The Invited(74)

There was no gravestone or obituary for Hattie Breckenridge. No mention of her or what had happened to her in the local paper. Very little proof that she had existed at all.

    “It’s like she was a ghost even back when she was alive,” Helen said. She sat across from Riley at a big table in the center of the historical society. The space was in a disheveled state because of the flood—boxes and plastic totes were piled up on desks and shelves, files and documents haphazardly thrown in to save them from water damage.

Riley had arrived earlier to attempt to start putting things in some semblance of order, and she’d pulled what little she’d found on the Breckenridge family aside, started making notes. Helen had her own little notebook out now, hoping for a chance to jot down some solid facts about Hattie and Jane, something that might tell her where to go from here, how to find out more. Seeing them together in her house last night had made her more determined than ever to learn their stories, to follow the family tree and see if there might be more information, living relatives even.

“I know, it’s crazy,” Riley said. “We have whole boxes full of stuff on some families in town: letters, diaries, photographs. But there really isn’t much on the Breckenridge family.”

She pulled down another box and opened it up.

“Like I said, you’ve gotta bear with me here. Things aren’t usually in such disarray.”

“How’d you get involved with the historical society?” Helen asked.

Riley smiled. “I’ve been a volunteer here forever. Mary Ann roped me into it years ago when I was practically living here doing research on my own family. When I was in college, I did this project on Vermont in the Civil War and I found out some of my relatives had fought, not just for the Union army, but for the Confederates, too. I don’t know, I guess it made me feel like I was part of something so much bigger, you know? I feel like studying the past helps me to frame the present. I guess I’ve always been a bit of a history geek—I love all the old stories, the way what came before shapes who we are now. Sometimes I get all caught up in my own little bullshit life dramas, like trouble with boyfriends or money, and then I think about those relatives, cousins fighting each other in the Civil War, or people who went through the Great Depression or the Holocaust, and it just puts things in perspective.” Riley’s eyes blazed and Helen recognized a kindred spirit.

“Absolutely,” Helen said.

    “I mean, just look at Hattie’s life—everything that happened to her, the bullshit she must have had to endure. Imagine walking through town, being called a witch, the hatred hurled at her, building day after day, year after year, until they eventually killed her, then weighed her down and sank her in the bog. All because she was different. Because she was special.”

Helen thought of the looks and sneers she got in town, the whispering behind her back. Her, the outsider, the one who’d stirred up Hattie’s spirit.

Riley took a few seconds to compose herself, then looked back down at the boxes. “Okay, moving forward. We’ve got no death records. Let me show you what we do have.”

Hattie’s father’s name, James Breckenridge, was on an old deed for the land around the bog.

“And here’s her father’s death certificate,” she said, pulling out a copy. “He died back in 1899. Struck by lightning, just days after Hattie predicted it.”

Hattie’s name was there on the census from 1900 when she was an eight-year-old child. And there were three photographs of her that they could find: one as a girl, with her schoolmates, in 1899, their names written in careful cursive on the back. Helen didn’t need to check the names to find Hattie, though—she recognized her immediately. Seeing her—finding proof that she’d existed as an actual flesh-and-blood person, a student in the Hartsboro one-room schoolhouse, and wasn’t just a ghost in Helen’s kitchen—gave Helen a feeling of deep satisfaction. Helen looked down at the school photograph: Hattie was in the back corner, a shadow of a girl with dark hair that fell down to cover her eyes. She was frowning into the camera, scowling really. It was an I hate you all kind of look. But still, even as an angry little girl, there was something stunningly beautiful about her. Something captivating. It nearly took Helen’s breath away.

“Folks say that Hattie couldn’t read or write very well because she left school in the third grade, got kicked out, really. Strange things happened when she was at school—books jumped off shelves, desks shook. And one time, the stories go, she was writing in her primer and the teacher came over to look. There were three pages written in Latin.” Riley paused here, eyes widened for emphasis.

“Latin?” Helen asked. “How does a girl her age in Hartsboro, Vermont, learn Latin?”

    “That’s the thing about Hattie. She knew things she shouldn’t have. Things the spirits told her. That’s what the stories people passed down say anyway,” she added.

The other two photos of Hattie were group shots at a town picnic and were dated 1909. Hattie was a teenager then and stood at the edge, away from the others. She was tall, her dark hair pulled back in a long braid, her eyes dark and stormy.

“Those pictures were taken around the time her family home burned,” Riley said.

“And her mother was killed?”

“Yeah, listen to this. It’s from 1909.” She pulled out an old article clipped from the local paper and read it out loud: “?‘A fire of undetermined origin took the life of Mrs. Lila Breckenridge of Hartsboro on Tuesday, October 12. The Breckenridge family home was destroyed. Hattie Breckenridge, Mrs. Breckenridge’s daughter, escaped unharmed.’?”