The Invited(7)

    She loved him for many reasons, but mostly because of the way he balanced her out, grounded her, took her most ethereal ideas and found a way to give them form. If he said building a house made more sense than buying one, then he was probably right. And if he said there was a way to do it and give Helen the sense of history she longed for, then she had to believe him.

Helen reached over the pizza box, picked up one of the glossy New England real estate flyers, and flipped to the back, to where the land listings were. She started looking at pictures of vacant lots, doing her best to imagine her dream house standing there, she and Nate tucked safely inside.



* * *



. . .

This is where our house will go, Helen thought now as she watched the men work on the foundation. She could almost imagine the lines of it, the shadow it would cast, the roof reaching up to touch the impossibly blue sky. The clouds were so low, so vivid, she was sure that if she climbed the hill, she’d be able to reach out and touch them. It was like being in a child’s drawing of the perfect landscape: trees, sky and clouds, happy yellow sun, and, beneath it, a square box of a house with a smiling couple standing outside.

They had discovered this piece of land back in January and made an offer that day. The craziest part was it wasn’t even on their list to look at—they’d found it when they got lost looking for an old covered bridge Helen had seen signs for. They stopped at a general store for directions and there on the bulletin board was an ad for the land: forty-four acres in the small village of Hartsboro, Vermont. They called the realtor and arranged to meet him out there that afternoon. Half of the land was wooded, but the western part of the property consisted of the Breckenridge Bog. Land not useful for farming or building. Land that, local legend claimed—the realtor said this with a chuckle—was haunted. As they trudged out through a foot and a half of freshly fallen snow to look at the property, Nate chuckled with him. He said, “Do you think the seller would accept a lower offer on the basis that the land is known to be haunted?”

    “I think,” the realtor said, turning serious again, “the seller is highly motivated and would consider any reasonable offer.”

They were in a large clearing with a hillside in front of them, woods to the right and left, the single-lane dirt road behind them. As they walked, it began to snow big, thick flakes that caught on Helen’s eyelashes. Their feet sank in the perfect white snow and Helen looked at the trees, blanketed in white, softly bent with the weight of it. Helen was struck by the quiet, the serenity of the landscape.

“Haunted?” Helen asked, circling back. “Really?”

The realtor nodded, then looked a little like he was sorry he’d mentioned it. “That’s what people say.” He shrugged, as if he didn’t really know the story, and he started telling them that the back of the property was bordered by a class three road that became a snowmobile trail in the winter. “You folks get yourselves a couple of snow machines and you’ll be in business,” he said. “But seriously,” he added. “What you’ve gotta understand is that even though this place is forty-four acres, only about four acres are suitable for building. The rest is just too hilly or marshy. That’s why the low price.”

Helen did not believe in ghosts. But she believed in history. “Hey, it’s not every piece of property that comes with its very own ghost,” Helen whispered to Nate. If there was a ghost story attached to this land, then that meant the land had a story to tell. Maybe she wouldn’t get her hundred-year-old house with stories to tell, but she could settle for a place with history, a mystery even.

Nate nodded, wiggled his fingers, and made a ghostly Oooo sound.

Nate pointed out the sugar maples on the back hill and said they could tap the trees, boil the sap, and make syrup. “Can’t get much more quintessential Vermont than that!” he said excitedly.

As they walked around the land, Helen had this strange sense of familiarity, of déjà vu almost, like she’d been there before. Silly, really.

They saw the flat area with good southern exposure that would make a perfect building site and the old green trailer that stood on the edge of the clearing.

“We can live in the trailer while we build,” Nate said. Then he leaned in and whispered excitedly to Helen, “It’s perfect! It’s got everything we’ve been hoping for and then some.”

And it did seem perfect. Almost too perfect—it was exactly like the land Nate had been describing that they would find, the land he’d promised her. Helen had this sense then. This land—their new home—was meant to be; it had been waiting for them, calling to them. But the thought was not entirely a warm and comforting one; no, it was more like a prickle on the back of the neck. It both drew her to the place and made her want to get in the car and race all the way back to their condo in Connecticut.

    “I don’t know what kind of shape that old mobile home’s in,” the realtor admitted. “The seller was using this place as a hunting camp, but he hasn’t come up in a long time. It’s got plumbing and electricity, but I don’t know if it works. It’s being sold as-is.”

Helen looked at the vintage trailer, aluminum and faded green, and guessed it to be about thirty feet long and maybe eight feet wide, up on cinder blocks. The roof wasn’t falling in, and the louvered windows weren’t broken.