As Olive watched this spirit woman move, there was something spookily familiar about the dance she did: step, step, shimmy; step, step, shimmy. Then Olive looked down, peeked through the legs of the people who stood in a circle, chanting, “Hattie, Hattie, Hattie,” and saw the woman’s feet.

She wore ivory-colored shoes with silver beads embroidered across the toes in a flower shape and straps that fastened with tiny silver buckles.

Olive clasped her hand over her mouth to keep from making a sound, from crying out, “Mama!”

CHAPTER 39

Helen

SEPTEMBER 13, 2015

Helen was trying to put the pieces together: Olive’s mother paying $300 for Hattie’s necklace, then running off, never to be heard from again. And what the girl had said about Olive: Odd Oliver. Helen’s heart nearly broke. She needed to talk to Olive, to ask if she knew anything about the necklace her mother had bought, find out if she’d ever mentioned it. It wasn’t too late—she’d call Olive tonight, invite her over for hot cocoa to talk.

But her plans slipped away when she walked into the trailer.

Nate was sitting at the kitchen table, looking down at something. At first, she worried it was another warning message: LAST CHANCE.

But this was far worse.

Helen froze in the kitchen, wishing she could turn around and run.

Nate was pale, shaking. He had the ax next to him. And Helen’s notebook—full of all she’d learned; all she’d experienced with Hattie, Jane, and Ann; all the things she had lied to Nate about over and over—was there, open on the table.

Helen stepped back. “Nate?”

She thought of Ann being shot dead by her husband in their living room. What did it take to make a person snap, to pick up a gun (or an ax) and come after the one he loved?

“What did she look like?” he asked. He croaked the words out, like a frog calling from the bottom of the well.

“Who?”

“Hattie. When you saw her in the kitchen. And later, in the house. What did she look like?”

He reached down, rested a hand on the ax handle—the new hickory handle Helen herself had bought for hanging the ax.

“I—” Helen scrambled, unsure what to say. Perhaps deny it all, tell Nate that he was right, that there was no such thing as ghosts, she knew that now. Tell him she must have imagined it.

But hadn’t she done enough lying?

Nate rose, holding the ax. His eyes were glassy, bloodshot. “What did she fucking look like, Helen?” he shouted.

“Nate,” Helen stammered, taking a stumbling step backward, toward the still-open door, estimating the distance between Nate and herself.