“Help us understand, Olive,” Helen said.

The girl drew in a deep breath. “See, my mom and I, we used to hunt for the treasure. She always said it was real. And she said she knew we’d be the ones to find it. But then last year, my mom, she…” Olive faltered. “She took off, okay?”

“Took off?” Nate repeated.

Olive nodded. “She left us. Me and my dad. We haven’t heard from her since. And I think—no, I know, that if I find the treasure, my mom will hear about it, ’cause it’ll be on the news and stuff, right? And if she hears, she’ll come back. If not, I can hire someone to find her. A private detective.”

Helen flashed Nate a this poor kid look. Helen had lost her own mother when she was just eleven. She knew firsthand how hard it was to be motherless. How back when she was Olive’s age, she would have done anything, anything at all, to get her mother back. She looked back at Olive, dressed up as a ghost in the old nightgown—her mother’s probably—and her heart just about broke.

“I wish you’d just asked if it was okay to go poking around on our land,” Nate said, voice softer, calmer now. He’d lowered the light so the beam was pointing down at the floor. “You didn’t need to try to drive us off with this whole crazy ghost girl thing. And you certainly didn’t need to steal.”

“I know,” Olive said. “I know and it was really stupid…and I’m really sorry.”

“Nate’s right,” Helen agreed. “If you’d just asked if you could search our land, we would have been fine with that.”

Olive looked down at the plywood floor, eyes on the charred remains in the cast-iron pot. She began to pick at the frayed edge of the left sleeve of her nightgown.

“So what are we going to do here?” Nate asked, looking from Helen to Olive.

Olive looked up, twisting the sleeve of her nightgown now. “Like I said, I can give all your stuff back. Well, not the pie. My dad and I ate that.”

“I knew it!” Helen said, looking over at Nate. “I told you I’d brought that pie home and put it in the fridge! You made me think I was nuts, telling me I must have left it back at the store or that maybe I didn’t buy it at all.”

“Sorry,” Olive said, looking small and sheepish. She toed the floor with a ratty sneaker. “And I can’t exactly give back the money, either. I…I kind of spent it.”

“Of course,” Nate said, his voice taking on an edge again. “Are you sure drugs aren’t involved in this in any way?”