Helen nodded. She’d walked by the house. Waved to a man in blue work clothes who drove a banged-up half-ton pickup.
“How old are you, Olive?” Helen asked.
“Fourteen.”
“So what, are you a freshman?” Helen asked.
Olive nodded. “Yeah. I go to Hartsboro High.”
“And it’s just you and your father?”
The girl nodded. “Just us now.” Helen almost asked more, but the pained look on Olive’s face stopped her.
Nate spotted a camouflage backpack, set down his spotlight on the floor, and grabbed the bag. He unzipped it and peeked inside. He pulled out a can of lighter fluid, some matches, then his hammer, a measuring tape. “These are our tools,” he said. He reached in again. “My phone!” He tried turning it on, but the battery was dead.
Olive nodded. “I’ve got the rest of them at home. I’ll bring them all back. I promise.”
Nate slipped his dead phone into his pocket and reached back into the bag, pulling out a graph-paper notebook this time and flipping through it, holding it in the spotlight beam. There were maps on the pages, maps of the bog with all the trees and large rocks marked. The maps were outlined in red grids with Xs over some of them.
“What’s this?” Nate asked.
“A map,” the girl said.
“Oh, really? You aresonot in a position to be sarcastic, okay?” Nate said.
“I know! It’s just…it’s hard to explain,” the girl said.
Nate was studying the notebook, frowning hard at the map with the tiny Xs. Helen could see that the drawing was a good one, the bog accurately rendered, right down to the path leading to her and Nate’s house.
“You said you were trying to scare us?” Helen asked. “Why? Why did you want us to leave?”
Olive chewed her lip, looked down at the plywood floor.
Nate set the notebook aside. “Better start talking, Little Ghost Girl, or I’m calling the police and driving down the road to knock on your father’s door.”
“Okay, okay,” the girl said, sounding frantic. “See, this land, it all used to belong to Hattie Breckenridge.”
Helen nodded. “We know. She lived in a house on the other side of the bog. But the house isn’t there anymore. Only the old stone foundation.”
“Right,” Olive said.
“So, you’re what—protecting Hattie’s land? Trying to keep it safe from outsiders?” Nate asked. He’d picked up the spotlight again and kept shining it right at Olive, blinding her, making her close her eyes. “Why? Because her ghost told you to?”
“No,” Helen said, understanding. She suddenly got it. The marked-up map in Olive’s notebook, the little bits of red string she’d found, Olive’s desire for them to leave the land. “You’re looking for the treasure, right?”
Olive looked away, bit her lip.
“What treasure?” Nate asked.
“It’s a story I heard in town,” Helen said. “Hattie Breckenridge supposedly buried treasure somewhere around the bog.”
“Treasure?” Nate scoffed. He rocked back on his heels, held out his arms in anI can’t believe thisgesture. “First, we’ve got a witch ghost, now there’s a buried treasure? Is thisScoobyfuckingDoo?”
Helen put a gentle hand on Nate’s arm and squeezed. She got how absurd it all sounded. “The librarian said it was just a story people told, town legend.”
“It’s not a story,” Olive said. “The treasure is real.”
“And you’ve been looking for it? Around the bog? Here on our land?” Helen asked.
