She looked at the table in the corner where his laptop was set up. It was open and showing the green-tinted images from the three outdoor cameras set up in the yard. Helen went over to look at them. There was nothing out there, no movement at all, only the trees, the trailer she and Nate were tucked safely inside, and the dark unfinished house looming above it.
The windows of the trailer were open and all Helen heard were the usual night sounds: the occasional croak of a frog from down by the bog, a lone barred owl, crickets.
She noticed Nate’s wildlife journal tucked against the laptop and opened it up. There was the first entry: the great blue heron in the bog. And then the porcupine, a male and female cardinal, a red squirrel. Then the sketch Nate did of the deer after his first sighting of her, the day he fell in the bog back in July. His drawing was remarkably lifelike—his art skills seemed to be improving with each sketch. She turned the page and found more drawings of the white deer and copious notes about his observations. She continued to flip through and felt her stomach harden into a knot. Page after page was full of sketches of the white deer and messily scribbled notes that seemed to make less and less sense as she went along. The notes said things like “Her eyes change color—tapetum lucidum?”; “went out into the middle of the bog and vanished”; “tracks disappeared.”
There were detailed accounts of sighting after sighting all summer long: where she came from, where she went.
One note said: “It’s a game we play. Like a child’s game of tag.”
Helen continued to turn the pages with trembling fingers.
His book was nearly full and over 90percent of it was sketches of and notes about the deer. Close-ups of her face and eyes. Notes on her approximate height and weight.
“My god,” Helen muttered, sure she was looking at the diary of a man unwound, a man completely obsessed. She felt sick to her stomach.
Then she got to the last page with today’s date at the top: “She was waiting for me today at our usual place. She was clearly annoyed that I was late. She looked at me as if to say,Please don’t keep me waiting again.Then she took off, running so fast that I could not possibly follow.”
CHAPTER 30
Olive
SEPTEMBER 10, 2015
Olive had been dreaming about Hattie for the past few weeks. Since she’d put Mama’s necklace on. Dreaming not just about Hattie but thatshewas Hattie. She was standing in front of her house by the bog. Then she heard men and dogs coming for her.
The dreams ended the same: with a noose around her neck and her hanging from the big white pine.
She woke up at midnight on the living room couch and was totally disoriented: she thought she was still Hattie, waking up in the little crooked cabin.
“You okay?” her dad said, standing over her. He was in boxers and a T-shirt. His hair was ruffled and his eyes were puffy.
“Yeah, bad dream,” she said.
“You screamed in your sleep,” he said. “Scared the hell out of me. Woke me up out of a sound sleep. I came tearing out here thinking something…I don’t know what.”
“Sorry.” She rubbed her face and shook her head, trying to rid herself of the dream.
“Then when I got out here, you were talking in your sleep.”
“Yeah? What’d I say?”
“ ‘I’ll always be here,’ ” he said. “That’s what you said.”
Olive got chills.
“You sure you’re feeling okay, Ollie?” Daddy said. He put a hand on her forehead, like she might have a fever. “You don’t look right.”
“I’m fine, Dad,” she said. But she was anything but fine.
“If you’re sick tomorrow, I can call Riley, see if she can come hang out with you.”
“No, Dad, I’m fine, really.”
“Things going okay at school?”
“They’re fine,” she said.
The truth was, even though she was only a few days in, the year was off to a better start. She hadn’t cut so much as a single class. She showed up prepared, did all of her homework.
