Jo made it home with barely enough time to jump in the shower. She pulled on some clean gear and grabbed her keys. Lucy was already waiting for her in the car.
“Hey, I’ve got a question for you,” Jo said as she slid into the driver’s seat. “What would you do if someone you didn’t know offered you a ride?”
Lucy gave her mother the stink eye. “Do you think I’m dumb?”
“Okay, fine.” Jo tried again. “Imagine your dad forgets to pick you up from school and someone offers to drive you home. Let’s say it’s someone you know, but not very well.”
Lucy appeared thoroughly unimpressed by the latest scenario. “I have a phone, Mom. I’d just call you to come pick me up.”
“What if a man tried to drag you into his car?”
“Then I’d scream my head off and kick him in the balls and bite and punch and make the pervert wish he’d picked some other kid.” Lucy sounded like she’d enjoy nothing more.
“Good,” Jo said, though the conversation had done nothing to settle her nerves. The dead girls down by the beach must have had similar chats with their mothers. “But there’s one more thing I want you to do if anyone ever tries to hurt you. I want you to look them right in the eyes and tell them ‘If you mess with me, my mother will fucking kill you.’ Make sure you use the word ‘fucking,’ and try to look crazy when you say it.”
“Sure. I can do that.” Lucy seemed confident.
The traffic in front of Lucy’s school was worse than usual, and there were fewer kids walking alone. The line of cars came to a stop. “Show me,” Jo ordered.
Lucy lowered her chin and looked up at her mother with a hideous grin. “If you mess with me, my mommy’s going to fucking kill you. She’s going to rip your intestines out of your butt and shove them into your eye sockets and out through your mouth.”
“Yeah.” Jo nodded with genuine admiration. “If that doesn’t do the trick, I don’t know what will. Did you come up with that last part by yourself?”
“Yep!” The adorable eleven-year-old Lucy was back. “Pretty good, right?”
“Absolutely terrifying,” Jo commended the girl. The line of cars surged forward until they reached the drop-off point. “But seriously, Lucy, be careful. I can’t lose you. And I don’t really want to kill anyone. So please stay safe, okay?”
“Okay, Mama.” Lucy leaned over and planted a kiss on her mother’s cheek. And then she was out, the car door was slammed, and Jo’s most precious possession was skipping away from her across the schoolyard. It wasn’t until the SUV behind her honked that Jo finally stepped on the gas.
Her unease only intensified when she pulled up in front of Nessa’s prim two-story white colonial ten minutes later. Though she knew her friend to be an early riser, there were no signs of life inside. Jo felt the first flicker of panic as she hurried down the flagstone path to the front door. She should have checked on Nessa the previous night when her call went straight to voice mail. After all, there was a killer in town, and as anyone who watched shows like Dateline or Newsnight would know, Nessa’s picture-perfect house, with its jolly red door and white picket fence, was the ideal setting for a gruesome murder.
Jo rang the bell six times and tried the door handle. She’d started pounding with her fists in frustration when Nessa answered the door, still in the outfit she’d worn the previous day. The sunlight hit her face, and she recoiled with a hiss like a vampire.
Jo grabbed hold of the doorframe. Relief had weakened her knees. “Oh my God, I thought you were dead.”
“I wish,” Nessa said. “What time is it?”
“Eight forty-five,” Jo informed her. Then she leaned toward the woman and sniffed. “You smell like a winery. Did you throw a party after I dropped you off?”
“Don’t you go smelling me,” Nessa scolded her. “I saw three dead people yesterday. I needed to take the edge off.”
Jo gave her a hug. “How many bottles did you go through, you lush?” she whispered in Nessa’s ear.
Nessa pushed her back. “Just one,” she said with a wince. “But apparently that was one too many.”
“Aww. Poor thing. Thank goodness I know where to fix you up,” Jo told her. “Don’t bother putting on fresh clothes. Just hop in the car.”
“Take me to the hospital,” Nessa ordered as she shuffled toward the driveway. “If I’m unconscious when we get there, tell them to give me oxygen and hook me up to a saline drip.”
“Trust me,” Jo told her. “We’re going somewhere much better than the hospital.”
Nessa strapped on her seat belt and closed her eyes for the ride. She’d barely settled in before the car stopped again.
Nessa opened a single eye. She could see Harriett’s jungle pushing against the property line as if eager to claim more territory. “This is where you brought me?” she asked.
“Trust me.” Jo helped Nessa out of the car and escorted her to the house, holding on to Nessa’s elbow as if she were ninety years old.
Jo had just lifted her knuckles to knock when the door opened and Harriett emerged from a fragrant fog of pot smoke like a magician appearing onstage. She was wearing what appeared to be a blue linen shawl with a hole cut for her head and a vintage YSL belt to cinch the waist. A pale cloud followed her outside and drifted up into the atmosphere.
