She held her breath, waiting.
“I took her picture,” he said.
“You…photographed her?”
He nodded. “And as soon as I did, it was all gone—the house, the woman, the deer. I was standing alone at the other end of the bog. It was like I’d imagined the whole thing. But it seemed so goddamnedreal.”
“What does the picture look like?” Helen asked, though she knew how he would answer.
“Like nothing. Like pure light was shining through the lens. Just one overexposed blur.” He looked down at Helen’s notebook again. He had it open to the passage where she talked about seeing Hattie for the first time in the kitchen. “Do you think it was her?” Nate asked.
“I do.”
“And these other women you’ve written about, Hattie’s daughter, her granddaughter—you’ve really seen them, too?”
Helen nodded.
Nate looked down at Helen’s notebook, touched it. “It’s because of the objects in the house? That’s why they come?”
“I think that’s part of it. I think the objects help them to come, but I think they come for other reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“I think they want to be together again. And…and I think they want something from me. From us, Nate. From our house.”
“Our house?” He gave her a helpless, perplexed look.
She nodded, paused. “I think they want these objects in our house so that it can be a gathering place, a safe space for them all to come back to. Somewhere between our world and theirs. An in-between place.”
“In-between place?” he echoed in the dull monotone of someone in shock, someone who was dealing with more than he could handle. But she had to go on, to tell him the rest.
“But there’s more than that. I think they want us to help them.”
“Help them how?” Nate asked.
“There’s someone they want me to find. A living descendant of Hattie’s.”
“Who?”
“I’m not sure, but whoever it is, I think she’s in danger.”
He stared at her, not knowing how to respond, doing his best to process what she was saying, to take it all in.
Helen reached out, put her hand on his arm. “We’ve got to help her, Nate. That’s what Hattie wants. What all this has been for.”
CHAPTER 42
Olive
SEPTEMBER 13, 2015
She ran home, cutting through the woods and people’s backyards, staying off the streets because she didn’t want to risk being seen if Dicky and his friends had gotten in their cars to look for her. The moon was nearly full and she had good light to navigate by. Once she was back in her yard, she went straight into the workshop—an old, leaning eight-by-ten wooden shed that stood on the other side of the driveway from the house. Heart thumping, skin prickling with cold sweat, she grabbed the old twelve-gauge Winchester her daddy used for duck hunting. All of their other guns were locked up in the gun safe in the dining room. But Daddy had been cleaning the twelve-gauge, so it was in the shop, on the workbench.
She didn’t know if Dicky and his gang of wackos would come after her, but she wanted to be ready if they did.
She felt around on the workbench until she found the flashlight her dad kept out there and flicked it on. The batteries were low and the light it cast was dim.
She found her father’s waxed-canvas duck hunting bag and opened it up, grabbing a box of ammo.
