Nate was still out cold in the bedroom and hadn’t so much as stirred when Helen had come in and turned on the lights in the trailer.

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 90 percent 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 that she was Hattie. She was standing in front of her house by the bog. Then she heard men and dogs coming for her.