“Jesus, Harriett.” Jo fanned the smoke away from her face. “It’s not even nine.”
“Did you come to tell me the time?” Harriett replied with her gap-toothed smile. “I know this might surprise you, but I do own a clock.”
“Oh yeah? Where is it?” Jo challenged her.
“I have no idea. Perhaps in one of the drawers.”
“Have you been smoking marijuana?” Nessa asked. She spun around to confront Jo. “Is that what you think’s gonna fix my hangover?”
Jo rolled her eyes. “Nobody’s gonna make you do drugs, princess,” she assured Nessa. “Brought you another patient,” she told Harriett as she pushed Nessa into the house. “Unless you’re too stoned to cure anyone else.”
“I was stoned when you brought me the last patient,” Harriett noted. “I didn’t kill her, did I?”
“What patient?” Nessa asked suspiciously. “Who are you talking about? What have you two been doing?”
“Sit down,” Jo ordered. “We’ll fill you in when you’re cured.”
Harriett put on her glasses and took her place behind the workbench. Jo did her best to keep Nessa distracted while Harriett tossed an assortment of leaves, roots, and something that looked like it might be alive into a blender. The liquid she poured into a champagne flute was a thick, murky brown.
“What’s in this?” Nessa asked when Harriett handed her the cure.
“Just a few things from my garden,” Harriett replied casually.
“You didn’t put one of those nasty mushrooms in there, did you?” Nessa asked.
Harriett grinned. “I’m trying to cure your hangover, not send you to the moon. Drink it. I promise it will make you feel better.”
Nessa took a timid sip and wrinkled her nose. “It tastes like poop.” Her eyes widened. “Don’t tell me there’s poop in this.”
“Okay.” Harriett pushed her glasses on top of her head. “I won’t tell you that.”
“I hope that’s one of your jokes.” Nessa stuck a finger in the drink. It was coated in brown when she pulled it back out. “Harriett! This looks like a rectal exam!” Then she stopped, her face frozen in confusion. Jo later swore she watched the veins in Nessa’s bloodshot eyes fade until they disappeared altogether.
“Yes, but how do you feel?” Harriett asked.
“Good enough not to care what’s in it.” Nessa pinched her nose and chugged the rest. She banged the flute down on the coffee table and sat back with her lips puckered in disgust.
“Just so you know, all of my potions are one hundred percent feces-free,” Harriett informed her.
Nessa’s eyes rolled up toward heaven. “Thank you, Jesus,” she muttered. “I promise I’m going to lead a clean, healthy life from now on.” Then she brought her gaze back down to earth. “So. Y’all ready to tell me what you’ve been doing without me?”
“We may have identified one of the girls you saw on the beach.” Jo took out her phone and pulled up a picture of Amber Welsh’s pale, redheaded daughter “Does she look familiar?”
Nessa glanced up in astonishment. “That’s Mandy Welsh.”
It was Jo’s turn to be surprised. “You know her?”
“No, but my daughters did. They were in the same grade at school. And yeah, she was there at the beach yesterday. How did you find out about her? My girls said the police have everyone convinced that Mandy ran away.”
“They didn’t do a very good job of convincing Mandy’s mother,” Jo said. “I met her last night. She saw a news report about the dead girl and went on a bender. When I found her, she was drunk as a skunk and throwing plants at the police station’s windows. I brought her back here and Harriett sobered her up. She told us her daughter disappeared along Danskammer Beach Road and the cops never bothered to search for her.”
“You met Mandy’s mother? Why didn’t you call me?” Nessa pouted.
“I did, but you didn’t answer. I even drove past your house, and your lights were all out. If I’d known you were in there tying one on, I would have knocked. But I figured you needed your rest. We told Mandy’s mother you’d want to talk to her this evening. She works at the Stop & Shop. We can pick her up right after her shift.”
Nessa wasn’t completely sold on the strategy. “That feels backward to me. Usually you find the body and then talk to the family. What if I’m wrong and it’s not Mandy out there?”
“Do you think there’s a chance of that?” Harriett asked.
“No,” Nessa admitted. “But shouldn’t we wait a few days to talk to the woman? I called Franklin last night and told him I thought Mandy Welsh’s body was out there in the ocean. He promised me he’d have a look.”
“Did he tell you how long it might take to find her?” Jo asked. “It’s a pretty big ocean.”
The previous night, with her common sense clouded by two glasses of wine, Nessa had assumed the police would be out there first thing in the morning. Now she realized just how ridiculous that was.
“If it was your daughter, would you want to wait another day to know?” Jo asked.
