“I—” she stammered. “I’m sorry,” she said, truly meaning it. Feeling it in her gut. “I know it sounds crazy and terrible, but it’s not. I didn’t mean to lie. I was just afraid. You get so annoyed, angry even, when I talk about Hattie and Jane.”

“Do you blame me, Helen? I mean, really? Think about it. How is it that they’ve become more important to you than I am?”

“They’re not more important, Nate. How can you think that?”

How could she explain it? This feeling she had, uncovering little pieces of truth about these women and the lives they led. It was like Hattie wanted her to find them. Hattie was guiding her, helping her to bring them all together like this, these generations of Breckenridge women. And now to save one of them.

“It’s just been this amazing experience,” she confessed. “To make these discoveries. To feel so connected to the past. To find these objects tied to these women, generations of Breckenridge women. It’s like…like I was meant to find each object, led to them somehow, and I—”

“Don’t give me this New Agey destiny bullshit,” he interrupted. “You sound like that wacko Dicky talking about all that the spirits have to teach us.”

“I don’t think—”

“You’re turning our house into this fucked-up museum of Hattie’s fucked-up family, all of whom seemed to die in horrible ways! Some people move into a haunted house, but you, you want to build a haunted house, Helen. How fucked up is that?”

He took a few long swallows of beer, tilting the can way back. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at her accusingly.

She’d never seen him this angry, this spiteful. His whole face seemed to change. The dark circles beneath his eyes made them look sunken deep in his skull, small and beady. His hand holding the beer can trembled slightly.

She thought, absurdly, of Ann’s husband. Of what it had taken to break him, to turn him to act in the violent way he had. He must have loved her once, back before something snapped inside him.

Was everyone capable of such evil? Of doing such a terrible thing?

A few months ago, Helen would never have believed herself capable of lying to Nate. And if anyone had told her Nate would talk to her in such an angry way, look at her with such loathing, she never would have believed it.

Other people’s lives were like that. Not theirs. They were different.

They loved each other. He’d written her a poem about the night they’d met, a beautiful poem that had won her over completely. They had their differences, sure, but she didn’t remember him ever even losing his temper before Vermont.