Riley stepped back, positioning herself to kick Helen again, but stood frozen, a strange statue in a white dress, eyes focused out on something in the middle of the bog.

The white doe. The animal stood, seeming to hover over the surface of the bog, her white fur as pale and glimmering as the stars above, her eyes an iridescent silver.

The doe was moving toward them, slowly at first, then full-on charging right at Riley, head down.

“Hattie?” Riley said, putting her hands up in front of her, in what Helen thought at first was a stop now protective gesture, but she was wrong—Riley was opening her arms to the deer, calling her closer, waiting to embrace her.

Olive struck Riley on the back of the head with the butt of a shotgun. Riley sank to her knees beside Helen on the boggy ground, dazed but conscious. Olive quickly turned the gun around, training it on her aunt.

“Hattie?” Riley said plaintively.

But the deer was gone.

CHAPTER 51

Lori

JUNE 29, 2014

Dustin stood over her, swaying like a snake.

“Get out before I do something we’d both really regret,” he spat.

Lori scrambled to her feet, left, got in her car, and drove aimlessly for an hour or more. She was moving on autopilot, numb and frightened. Not sure what to do or where to go.

She circled back through town, saw the lights at Rosy’s still on, and looked through the window to see Sylvia cleaning up. She knocked on the window, and Sylvia let her in, gave her a full glass of whiskey.

“Can I stay with you tonight?” Lori asked.

Sylvia kept pouring whiskey and Lori kept drinking, saying too much to her old friend.

She spent the night with Sylvia and made a plan. She got up at dawn, head pounding and stomach heaving from all the whiskey she’d had. She snuck out of Sylvia’s and drove home.

She wrote Dustin a note and stuck it under the windshield wiper of his truck:

D—

I love you with all of my heart. I would never be unfaithful. Soon, you’ll understand everything. I have a surprise. Something that’s going to change everything. Meet me in the bog at midnight, by the foundation of Hattie’s house. I’ll show you what I’ve been up to every night.

All my love,

Lori

She went to the mall, walking around like a zombie, then wandered into the movie theater, where she paid ten bucks for a matinee she barely paid attention to and a box of popcorn that tasted greasy and stale. After the movie, she drove to a truck stop out on the highway—a place she and Dustin used to come when they first moved back here. Exhausted, she pulled in between two semis and slept in her car awhile, then woke up and had a big steak and eggs meal.

JUNE 30, 2014