If it was one of her babies, Nessa thought, she would have already gone mad with grief and pulled her hair out with worry. Even the notion was too much to bear. She bit her lip to keep it from quivering. Fat tears rolled off her chin and left blotches on her blouse.
“What is it?” Jo asked softly.
“Some evil asshole is going around killing girls, and I’m the one who gets to tell their mamas. What did I do to deserve this?”
“You’re the light that holds back the darkness,” Harriett said. “Women like you have always existed. Without you, the world would be thrown out of balance.”
Jo and Nessa turned their eyes to Harriett, who’d returned to her workbench, where she was filling a little glass bottle with a syrupy black liquid.
“What?” she asked when she looked up to find her friends staring at her. “I’ve been doing a lot of reading.”
“If I’m the light, what are you guys?” Nessa said with a sniffle.
“I’m the punishment that fits the crime.” Harriett returned to her work. “Jo is the rage that burns everything down. Nessa will have to talk to the dead girls’ mothers. But we’ll all have our parts to play.”
Silence followed. Then Jo giggled nervously. “Harriett is so fucking stoned,” she said.
Harriett grinned. “Nessa knows what I’m saying.”
She did. She’d heard something like it before—the day she’d asked her grandmother if she ever wished she hadn’t been born with the gift.
You don’t waste your time wishing when you got a job to do, the old woman had told her. Our work is important. We keep the scales balanced.
“Harriett’s right.” Nessa wiped her face and pulled herself together. “We need to get down to business. Anything else I need to know?”
“I jogged down to Danskammer Beach this morning,” Jo said. “There were cars parked along the highway and a crowd of people hanging around the crime scene snapping selfies.”
“Selfies?” Harriett looked up over her glasses.
“What in God’s name?” Nessa sounded mortified. “Why?”
“I guess word got out that there could be a new serial killer and all the ghouls are thrilled. Some kid actually stopped me and said he’d seen me on the news yesterday. Asked if he could interview me for his true crime podcast. I was standing a few feet from where we found that poor girl’s body, and this little asshole is looking to make a buck off the story.”
“Did you punch him?” Nessa said, making it clear she would have approved.
“No. Thing is, I know his show,” Jo admitted. “I’m embarrassed to say I used to listen to it all the time. Art made me stop after I slept with the lights on for a month.”
“Shows like that aren’t my thing, but I don’t blame you for listening,” Nessa said. “You gotta know what monsters are after you if you plan to avoid them.”
“It makes sense to listen if you’re a woman. But it doesn’t explain why serial killer stories are just as popular with men,” Harriett said. “Think about it—straight guys are almost never the victims. They don’t have to worry about anyone chopping them into bits. So what’s the appeal?”
“It’s pure entertainment for them,” Jo said. Dead women’s bodies fertilized a whole industry. Books, movies, shows, podcasts. “They all turn the murderers into supervillains with comic book names. It’s all about the killers—not the women they kill. There was one guy in Providence—they called him the Head Hunter because he cut off women’s heads. The podcast kid I met today could probably have rattled off every place in Rhode Island where the guy hid a head, but he couldn’t name a single one of the victims. The women are just props in the killer’s story.”
“You keep talking about a serial killer,” Harriett said. “Are we sure it was one person who murdered these girls?”
Nessa was curious to hear Jo’s answer. The same thought had occurred to her.
“What other explanation could there be?” Jo asked.
“It’s too early to draw any conclusions,” Nessa said. “I have to go back to Danskammer Beach. I didn’t get a good look at the third girl. I need to be able to sketch them all.”
“Do you think it’s smart to be sketching dead girls with half the town down there snapping selfies?” Jo asked.
“We’ll travel by water,” Harriett announced as though it had long been decided. “I have a friend with a boat. What time do you two want to leave?”
That afternoon, Celeste watched from the prow of her boat as the three women made their way down the dock, with Harriett in the lead. Even in a plain white shirt tucked into a pair of old jeans, Harriett looked like a visitor from another realm. The two women walking side by side behind Harriett couldn’t have appeared more different. One was pretty and plump, with a wide smile punctuated by two girlish dimples. Her manicure suggested she wasn’t a fan of manual labor, and her fancy silk blouse wasn’t made for sailing. Her companion was a compact little redhead with ripped limbs, a tight ponytail, and an outfit that suggested she might drop and do thirty at any moment. Yet the fact that the two women belonged together was perfectly clear. They were a matching pair.
There was a time when Celeste might have been jealous to see Harriett in the company of interesting women. In her youth, she’d demanded everything from her lovers. Every ounce of affection. Every second of spare time. Now her desire to possess had dwindled, and she knew trying to own someone like Harriett would be pointless. What Harriett gave freely was much more precious than anything Celeste might try to take.
