The Invited(99)

Nate clenched his jaw. “Yeah, I figured. But let me guess. There’s more to it than that, right? She died in some really horrific way?”

Helen thought of lying. She did. But Nate would look online and learn the truth in a few quick keystrokes. She sighed and nodded.

“It was a murder-suicide. Her husband shot her, then himself.”

He laughed in a sickening I can’t believe this is happening kind of way. “So the mantel—this mantel that you just had to have, that we had to do a major redesign for—for our new home, our new life together that we left everything behind for, it came from the house where the guy shot his wife and then himself?”

“I—” she stammered. “I’m sorry,” she said, truly meaning it. Feeling it in her gut. “I know it sounds crazy and terrible, but it’s not. I didn’t mean to lie. I was just afraid. You get so annoyed, angry even, when I talk about Hattie and Jane.”

“Do you blame me, Helen? I mean, really? Think about it. How is it that they’ve become more important to you than I am?”

“They’re not more important, Nate. How can you think that?”

How could she explain it? This feeling she had, uncovering little pieces of truth about these women and the lives they led. It was like Hattie wanted her to find them. Hattie was guiding her, helping her to bring them all together like this, these generations of Breckenridge women. And now to save one of them.

“It’s just been this amazing experience,” she confessed. “To make these discoveries. To feel so connected to the past. To find these objects tied to these women, generations of Breckenridge women. It’s like…like I was meant to find each object, led to them somehow, and I—”

    “Don’t give me this New Agey destiny bullshit,” he interrupted. “You sound like that wacko Dicky talking about all that the spirits have to teach us.”

“I don’t think—”

“You’re turning our house into this fucked-up museum of Hattie’s fucked-up family, all of whom seemed to die in horrible ways! Some people move into a haunted house, but you, you want to build a haunted house, Helen. How fucked up is that?”

He took a few long swallows of beer, tilting the can way back. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at her accusingly.

She’d never seen him this angry, this spiteful. His whole face seemed to change. The dark circles beneath his eyes made them look sunken deep in his skull, small and beady. His hand holding the beer can trembled slightly.

She thought, absurdly, of Ann’s husband. Of what it had taken to break him, to turn him to act in the violent way he had. He must have loved her once, back before something snapped inside him.

Was everyone capable of such evil? Of doing such a terrible thing?

A few months ago, Helen would never have believed herself capable of lying to Nate. And if anyone had told her Nate would talk to her in such an angry way, look at her with such loathing, she never would have believed it.

Other people’s lives were like that. Not theirs. They were different.

They loved each other. He’d written her a poem about the night they’d met, a beautiful poem that had won her over completely. They had their differences, sure, but she didn’t remember him ever even losing his temper before Vermont.

“Shit, Helen,” Nate continued. “Are you going to charge admission at Halloween? Welcome to Helen’s Haunted House: enter if you dare!”

She didn’t speak.

“Do you have any idea how totally fucked up this is? You’re obsessed. It’s a sick, unhealthy obsession. I think you need help. Seriously. And I don’t mean help from Dicky and his spiritualists. I think it might be time for therapy. For someone to help you figure out where this need you have for these things is coming from.”

    She didn’t say anything, just stood, concentrating on trying to keep breathing.

“Your father wouldn’t have admired this. He would have been horrified.”

This was more than she could stand. She barked out a cold laugh. “You’re one to talk. You’ve got your own fucked-up little obsession, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I saw your nature journal, Nate. You’ve filled the entire fucking thing with notes on that deer. If that’s not an obsession, I don’t know what is.”

He opened his mouth to speak, to defend himself, but she kept going before he got a chance.

“Have you been keeping track somewhere in one of your little spreadsheets of how many hours you spend looking for your white deer? Of the money you’ve sunk into it—the top-of-the line infrared cameras, the cables, the bags of deer food and salt licks? While you bitch and moan about being over budget. And you haven’t even gotten a single clear picture yet, have you?”

“No, but I will. The deer is real, Helen. An actual flesh-and-blood creature. Unlike these ghosts you’re apparently trying to summon.”

“You know what I can’t help but wonder? If maybe your need to do all this research and gather all this proof about the deer is because part of you worries that maybe, just maybe, Riley was right. Maybe that deer really is the ghost of Hattie Breckenridge. And you refuse to accept that possibility, so you’re determined to prove her wrong.”