She tugged on the string, untied it, gently pulled back the folds to see what was inside as Nate shone the light on it.

“What the fuck?” Helen gasped, nearly dropping the bundle (not just dropping it, but throwing it to the ground, trying to get it as far away from her as possible).

But she held tight.

There was a bit of dried grass making a small nest, and in the center, two objects rested: a rusted old square nail and a yellowy-white tooth.

Nate leaned in, reached for the tooth. “A molar,” he said. “From an ungulate.”

“A what?” Helen said.

“A sheep or a deer, maybe.”

“Well, what’s it doing all wrapped up on our front steps?” Helen demanded.

Nate thought a minute, rubbed at the stubble on his chin, which made a faint scratching noise. “I don’t know,” he said, leaning back in and picking up the nail. “This is old. Looks like hand-forged iron.”

“Again, I ask, ‘What the hell is it doing on our front steps?’ ” Helen said.

“Maybe it was here all along,” Nate suggested. “In the trailer. And we kicked it out.”

Helen shook her head. “We cleaned. We swept. We would have noticed it.”

“Maybe it’s a gift,” Nate said.

“A gift from whom? Who would leave us something like this?” Her voice rose in pitch, alarmed but not quite hysterical. She wondered how Nate could be so calm—as if someone had left a batch of welcome-to-the-neighborhood muffins on their front steps.

Nate rubbed his stubble again. Scratch, scratch, scratch. “Someone who’s trying to freak us out?” He looked at her, saw the mounting panic on her face, and pulled her into a tight embrace.

“Well, they’re doing a damn good job,” Helen said, looking over his shoulder, scanning the tree line again, sure that someone (something) was out there, smiling a wicked little smile.

CHAPTER 4

Olive

MAY 19, 2015

Olive danced around the kitchen making breakfast. Daddy wasn’t downstairs yet, but he needed to be out the door in half an hour, so she was sure he’d be popping in at any minute, looking for coffee. And wouldn’t he be surprised when he saw the special breakfast she’d made?

A busy beaver, that’s what Mama used to say when she saw Olive working hard at something. Aren’t you a busy beaver.

Olive smiled. She was an industrious girl. That was a word from a vocabulary sheet a while ago, back when she did her homework regularly.

Industrious.