The Invited(79)

    Mama had refused to go, and Riley had slammed the door on her way out. It was the only time Olive could ever remember seeing her aunt totally lose her cool.

Nate stood over them now, looking down at Helen, eyes blazing with their own fire. “That’s why you went there, right?” he demanded. “You knew about the fire. And you wanted the bricks because of the fire, because of the people who died.”

“Nate, just calm down. I think there’s a possibility that—”

“Jesus, Helen,” he spat, interrupting her. “Why can’t we just use bricks from Home Depot? What’s this sudden obsession you have with filling our house with these things steeped in dark history?”

Dark history.

Olive liked that. She touched her T-shirt, feeling for the necklace underneath.

I see all.

“Bricks from Home Depot don’t tell a story,” Helen said.

He let out a long, dramatic sigh. “You know I love that you want to put things in the house that have history, that tell a story. But do the stories have to be such awful ones? Do they have to center around death and tragedy?”

She didn’t answer.

Maybe Nate wasn’t the only one going a little crazy. Maybe Helen was, too. The thought hit Olive like a cannonball in the stomach.

Helen had been keeping secrets.

Olive’s mother had been keeping secrets, too, and look where they got her.

Nate didn’t wait for Helen to respond or reprimand him for swearing in front of Olive. He just stalked through the front door of the house, calling back, “I’m going to go start wiring the upstairs.”

Olive kept scraping at her brick even though all the cement was gone. She wanted to say something—felt like she should say something—but no words came. This was an adult. A teacher, even. Helen was really nice to her, and she guessed they were kind of friends—but to try to comfort her, to say, I’m sorry your husband just yelled at you like that, it felt all wrong. Finally, when she couldn’t stand the silence any longer, she asked, “So did a bunch of people die in the fire?”

    Helen startled a bit, as if she’d forgotten Olive was there. Then she nodded. “One man and twelve women died. Mill workers. And I think…no, I’m sure—that one of them was Hattie’s daughter, Jane.”

Olive got a tingle at the back of her neck. And the necklace gave a warm pulse under her T-shirt.

That’s what her mother was doing there. She must have figured it out, must have known about Jane. Must have thought that learning about Jane might lead her to find a clue about the treasure.





CHAPTER 24



Helen





AUGUST 8, 2015

Helen left home at eight and headed for Elsbury in search of the farmhouse where Ann had been killed. She’d plugged the address, 202 County Road, into the GPS. She wasn’t sure what she’d do once she found it—knock on the door, greet the current owners, and say she was interested in anything they might have that had once belonged to Ann, anything that had been in the house when she was killed, anything haunted?

Right. That was a sure way to get the door slammed in her face and the cops called.

Hattie will show me what to do, she told herself.

She’d promised Nate that she’d be back by one to help with the upstairs wiring—told him she had a couple of places to check out, places that had used roofing materials. She felt guilty lying, but she couldn’t exactly tell him the truth. Letting him know she was doing anything connected to Hattie would just start another argument. And they’d had enough of those lately. It seemed they fought over everything, from the color of the tile they should put in the bathroom to what to have for dinner. Nate had insisted they stop eating out and getting pizza, start keeping a strict budget for groceries. Yet he frowned at her when she came home from food shopping with cheap store-brand coffee and gave her a lecture about how they should drink only fair trade, organic coffee because everything else was poison and a disaster for the environment and the local people.

About an hour into the drive, her phone rang. Nate’s ringtone. She reached over and answered the phone, left hand still on the wheel of the pickup. “Hello?”

There was only dead crackling air.

“Nate? Hello?”

    “—elen?” His voice sounded echoey, far off, like he was calling from the bottom of a well.

“I can barely hear you, Nate. Where are you calling from?”

“The house,” he said. “I wanted—”

He was gone again, his voice replaced by a crackle, a sizzling sound, like meat on a grill.

“Can you—” he said.

“What?” she asked. “I can’t hear you.”

“Because of you.”

“Nate?”

“Because of you.” It was a woman’s voice that came through loud and sure. A woman’s voice that sounded like glass being ground up in a blender. A jagged, grating sound.

Helen nearly swerved off the road. Heart pounding, she pulled over, turned on her blinkers.

“Hello?” she croaked out. “Who is this?”

She held her breath, afraid of what the voice might answer. The phone felt hot in her hand, like the circuits were overheating, might just burst into flames.