Her affair with Harriett had changed her relationship with Andrew, though not in the ways she’d imagined. They were still happy together. And they were just as happy apart. For the first time in her life, Celeste wasn’t afraid to be on her own. Her time with Harriett had taught her a great deal. Harriett had a six-year head start on Celeste. She’d made it to the top of the hill they’d been climbing, and she knew what lay on the other side. Celeste had watched other women cower or crumble once they reached the summit. Harriett had grown powerful instead. Celeste didn’t know for sure what had happened. Harriett claimed she’d simply decided to see the world with her own two eyes. Whatever that meant, it was what Celeste wanted. And she could tell the two women with Harriett had made up their minds as well.
Harriett greeted Celeste with a kiss on the mouth that left Celeste weak in the knees. She could feel Harriett’s hand on the small of her back, pulling her closer. Neither of them cared who was watching—though Celeste worried Harriett might try to drag her belowdecks. She snuck a glance at Harriett’s friends, who were doing their best to appear nonchalant.
“Hello.” She gently pushed Harriett back. “I’m Celeste.”
“My apologies,” Harriett said. “Celeste, I’d like you to meet my friends Jo and Nessa. Ladies, this is Celeste.”
“Nice boat,” Jo said awkwardly, struggling to hide her amusement.
“Thanks,” Celeste replied. “It was my husband’s forty-fifth birthday present to himself. From what he tells me, it’s something all big shots need, even the ones who vomit at the sight of the ocean.”
Celeste saw Nessa’s eyes pop at the word husband. Harriett noticed, too, and gave her friend a wink.
“Her husband, Andrew, and I used to work together,” she said. “Now he has the job I deserved, and I have sex with his wife. I think I got the better deal, don’t you?”
Nessa was getting used to Harriett teasing her. “Couldn’t tell you,” she replied coolly. “I’ve never worked in advertising.”
Jo let loose a cackle. “Nice one,” she said, and with that, the ice was officially broken.
“So you guys ready to set sail?” Celeste asked. “Harriett says you want to go out by Danskammer Beach to whale watch? I warned her you might not see many whales this time of year.”
Celeste felt an arm wrap around her waist. “And I promised Celeste that she wouldn’t go home disappointed,” Harriett said. “I called ahead and told the whales we were coming.”
It hadn’t occurred to Nessa to take the whale comment seriously. She assumed Harriett was kidding around to entertain the pretty lady whose blue-striped sailing shirt and pearl earrings made her look like Jackie Kennedy. Yet just as Danskammer Beach was coming into view, Nessa saw a massive slab of dark gray flesh break the surface on the starboard side of the boat, and a spray of water shot ten feet into the air.
“Goodness!” she yelped, feeling the tingle of spray on her bare skin. “What is that?” If something so big could appear unannounced, who knew what else might be lurking beneath the waves.
“It’s a whale,” Harriett said with a knowing smirk. “A female humpback.”
“You guys got lucky!” Celeste shouted from the wheel. Harriett lifted an eyebrow and her smirk spread into a grin.
“You really can talk to whales?” Nessa asked.
“You said your grandmother’s friend Miss Ella spoke to snakes. I thought I might have a go at chatting with a whale. I’ve spoken to this one, but I can’t confirm she’s listening. She’s the strong, silent type. I yammer away, but she never talks back.”
The whale swam alongside the boat as if escorting them to their destination. As they got closer to Danskammer Beach, Nessa felt her body go cold. The two girls were down there, their faces staring up at her from the murky water.
She laid a hand on Harriett’s arm. “Would you ask Celeste to stop here?” Nessa asked. “And keep her busy for a little while, if you would.” They hadn’t discussed the importance of being discreet; it went without saying that no one needed to know they were looking for ghosts, not whales.
“Not a problem.” Harriett made her way to Celeste at the other end of the boat.
With the engine off, the boat bobbed up and down on the waves. The whale cavorted around the vessel, launching herself upward, twisting high in the air, and sending a burst of water into the sky when she slammed down on the surface.
“She’s putting on a show.” Jo took a seat next to Nessa. “It’s like she’s covering for us.”
“Yeah.” Nessa pulled a sketch pad and pencil out of her handbag. She wasn’t feeling chatty.
“Can you see the girls?” Jo asked quietly.
Nessa glanced up, her face grim. “Yes,” she said. “It looks like their bodies were dropped in the same place. If so, I don’t think it can be a coincidence. The same man must have killed them both.”
