Dustin is watching my every step. He keeps asking me what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been so secretive about. “Nothing,” I tell him. The other day, when we were arguing, he grabbed my arm and twisted it hard, leaving a ring of bruises. He said if I’m not careful, I’ll end up with a lot worse than a hurt arm. “Sometimes people disappear,” he told me. “People who keep secrets.” My heart jolted. I’ve never been so frightened.
Olive’s hands were shaking. Her mouth was dry and sour.
What had her father done?
Outside, a car pulled into the driveway, the headlights spilling over the shed. Olive flipped off her flashlight, stood in the dark, listening. A car door opened and closed. Footsteps, then the front door of the house banging open and shut.
Should she run?
No. If she ran, she’d never discover what had really happened to her mother.
Olive grabbed the shotgun, loaded it, and started very slowly toward the house.
CHAPTER 43
Helen
SEPTEMBER 13, 2015
Nate was looking over Helen’s notes from the historical society while she paced the tiny kitchen in the trailer.
“Okay, so this Gloria Gray would be Hattie’s great-granddaughter. You think she’s the one in danger?”
Helen nodded. “I do. But the only record we could find was her birth certificate. I know that after her parents died, she and her brother were sent to live with family. So that’s a list of all the relatives Mary Ann and I could find, people they might have gone to stay with.”
“It’s a long list,” Nate said.
“I know,” Helen admitted. “But I’ve got to try.”
Nate nodded. “Okay. Get your laptop and phone. Let’s start trying to find these people, see if we can track down Gloria.”
* * *
. . .
At first it seemed hopeless, trying to find out what might have happened to Gloria Gray. Nate used Helen’s laptop (his was in the corner, streaming the feed from the wildlife cameras) and she took notes and made calls when they were lucky enough to find a phone number. She left several voice mails. Nate sent emails and Facebook messages, trying to convey how urgent it was to hear back as soon as possible without sounding crazy or desperate.
Helen was overwhelmed, feeling more and more like this was an impossible task. She thought of how it seemed as if she’d been led to find Jane and Ann—why would she hit a dead end now?
“Wait a second,” Nate said. “What’s the date of birth for Gloria’s brother, Jason?”
Helen looked down at her notes. “August 22, 1968.”
“I’ve got an obituary,” he said.
“You’re kidding!”
“He died in 1987, from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident.”
“Shit,” Helen said. “He was so young.”
“He was living in Keene, New Hampshire. He’d just graduated from high school there the year before. And listen to this: ‘Jason was predeceased by his parents, Samuel Gray and Ann Whitcomb Gray. He is survived by his sister, Gloria Whitcomb. He is also survived by his uncle and aunt, Mark and Sara Whitcomb, and his cousins, Rebecca Whitcomb, Stacy Whitcomb, and Marie Whitcomb.’ ”
“Wait a second,” Helen said, turning the laptop to get a better look. “His sister is listed as Gloria Whitcomb?”
“That’s what it says,” Nate said, pointing out the line in the obituary.
Helen’s mind whirred. “They must have gone to live with their uncle Mark and Gloria changed her last name.”
“But why did she change her name and Jason didn’t?”
“Hell if I know, but let’s do a search for any Gloria Whitcombs in New Hampshire.”
Helen glanced at Nate’s laptop, streaming the live feeds of his cameras: views of their trailer, yard, and new house with a glowing green cast. She was sure she saw movement: a figure leaving the house, moving so fast it seemed to fly across the yard, into the woods, moving down toward the bog.
“Okay, got something,” Nate said.
“What is it?” she asked, moving over to stand behind him, squinting down at the screen while he read.
“Listen to this, it’s a wedding announcement from 1998 in the Keene Sentinel: ‘Gloria Whitcomb, of Keene, New Hampshire, and Dustin Kissner of Hartsboro, Vermont, were united in marriage on June 2 at St. James Episcopal Church in Keene. The bride is the daughter of Mark and Sara Whitcomb of Keene. The groom is the son of Howard and Margaret Kissner of Hartsboro, Vermont.’ ”
Dustin Kissner.
The name pinged in Helen’s brain.
“That’s Olive’s father,” Helen said.
Nate typed more, brow furrowed. “Yup. Current address is listed as 389 Westmore Road. That’s Olive’s place. So is Gloria Olive’s mother?”
“No, her name is Lori, I’m sure of it.”
“Could Lori be short for Gloria?”
“Oh god, I guess you’re right. But…she disappeared last year,” Helen said quietly.
“Disappeared?” Nate asked.
“Rumor has it she ran off with a man, but Riley was telling me that Olive thinks maybe something else happened. Riley seemed a little worried, too. She seemed to think that maybe her leaving had something to do with Dustin. That he’d scared her.”
“What? Like he threatened her in some way?”
“Nate,” she said, “what if he…what if Olive’s dad did something to Gloria? Hurt her. Or worse. And what if Olive found out?”
“Helen, you don’t know—”
“Maybe it’s not Gloria I’m supposed to find and save,” she said. “Maybe it’s Olive.”
