They were out in the bog, near Hattie’s old house. Bullfrogs sang in a strange angry-sounding chorus, voices raised, like they were shouting over each other.

It was quiet up at Helen and Nate’s. Olive had spent the morning helping them fill the walls with rolls of pink fiberglass insulation. Even with gloves, long sleeves, and her jeans tucked into her boots, bits of fiberglass found their way to her skin and made her itchy, just like when she’d helped her dad with insulation. She’d kinda hoped Nate would use hay bales or milkweed fluff or recycled Patagonia fleece to insulate—no such luck. Probably too expensive. She went home, took a shower, and met up with Mike. Helen and Nate were hoping to finish the insulation today and start hanging drywall.

“What if someone had seen you going in?” Mike asked, reaching down, picking a handful of sedge grass. “What if your dad had found out you went there? He’d be pissed.”

“Well, he didn’t, right? My dad isn’t exactly paying a whole lot of attention to where I go and what I do these days.”

Mike scowled, picked apart the grass in his hand, ripping it into tiny pieces. “Maybe he should. I mean, that guy Dicky is a legit weirdo. The dude lives with ghosts and carries a loaded gun everywhere! And don’t tell me you didn’t think that old hotel was creepy as hell.”

Olive had told Mike only what Dicky had told her: that her mom hadn’t been there. She’d decided to keep the phone call she’d heard to herself. And right now, she was realizing what a smart move that had been. No way was she going to tell Mike that she planned to go back next month, that there was some connection between her mom and Dicky and his ghost club.

“Did he have his gun when you saw him?”

“Sure,” Olive said.

“Oh man, oh man!” He dropped the grass, looked at her in wide-eyed amazement that soon morphed into this stupid, furrowed-brow reprimanding-parent kind of look. “Olive, do you get how dangerous that was?” There was spittle on his lower lip.

“Like he was going to shoot me for coming to his store in the middle of the day. Quit trying to act like you’re my dad,” Olive said.

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Mike shot back.

“Oh, really? ’Cause that’s what it seems like.”

“I don’t want to be your dad,” he said.

“Well, what is it you’re trying to be? A boyfriend, maybe? Because I so do not need a boyfriend.”