Months later, Harriett received an invitation in the mail. Her presence was requested at the unveiling of a new exhibition in Central Park. The image on the front showed the park’s famous Shakespeare statue transformed into Eleanor Roosevelt.
Of the twenty-nine statues in Central Park, only one is a woman.
This year, for International Women’s Day, we will be righting that wrong.
Join Manhattan Financial Advisors in celebrating women’s contributions to the world.
Beneath was a handwritten note from Max.
You were the inspiration. Please come back.
Harriett sent her regrets, along with a bouquet of flowers handpicked from her garden.
The Twins
Nessa parked her car in her drive and sat staring straight ahead at her white colonial. It took a minute to find the strength to get out. Then she unlocked her front door, closed it behind her, and stood quietly in the foyer of the house she’d inherited.
She’d had plenty of bad days in recent years, but it had been a while since one had felt quite so unrelenting. First the dead girls at Danskammer Beach, then Franklin’s appearance, and finally Harriett’s bizarre insistence that she sleep with a man she hadn’t seen in ages. If this was how things were going to be, Nessa wasn’t sure she wanted to stick around for thirty more years.
Her gaze swept the foyer as she listened to the crash of waves on a distant beach. In the grief-filled months following her parents’ funerals, her daughters had begged her to see a therapist. Nessa had turned first to interior decorating instead. She’d spent weeks shopping for the room’s antique table and porcelain lamp. She’d splurged on the wallpaper with its hand-painted cherry blossoms so visitors would see something beautiful when they entered her home. It had never occurred to her that the loveliest corner of her house would one day be the best spot to hear the dead.
After her parents died and her daughters left for school, there were times when the silence had almost driven her mad. Now the once quiet house was filled by the sound of the ocean, and Nessa was terrified of what she might hear next. She turned on the television as she passed through the living room and into the kitchen. Rooting through the fridge, she found a bottle of white wine that a friend had brought months earlier. She uncorked it and poured herself a glass. Sitting at the kitchen table, she put her phone faceup in front of her. Then she dialed the last number she’d called.
“Hey, Mama.” Breanna sounded worried. “Everything all right?” She was the elder of Nessa’s twins, the first daughter of a first daughter, and she’d always had a touch of the sight. Even as an infant, she’d been so in tune with her mother’s moods that Nessa hadn’t been sure whether the child was reading, causing, or predicting them.
“Yes, baby.” Nessa kept her voice even while the tears trickled down her face. They weren’t tears of sadness, but rather of gratitude. Her children were safe. For years, the twins had been Nessa’s sole source of solace. They’d stayed close by her side after their father died. Neither one of them would leave her for more than a few minutes at a time. “Where’s your sister? She okay?”
“Jordan’s fine, Mama. She’s at the library.”
“Good, good.” Nessa paused to blow her nose. “So tell me what’s been going on. How’s life?”
She wanted to hear her daughter talk about normal things. Boys and books and the Korean soap operas both girls loved.
“‘How’s life?’ You’re really worrying me now, Mama.”
There was no point in pretending nothing was up. Breanna could see straight through her. “Okay, fine. I was calling to let you both know not to get upset if you spot me on the news this evening.”
“Oh my God, Mom!”
“No, no, no. Don’t jump to conclusions. Nothing happened to me. I just—” Nessa took in a breath. “I found a dead girl today.”
Breanna went quiet. Her next words were a whisper. “Who was it?”
Nessa had never hidden anything from her daughters. They knew all about the family legacy. She’d sat them both down at the age of ten and told them every story she could recall about their great-grandmother Dolores and Miss Ella. When Nessa confessed that she, too, had the gift, Breanna had sobbed for hours.
“I don’t know who it was yet,” Nessa admitted. “Just someone who needed to be found.”
“So it’s started?”
“I suppose so.” Nessa suddenly felt exhausted.
“Was it horrible? You can tell me.”
Nessa could imagine her daughter cringing on the other end of the line. Breanna didn’t want to hear the details. Like other normal people, she preferred to avoid the subject of death. But Nessa knew her daughter would listen if she needed her to.
“Yes, it was horrible,” Nessa confirmed. “She was just a young girl. They killed her and dumped her by the highway like a piece of trash.”
They. The word had slipped right out of her mouth. She’d always assumed there was a single killer. But the truth was, she didn’t know that for sure.
“Oh my God, Mama, that’s awful,” Breanna moaned. “Do you need us to come home to be with you?”
“No!” Nessa wasn’t going to say so, but the last thing she wanted was her two girls in town with people going around killing women their age.
“I wish the gift had gone to someone else. You sure you don’t need our help?”
“I’ve got help,” Nessa told her.
Breanna knew what that meant. “You’re saying you found a witch like Miss Ella?”
“I found two. A protector and a punisher.”
“In Mattauk? Hold up. Jordan just came in.” Breanna put the phone down, but Nessa could hear her talking to her sister in the background. “Mama found a dead girl today.” Then she heard a thump and a thud as the phone changed hands.
“Where’d you find her?” That was Jordan—just like her father the cop. Loving and warm, but always straight to business.
“In some scrubland between the beach and the road.”
“Which beach? Which road?”
“Danskammer.”
Jordan’s next question followed so quickly, it took Nessa by surprise. “Was she redheaded?”
“No,” Nessa said, thinking only of the girl in blue. “Why?”
“Hey, Breanna.” Nessa heard her daughter put the phone down. “Mama found the girl out by Danskammer Beach,” Jordan told her sister.
“You’re kidding!” Breanna responded in the background.
“You remember Mandy Welsh?” Jordan asked her mom.
“No,” Nessa said. “Don’t think so. Should I?” There were vast stretches of time when Nessa had been oblivious to everything but her daughters, her parents, and her patients.
“She was the girl who went missing when Breanna and I were juniors in high school.”
That rang an unpleasant bell. “Remind me?” Nessa said, sitting up a bit straighter.
“They say she left her house one evening and never came back. The last place she was seen was Danskammer Beach. The cops claimed she ran away. But no one at school believed them. Mandy wasn’t the type.”