why? Because her ghost told you to?”

“No,” Helen said, understanding. She suddenly got it. The marked-up map in Olive’s notebook, the little bits of red string she’d found, Olive’s desire for them to leave the land. “You’re looking for the treasure, right?”

Olive looked away, bit her lip.

“What treasure?” Nate asked.

“It’s a story I heard in town,” Helen said. “Hattie Breckenridge supposedly buried treasure somewhere around the bog.”

“Treasure?” Nate scoffed. He rocked back on his heels, held out his arms in an I can’t believe this gesture. “First, we’ve got a witch ghost, now there’s a buried treasure? Is this Scooby fucking Doo?”

    Helen put a gentle hand on Nate’s arm and squeezed. She got how absurd it all sounded. “The librarian said it was just a story people told, town legend.”

“It’s not a story,” Olive said. “The treasure is real.”

“And you’ve been looking for it? Around the bog? Here on our land?” Helen asked.

Olive nodded. “It’s real and I’m gonna find it. I need to find it.”

“So much that you had to break the law? To spy on us, steal from us?” Nate said.

“You don’t understand,” Olive said.

“Help us understand, Olive,” Helen said.

The girl drew in a deep breath. “See, my mom and I, we used to hunt for the treasure. She always said it was real. And she said she knew we’d be the ones to find it. But then last year, my mom, she…” Olive faltered. “She took off, okay?”

“Took off?” Nate repeated.

Olive nodded. “She left us. Me and my dad. We haven’t heard from her since. And I think—no, I know, that if I find the treasure, my mom will hear about it, ’cause it’ll be on the news and stuff, right? And if she hears, she’ll come back. If not, I can hire someone to find her. A private detective.”

Helen flashed Nate a this poor kid look. Helen had lost her own mother when she was just eleven. She knew firsthand how hard it was to be motherless. How back when she was Olive’s age, she would have done anything, anything at all, to get her mother back. She looked back at Olive, dressed up as a ghost in the old nightgown—her mother’s probably—and her heart just about broke.

“I wish you’d just asked if it was okay to go poking around on our land,” Nate said, voice softer, calmer now. He’d lowered the light so the beam was pointing down at the floor. “You didn’t need to try to drive us off with this whole crazy ghost girl thing. And you certainly didn’t need to steal.”

“I know,” Olive said. “I know and it was really stupid…and I’m really sorry.”

“Nate’s right,” Helen agreed. “If you’d just asked if you could search our land, we would have been fine with that.”

Olive looked down at the plywood floor, eyes on the charred remains in the cast-iron pot. She began to pick at the frayed edge of the left sleeve of her nightgown.

    “So what are we going to do here?” Nate asked, looking from Helen to Olive.

Olive looked up, twisting the sleeve of her nightgown now. “Like I said, I can give all your stuff back. Well, not the pie. My dad and I ate that.”

“I knew it!” Helen said, looking over at Nate. “I told you I’d brought that pie home and put it in the fridge! You made me think I was nuts, telling me I must have left it back at the store or that maybe I didn’t buy it at all.”

“Sorry,” Olive said, looking small and sheepish. She toed the floor with a ratty sneaker. “And I can’t exactly give back the money, either. I…I kind of spent it.”

“Of course,” Nate said, his voice taking on an edge again. “Are you sure drugs aren’t involved in this in any way?”

“I swear! I used the money to help buy a new metal detector. A really nice one. So I could look for the treasure. I guess I can sell the metal detector and use the money to pay you back.”

“How much money of ours did you take?” Helen asked.

The girl looked up, thinking, then counted with her fingers. “About eighty dollars, I think. Actually, maybe closer to a hundred? I’m not sure ’cause I didn’t do it all at once. It was a twenty here, five or ten there, you know?”

“Jesus,” Nate said again, shaking his head, rubbing his eyes.

Helen was amazed that she’d taken so much. They’d been careless with their cash—she and Nate sharing money, passing it back and forth, sticking it in pockets, and both running off to the general or hardware store several times a day for little things they needed.

“Wow,” Helen said. “Well, the stolen money is definitely a problem. We’re going to need you to pay us back somehow.”

“At the very least!” Nate added.

They were silent a minute, both of them watching Olive, who continued to twist at her nightgown worriedly.