The Invited(66)

    Of course, it didn’t help that Nate was splurging on hundred-dollar night-vision cameras. She shook the thought away, told herself she was being petty.

“Maybe we could get the rejected slate pieces for cheap, you know? The weird shapes that broke and aren’t square. I think it could work. We could do like a funky mosaic thing.” Her dad had done a floor like that for an artist friend of his and it had turned out beautifully.

“Maybe,” Nate said.

“These bricks—they were just so cool, and I love knowing that they came from a real mill up the road. Think about it. It’s like I pick one up and feel this instant connection to the past. I can practically smell the grease, hear the hum of the looms, feel the cotton dust in the air.”

Smell the smoke of the fire, she thought.

If installing the beam had helped Hattie come back, would installing the bricks draw one of the mill workers back? The burned woman with skin hanging off that the contractors had seen in the basement, maybe?

She shivered.

Nate smiled at her, kissed her nose. “I love you. I’m not at all sure that cotton dust is a thing, but I love that you imagine it is. And saving these bricks from the landfill by reusing them in our house—can’t really complain about that.”

“Cotton dust is definitely a thing,” she said. “Wanna help me unload these?”

“Sure,” he said.

She moved the truck up closer to the house and pulled down the tailgate, and they started pulling the bricks out, putting them in a stack next to the house.

    “These are in pretty good shape. They’ll have to be cleaned up,” Nate said. “All the old mortar scraped off.”

Helen nodded.

“Some of them look like they’re from a chimney stack or something. They’re all black on one side.”

Helen said nothing, feigning ignorance as she continued to stack the bricks. At last, she said, “You were up and out early this morning.”

“Went for a walk. That heron was in the bog again. Such a beautiful bird.” There was that wistful look he got again, the one that reminded Helen of his deep love and respect for nature. “I got some good shots of it. I was thinking I’d print the best one, maybe have it framed? We could start a sort of gallery up in our library with photos of the local wildlife. Maybe even some of my sketches as I get better at it?”

“I love it,” Helen said, gathering an armload of bricks to bring to the house. “Did you see your white deer?”

He hesitated a moment, then said, “No.”

He was leaving something out, she was sure of it. And she felt oddly comforted, knowing that she wasn’t the only one who wasn’t telling the whole truth.

“But I do wonder if maybe there’s a group of them. I’ve been reading about these white Seneca deer in New York. It’s really interesting—there’s a population of about two hundred of them living on a protected reserve that was once an old army depot. They’re white-tailed deer, but they’re leucistic, which means they lack pigmentation in the hair. They’ve got brown eyes, not pink like true albinos.”

“Leucistic, huh?” Helen said. She loved how excited Nate got when he learned something new like this, like he couldn’t wait to share it. Mr. Science in action.

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had something like that here? A whole population of white deer! I was thinking I could do a study, write a paper.”

Nate had been talking about one day writing articles and papers for scientific journals since she’d met him, but back in Connecticut he’d never had the time or found a subject inspiring enough.

“Sounds great, hon,” she said, only half paying attention because her mind was on other things. She was working out the best way to get the bricks into the house as soon as possible, to test out the theory and see who, or what, they might call back.





AUGUST 5, 2015

She was dreaming about the fire. She was in the factory beside other women who had to shout to be heard over the deafening thrum of the looms, the machines making the walls and floor vibrate, turning the mill into a living thing.

“Fire!” someone shrieked. “Run!”

And then she smelled the smoke, turned and saw the flames, how they licked up the far wall like the tongue of a great demon, gobbling the dry wooden beams, the painted floor and ceiling. She ran to the front doors, her and a throng of women and girls in their plain dresses with work aprons over the top, hair pulled back. They pushed, they pounded and clawed and screamed, but the heavy wooden door did not budge.

Trapped. They were trapped.

She thought of the windows. Thought that if they were calm, if they could all get to the windows and break through them, they could escape. But the women, in full panic now, screaming, choking on the smoke, which had grown black and thick, kept pushing at the doors, at the women between themselves and the door. She was pinned there, pressed tight by the bodies around her. She could not move.

Helen opened her eyes, took a gasping breath of cool air.

She was not in the factory being crushed against the locked door while flames overtook the building.

But where was she?

Who was she?

I am Helen, she told herself, taking a deep breath, trying to slow her racing heart. I’m married to Nate. We used to live in Connecticut, where we were both middle school teachers. Now we live in Vermont and are building our own house.