They floated just below the surface, their long hair undulating in the ocean’s currents. Mandy Welsh’s pale face shone like the moon. She had frank, honest eyes the color of moss. The rest of her body, clad in a billowing black dress, blended in with the depths below. With so many photos online, Nessa didn’t need to sketch Mandy. Her subject was the Asian girl in the red hoodie with long black hair and lips parted as if she wished to speak. She looked even younger than Mandy, Nessa thought. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Don’t you dare cry, Nessa, she heard her grandmother chide her.
“You’re good at that,” Jo said. “I didn’t know you were an artist.”
“I’m not,” Nessa told her as she sketched the outline of the girl in the hoodie. “I haven’t opened a sketchbook in years.”
The last morning of Nessa’s summer in South Carolina, her grandmother had slid an envelope full of cash across the breakfast table. She’d never had much to spare, so Nessa knew it was meant for something important.
“When you get home, find somebody who can teach you to draw,” she’d said. “You don’t need to be Leonardo da Vinci. But you need to be able to sketch a face so people know who they’re looking at.”
Nessa had never shown any promise as an artist, but she didn’t dare say so.
“You won’t always know the people who call to you,” her grandmother told her. “And sometimes the bodies are too messed up to identify on their own. You’ll need a picture of the ghost to figure out who they are.”
Nessa’s grandmother got up from the table and returned with a scrapbook, which she opened to a pencil-drawn portrait of a girl. Her eyebrows were plucked to thin black arcs over round, heavily lined eyes. She’d tried her best to conceal her youth, but plump cheeks and a mischievous smile betrayed her. It may not have been a perfect portrait, but it made a lasting impact. One look, and Nessa knew just who the girl had been—and how much her family had lost.
Nessa flipped through the scrapbook, past portraits of other dead women. She shook her head sadly. She wasn’t up to the task. “I don’t think I can do this. Why can’t I describe them and have someone else make the drawings?” she asked.
“Because they’re more than just pictures,” her grandmother said. “They’re a contract. When you draw a ghost, a bit of their soul gets transferred to the paper—where it’s mixed with a little bit of your own. The dead will trust you when they know you’ve got something at stake. If they believe you’ll keep looking, they’ll be able to rest.”
“What if I can’t find their people?” Nessa had asked.
“Then you’ll lose that little piece of yourself that you put down on paper. So make sure your pictures are good.”
While waves rocked the boat, Nessa finished her sketch of the unidentified girl. Whatever details hadn’t made it onto the paper were still in her head. As soon as she was home, she would transform the sketch into a portrait. She was too exhausted to polish it right away. Too much of her own soul had gone down on the paper. She handed the book to Jo, who’d stayed by her side the entire time. She watched as Jo studied the page.
“She doesn’t look anything like Mandy Welsh—or the girl we found yesterday,” Jo noted. “Aren’t serial killers supposed to have a type?”
“I think it’s safe to say that the killer likes young girls,” Nessa pointed out.
“True,” Jo said. “He also owns his own boat, and knows that the water out here is deep. A fisherman, maybe?”
“Maybe,” Nessa offered wearily.
Jo gave her friend’s shoulder a squeeze. “Okay, we can talk about all of this later.” She passed the sketchbook back to Nessa. “But before we go, do a quick drawing of the whale,” she said. “So we can show our captain what you’ve been up to.”
While Nessa sketched, the only sounds were the whistling of the wind and the chattering of the women at the other end of the boat. As she finished her drawing, a third noise arose—a faint buzzing that was growing louder. Jo searched the sky, but the glare from the sun made it hard to determine the source. Then a flying object swooped down from above and traveled along the length of the boat before shooting back up into the clear blue sky.
“What the hell?” Jo hopped to her feet and made her way toward the captain’s wheel. “Was that a UFO?”
Harriett met her halfway. “It was a drone,” she said. “We have an admirer. Is there a chance its camera captured anything it shouldn’t have?”
“Just this.” Nessa had joined them, her sketchbook closed and a sketch of the whale in her hand. She presented the drawing to Celeste. “I drew this for you. To thank you for bringing us out here today.”
“It’s lovely!” Celeste said. “But are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look very well.”
“I’ll be fine,” Nessa told her. “I think the drone really rattled me. Where’d it come from?”
“Looked like it came from Culling Pointe,” Celeste said.
“Do you think it was spying on us?” Jo asked.
“Seems unlikely,” Celeste said, “but if you guys want to take a look, I can steer the boat that way.”
“Will we get in trouble if we head over there?” Nessa asked.
“I don’t see how,” Celeste said. “Nobody owns the ocean.”
The mansions that lined the Pointe’s pristine beaches grew larger as the boat sped toward them. Some were classic shingle style, others starkly modern, but all were empty palaces. The kings who’d built them didn’t rule countries. They ran pharmaceutical companies or data-mining operations disguised as social media. Millions of subjects paid them tribute each month, but few people even knew their names.