CHAPTER 44
Olive
SEPTEMBER 13, 2015
Her father was standing in the kitchen, wearing his town work shirt with his name stitched over the chest pocket. DUSTIN.
Dusty, his friends called him.
But his friends didn’t come around anymore. Not since Mama left. Not since they started their endless renovations. The knocking down of the walls, the piles of dust, the drywall and tape and compound and holes in the ceiling and floors.
“What are you doing with the gun, Olive?”
It was his serious, no-bullshit I’m the dad here voice. He called her Olive only when he was scared or angry or both.
She pulled the diary out of her back pocket, dropped it on the worn kitchen table.
“I found this in the shed,” she said.
He glanced down at it but kept his eyes on her, on the gun that was pointed at him.
When there’s a gun in the room with you, you give it your full attention.
Daddy looked tired. Thin. The dark circles under his eyes made him look like a raccoon man. “Put down the gun and we can talk, Olive,” he said, his voice like the chatter of an anxious coon. Danger. There’s danger here.
“Do you know what this is?” Olive asked, nodding at the book.
“No,” he said. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“Mama’s diary,” she said.
His face twitched slightly. “Lower the weapon, Olive,” he said.
“Did you know she was keeping a diary?”
He shook his head. The little color he had left his face, until he was as pale as the walls.
“I read it, you know. Can you guess what she wrote?”
He was silent, thinking, his jaw clenching, eyes on the gun. “Is it about the other men?” he asked finally.
She laughed. “You know what? I don’t think there ever were any other men. I think that was entirely your paranoia. Or maybe just you trying to cover your tracks.”
“Cover my tracks?”
“You know what’s in this diary? You know what she wrote? She wrote that she was afraid of you.” Olive swallowed hard, looked at her father. Her father, who taught
her to shoot and to follow the rules of a hunter: respect your weapon; never fire on a target you’re not sure of; never let an animal suffer; never, ever aim a gun at a person unless you intend to use it. “Why’s that, Daddy? Why would Mama be afraid of you?”
“Afraid of me?” he said, voice low, raspy, like he was in danger of losing it altogether.
“I read the diary,” she said. Her hands were hot and sweaty on the gun. She kept her finger on the trigger. “Don’t lie to me.”
She looked around the room, saw the torn-open walls, the missing floorboards. The constant state of destruction and demolition she lived inside. Then she understood. She finally figured out her father’s obsession with deconstructing the house. She felt like a cartoon character with a lightbulb going off over her head. “You’ve been looking for her map and the diary, haven’t you?” she said.
“What map?”
“The map to Hattie’s treasure. You thought she must have hid it in the house. Hid it somewhere good, somewhere no one would look. And the diary, that might prove what you did.”
He looked pained, his face proof of the expression “The truth hurts.”
“I—” he stammered, unable to come up with any more words.
“But you never found them, did you?”
He didn’t answer.
“I know you hurt her,” Olive said.
“Hurt her?” He staggered back as if the weight of her words had struck him in the chest. “Where on earth did you get that idea?”
“That’s what Mama wrote in her diary. That you hurt her. And you threatened to make her disappear.”
He was leaning against the counter now.
“She said that?” The words came slowly. “Why would she have said that?”
“You tell me, Dad.”
He shook his head. “I have no idea. I never hurt your mother or threatened her in any way. I would never dream of it.” He seemed to sink deeper into himself, to be taking up less and less space. The incredible shrinking man.
It was hard for Olive to believe that her father was lying—he looked so genuinely confused and hurt. But why would Mama have written those words in her diary?
Her father’s eyes moved from Olive and the gun to the kitchen window. “There’s someone out there,” he said.
“What?” Keeping the gun on him (was it a trick, something he was doing to divert her attention so he could get the gun?), she glanced out the window.
Daddy was right. She saw movement. She thought at first it was Dicky Barnes, that he’d come for her. Dicky and his band of spirit-calling witches were the last thing she needed right now.
But it wasn’t Dicky.
She saw the white dress, the glow of the white deer mask in the cool blue light of the moon.
Daddy stood looking out the window, blinking in disbelief at the deer head with white fur, long snout, glossy black eyes. “What the hell is that?” he asked.
But Olive was already at the kitchen door, throwing it open, watching the figure dart off across the yard toward the tree line.
“Mama?” she cried. The figure stopped, turned back to look at Olive, the white mask seeming to glow. Then she turned away again and ran off into the woods. “Mama! Please! Wait!”
CHAPTER 45
Lori Kissner
JUNE 29, 2014
The others knew. She was sure of it.
She’d gone to the circle tonight, just as she did each week, as she’d been doing for the past six months now, and stepped into the center of the group right on cue, playing Hattie, channeling. She wore the white dress, the black wig, her beaded shoes, and, tonight, as the perfect finishing touch, Hattie’s necklace.
The others believed she had a gift.
She heard Hattie’s voice as no one ever had before.
She heard it and she let it speak through her.
