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.