“I read a book about the history of this area,” Harriett said. “Did you know there’s a story behind the name Culling Pointe?” She looked over at the others, who all shook their heads. “Back in the sixteen hundreds, the English attempted to start a colony here. They massacred most of the island’s native people and built a fort where Mattauk sits. Then one day a couple of colonists were hunting in the woods when they spotted a pair of deer walking around on their hind legs. The people who’d lived on the island for centuries could have told them that wasn’t unusual. The animals had learned how to reach fruit that grew in the trees. But the Europeans believed the deer were possessed by Satan. So they killed all the creatures and dumped their carcasses in the ocean. When they finished, they blamed the local midwife for inviting the devil to town and hanged her as a witch. She had her revenge the following winter when all but two of the colonists starved to death.”
“People were barbaric back in those days,” Celeste said.
“We haven’t changed,” Harriett said. “We just smell a bit better.”
“Have you been out to the Pointe?” Jo asked.
“As a matter of fact, I used to go once every summer,” Harriett said. “My ex-husband does the advertising for Little Pigs BBQ. The CEO of the company is a man named Jackson Dunn. He has a house on the Pointe, and he invites all his favorite toadies out for a big bash every Memorial Day.”
“I’ve heard about that party,” Celeste said. “Andrew says people would kill for an invite.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if someone already has,” Harriett said. “Jackson’s neighbors are all billionaires and CEOs. If you’re looking for clients or investors, that’s where you want to be. A lot of deals get made at that party. That’s how they recruit for their club.”
“I always knew there were plenty of rich folks around here, but billionaires? Five miles away from my little white house?” Nessa couldn’t quite believe it.
“The Pointe may be five miles away by map, but it’s really a parallel universe,” Harriett said. “It doesn’t belong to our world. The people who live there look normal, but they’re not like the rest of us. They hand off all of life’s unpleasantness to others, and everything they want magically appears. After a while, it changes them. More than anything, it changes how they see us.”
“Look over there. I think that’s our drone pilot.” Celeste was pointing at a tiny man standing at the end of a dock.
Jo checked him out through a pair of binoculars that Celeste kept in the boat’s cockpit. She guessed he might be in his mid-fifties. He was wearing a pair of old khakis and a denim shirt rolled up to his elbows. He must have seen they were heading his way because he offered a friendly wave. Jo passed the binoculars to Nessa and didn’t wave back.
“He seems normal,” she said. “Kind of cute in a rumpled way.”
“He reminds me of my high school math teacher,” Nessa added.
As they drew closer, their assessment didn’t change. He looked like the sort of man who owned several tweed jackets and knew how to pick a good cheese.
“Hello there!” he called out. “So sorry for dive-bombing you back there. I just got this drone and I’m still getting used to the controls. I thought I’d have more time to practice. The whales don’t usually arrive in these waters until later in the season.”
“You were whale watching?” Jo asked.
“Yeah, my girlfriend and I are just out for the day. She’s organizing a party for one of the residents, and I thought I’d try out my new drone. I had no idea I’d get lucky. How’d you know the whales would be out there today?”
Nessa hugged her sketchbook to her chest. He thought they’d been whale watching, too.
“I didn’t,” Celeste said. “I told them it was too early for whales, but they proved me wrong.”
“We got lucky,” Jo said.
“Did we?” Harriett asked with a grin.
That evening, the sun was heading toward the horizon when Jo turned onto Woodland Drive. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard, which read 6:33, and goosed the gas. She and Nessa needed to drop off Harriett and get to the Stop & Shop by seven to meet Amber Welsh.
As they approached Harriett’s house, Jo brought the car to a crawl again.
“There’s a hobo sitting on your front porch,” Nessa said.
“Really?” For a moment, Harriett was curious. The moment didn’t last long. “That’s just Chase,” she said, disappointed.
“Chase?” Nessa asked.
“My ex-husband.”
“Holy shit,” Jo said. “We were just talking about him. Did you—”
“Summon him? No. I have a feeling he’s here about a fungus. I meant to mail him the treatment a few months ago. I must have forgotten. Silly me.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Jo asked. “Do you need backup?”
“Backup?” Harriett laughed. “If it came to combat, who would you put your money on—the hobo or me?”
“Don’t murder him,” Nessa said in response. “The three of us have too much work to do.”
“I have no intention of killing him,” Harriett assured her. “That urge passed a long time ago.”
She slipped out of the back seat and made her way up the drive. The salt air and wind had blown her hair into a terrifying tangle of silver and gold that made her appear impossibly tall, Nessa thought, like the statue of a goddess come to life.