It was like she invited Hattie inside her, let her take over her body and mind, her tongue and mouth, let her say and do what she pleased.
She did have a gift.
And now, now she understood why.
She’d done the research. She’d been to the mill in Lewisburg and learned what had happened to Hattie’s daughter, Jane. And eventually she’d learned that Jane had had two children, Ann and Mark, and that Ann was none other than Lori’s mother, and Mark was Lori’s uncle, the one who had taken them in after the “tragedy.”
Before Ann’s death, she had said little about her own mother to Lori. Of course, Lori understood about keeping the past a secret. She’d kept her own past a secret all her life. When she moved in with Uncle Mark and Aunt Sara, she reinvented herself—started going by Lori and asked to have her last name legally changed to theirs. As if leaving the past, and all the pain that came with it, behind could ever be that easy.
Lori told no one about how she’d watched her father shoot her mother, then himself. She just told people, “My name is Lori Whitcomb. I grew up in Keene. My mom and dad are Sara and Mark Whitcomb.” What happened in Elsbury, when she was little Gloria Gray, was long ago and far away—and she liked it that way. Perhaps she shouldn’t judge her mother for never teaching her children her own mother’s name and the gruesome details of her death.
And now, years later, Lori told no one of what she’d learned about her true family history. Family tradition, after all. It was a powerful secret she kept, that she was related to Hattie by blood.
At first, Lori had believed that maybe she did have a gift. Maybe she was touched, as Hattie had been. Maybe it ran in the family, passed down to each generation of women.
Then she realized the truth.
Any power she had, any gift of divination or secret knowledge—it all came from Hattie. She knew things because Hattie spoke to her.
And now the words Hattie spoke were words of warning.
Be careful, Hattie whispered to Lori in her dreams. You’re in danger.
And now, now that she’d found the treasure, actually found it with Hattie’s help and blessing, she felt the walls closing in. All their eyes were on her, searching.
“Any updates?” they’d asked. “Any sign of it yet?”
“No,” she lied. “Nothing yet.”
She hadn’t wanted to come to the circle tonight at all. She wanted to stop going to the weekly gatherings altogether. To drop out of the group. To pass on her role as Hattie to someone else. But that would look suspicious. So she played along.
* * *
. . .
Once Lori put the necklace on, started wearing it day and night, hidden under her shirts, the visions and dreams truly started.
She dreamed of Hattie’s house again and again. Of Hattie stacking rocks for the foundation after her family home had been burned down, her mother killed.
Lori took out the necklace, looked down at the design, at the circle, triangle, and square that were the door to the spirit world. The door with the eye inside. A symbol that Hattie had been able to see things in both worlds, had the gift of sight.
Lori started going out at night so she wouldn’t be seen. She told Dustin she was going out to see friends, to see a band, any excuse she could think of. She wanted to surprise him with the truth. To bring that treasure home and say, This is my secret. This is what I’ve been hiding.
The digging was hard. She’d have to bring a change of clothes with her so she wouldn’t come home soaking wet and filthy. The worst part was trying to put things back in a way that made it look like the area hadn’t been disturbed. The last thing she wanted was a hiker or teenage stoner coming out, seeing the recent excavations, and getting curious. Rumors of Hattie’s buried treasure had gone on for generations—most people didn’t believe it, but still, treasure hunters came poking around from time to time.
The necklace and dreams brought her closer to the treasure.
After nearly two weeks of
digging almost every night, she’d found it last night! A crumbling wooden box. Inside that, a metal box with rusted hinges and catches. She broke it open with the spade of her shovel—inside were jewelry, gold coins, old bills, all wrapped in waxed canvas. It was real. As much as she trusted Hattie to lead her, she couldn’t quite believe that it was here, that she could touch it. She gingerly picked up a gold bracelet—were those rubies? Garnets? She put the bracelet back, nestled among other things that glinted and sparkled. She blinked down stupidly at the treasure, unsure of what to do next. It was nearly two in the morning. The box was too big; there was too much to carry back on her own easily. She decided to rebury it and come back again soon, once she’d thought things through and made a plan.
She carefully put it all back in the ground, changed into dry clothes, then walked home and slipped into bed beside Dustin. He didn’t stir.
* * *
. . .
Tonight, as she drove home from the spirit circle, she knew time was running out. The others were suspicious. They’d be watching her, keeping a close eye. She needed to go back and get the treasure soon—tonight! She’d do it tonight. She’d go home, change into old clothes for digging, pick up Dustin’s canvas duffel bag, and go get the treasure. Then she’d bring it home, hide it. She’d show Dustin, of course, and together, they’d figure out what their next move should be.
Heart pounding, shaky with adrenaline, she turned off the headlights as she pulled into her driveway and up to the dark house. She opened the front door slowly, crept into the hall.
The kitchen light came on.
Dustin was waiting for her.
“Where have you been?” he asked. His eyes were rimmed with red. From the smell of him and the empty bottle of Jim Beam on the kitchen table, he’d be in no shape to go in to work in the morning. And no shape to start an argument with.
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