Chase rose to greet her, and Harriett drank in his surprise. In the months since they’d seen each other, he seemed to have shriveled while she had grown. Chase’s beard had gone bushy and his pants looked like he’d slept in them more than once. Still, she experienced a pang, like a spasm in an organ that had been removed or a cramp in a phantom limb. It faded quickly, and she knew that was the last pain of its kind she would feel. A woman much like her had once loved a man who looked like him. Neither of those people existed anymore.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he lied awkwardly. Honesty had never been Chase’s strong suit.
“I don’t need you to flatter me,” Harriett replied. “I’m very content with my surroundings.”
“You know, if you didn’t like the landscaping, you could have just said so.”
“I did say so,” Harriett told him, without an ounce of bitterness in her voice. “Come inside, and you can have what you came for.”
She stepped past him and twisted the knob on the front door.
“You don’t keep it locked?” he asked. “Someone could come in and take everything.”
Harriett grinned. He’d always been a bit slow. “Everyone in Mattauk knows better than that,” she said, stepping through the open door. “And just in case you get any ideas, so should you. Come in.”
Chase caught a glimpse of the interior and groaned. “Oh my God,” he said as he followed her inside. “I paid a fortune for those chairs. What’s growing on them?”
“We paid a fortune for those chairs,” Harriett corrected him as she stepped behind her workbench and searched through the cabinet where they’d once kept the booze. “And it’s moss. Here you go.” She handed Chase a jar filled with rancid-looking goop. “Rub this on the affected areas. The rash should be gone by morning. Tell Bianca it’s for external use only if she still intends to have children.”
“Thank you.” Chase set the jar down on the counter. “We managed to get rid of the fungal infection on our own. It took a couple of months and eight visits to a tropical medicine specialist, but it’s finally gone.”
“Then why are you here?” Harriett asked. “I haven’t seen you in ages. Don’t pretend this is a social visit.”
Chase’s chest swelled as he drew in a long breath. “I need you to remove the curse.”
Harriett found the idea amusing. “I don’t do curses, Chase. Fungi, yes. Rashes, sure. Infestations, absolutely. But curses, no.”
He took a step forward, his fingers woven together as if in prayer. “Harriett, I’m desperate,” he said. “If you want me to beg you, I will. I’ll give you the apartment in Brooklyn. You can have the Mercedes. I’ll do anything you want.”
“Well, you certainly sound serious.” Harriett was enjoying the conversation. “What’s the nature of this curse you’re under?”
“I haven’t had a good idea in forever,” he said as if he was certain she already knew the answer. “My instincts are totally shot. The agency has lost three accounts. We haven’t won a single new business pitch in ten months. Little Pigs is talking about putting the account in review. And if we lose that business, I’m out. They’ve already told me. I’ve been working sixteen-hour days and sleeping in the office. I need you to tell me what I can do to fix things. Please, Harriett.”
“Do you remember when you were pitching the Little Pigs account?” Harriett asked. “Remember the brilliant line that won the business?”
“Of course. And that’s all I need, H—to come up with a few more great ideas like that one.”
“But you won’t,” Harriett informed him. “And not because you’re cursed.”
“Then why?”
“Because it was my idea,” she said. “I gave it to you.”
Chase bristled, clearly offended she’d even suggest such a thing. “No, you didn’t,” he argued. “I remember being in the office that night. I had every team in the agency crammed into the main conference room.”
“Yes. And you called me in tears because it was three in the morning and none of them had come up with anything good. So I told you I’d think about it and send you something.”
“No,” he insisted. “That’s not how I remember it.”
“For fuck’s sake, Chase. I still have the email I wrote you,” Harriett told him. “I let you have the idea. I even let you think it was yours. Same with the vodka and deodorant campaigns that won you all those awards. I stood next to you and listened to people hail you as a creative genius, and I never once corrected them or let your secret slip. But deep inside, I always wondered what kind of person could take credit for something that wasn’t theirs. Now I know. It’s a person like you.”
Chase looked like a seven-year-old who’d just spotted Santa slipping out of his costume. “If that’s really what happened, why didn’t you call me on it?”
“I didn’t think I needed to. You see, Chase, I thought we were partners. You know, two people working together toward a common goal. But that’s not how you saw it. You convinced yourself that you were the one who made it all happen. It was your charm and brilliance and good looks that bought this house and the cars and that lovely suit you’ve destroyed. Now you’re here to ask me to remove a curse, because it’s easier for you to believe I’ve bewitched you than it is to accept the fact that I made you a far better copywriter than you ever would have been on your own.”
“You’re right.” Chase nodded. He wasn’t going to put up a fight. “I was an idiot. I should never have let things end the way they did. I’m sorry.”
She laughed—at his blatant attempt to manipulate her, and at the fact that she might once have bought it. The illusions of her youth had been removed with no anesthesia. She hadn’t expected to survive the experience. But she had. And now she was completely invulnerable.
“You don’t need to be sorry. It was time,” Harriett said. “I have no regrets.”
“Harriett,” he pleaded. “You have to help me.”
“No,” she said, “I don’t. You can have what you need. But this time, you’ll have to pay a fair price for it.”
“I’ll give you anything.”
“Anything?” she asked. He seemed so eager.
“What do you want?”
“Your firstborn child,” Harriett said.
Chase blanched. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’d have to talk to Bianca.”
Harriett couldn’t keep a straight face.
“So you were kidding?” Chase exhaled.
Harriett howled with laughter. “I never wanted a baby when we were married. Why the hell would I want one now? I want you to take me and my friends to Jackson Dunn’s Memorial Day party.”
He wasn’t quite buying it. “That’s all you want?”
“That’s it,” Harriett said. “I assure you there is nothing else I could possibly want from you. I wouldn’t even fuck you these days. Frankly, I find you rather repugnant.”
She hadn’t intended to be cruel. Those were just facts.
“You know, you’ve really changed.” Chase sounded wounded. “You used to be sweet.”
“That was before you set fire to our marriage and tried to steal my house.” Harriett walked to the door and held it open for him. “I thought it all would destroy me, but it didn’t. It just turned me into something new. And now that we’ve made our little deal, you should get out of my house. My friends will be coming back soon.”
“So this lady doesn’t have a car?” Nessa asked. The Stop & Shop where Amber Welsh worked was off a six-lane highway. The sixteen-wheelers racing by were streaks of red and white light.
Jo thought of the rusty Corolla parked in front of Amber’s trailer. “She has one, but it’s not running at the moment.”
“I don’t understand.” Nessa looked around. There were no sidewalks, and the shoulder on the highway was little more than two feet wide. “How does she get here?”
Jo had been wondering the same thing herself. “I have a feeling she walks,” she said.
“You’re kidding. She’s going to end up getting killed on that road.”
Jo checked the time on the dashboard. It was 7:16, and she and Nessa had been parked in front of the Stop & Shop for half an hour.
“Where is she?” A bad feeling had settled over her. “I’m gonna go in and check on her—make sure she hasn’t gotten cold feet.”
Inside the store, a fluorescent light flickered as yacht rock played over the store’s sound system. Jo headed for the nearest cashier, a woman with a massive bosom and the imperious air of middle management. She was ringing items up for an elderly couple who seemed eager to get home with a shopping bag filled with unusually phallic vegetables.
“Pardon me,” Jo said. “I’m looking for Amber Welsh.”
“Well, when you find her, you can tell her she’s fired,” the woman snipped without lifting her eyes from the scanner. Her name tag identified her as Linda Setzer, Manager. “I know she has problems, and she’s got my sympathy. But I just can’t run a store this way.”
“I’m sorry, what way?” Jo asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The woman finally looked up at her. “Amber was a no-show today. I couldn’t get anyone else to cover, so I’ve been manning the cash register since noon.”
“Shit.” Jo muttered. She knew what would come next. Every true crime podcast started much the same way—with a woman not showing up for a shift.
“Tell me about it,” the manager said. “You ever worked a till? My legs are numb from standing all day and my back is spasming. I’m going to be crippled for the rest of the week.”
“I’m sorry,” Jo said, and the manager shrugged. “So you haven’t heard from Amber at all today?”
“Nope,” she said as she began to fill a paper bag with the elderly couple’s assorted vegetables. “And at this point, I am no longer interested in hearing from her.”
Jo hurried out and hopped back into the car. Whatever had happened to Amber, she knew it couldn’t be good.
“Where are we going?” Nessa asked as Jo peeled out of the parking lot.
“Amber’s house.”
The first time Jo had visited the trailer, she’d had Amber to guide her. Finding the entrance wasn’t as easy the second time. When she reached the end of the bumpy dirt drive, it seemed she’d made a mistake. The site was empty. There was no rusting trailer. No broken-down car. No potbellied little boy. Only dirt, rubble, and trash.
“I must have taken a wrong turn,” Jo said. As she steered the car around, the headlights hit a patch of scrub and she saw something gleam beneath it. She stopped the car and got out to investigate. Parked under the bush was a little metal truck with no wheels. A boy had written his name on the hood in crooked capital letters. DUSTIN.
“Holy shit.” The truth slammed into Jo and spun her around. Amber and her family were gone. Aside from the toy truck, there was no sign they’d ever been there. At some point in the past twenty-four hours, they’d disappeared.