The car’s engine drowned out the voices, but Nessa knew they were still there. She drove slowly through the empty streets of Mattauk, looking at the town through the eyes of a stranger. It wasn’t hard. She’d never truly belonged. The storefronts were all charming, the restaurants homey, and the businesses cleverly named. If asked, she could have drawn every building from memory. But Nessa was overcome by the uncanny sense that there was so much she’d never seen. She remembered when her parents had first decided to move out of the city. Nessa had warned them things had changed on the island. She and Jonathan had driven out one summer with the twins. All that was left of the community she remembered were a few little cabins down by the shore.
But her parents hadn’t been dissuaded from following their dream. The home they’d bought hadn’t come with a white picket fence, so they’d promptly built one of their own. They’d come to the island to find what they’d been promised—and to claim their reward for lives of good deeds and hard work. But while they hadn’t been snubbed in Mattauk, they’d never felt entirely welcome, either. They knew their neighbors referred to them not by their address or the landscaping or the color of their house. They were the Black family. Nessa had sensed her parents’ relief when she’d moved to the island with her kids after Jonathan’s death. It let them ignore what had become increasingly clear—Mattauk was no longer the place they remembered. So they’d doted on their grandchildren and tried their best not to look too hard.
Nessa wondered what they would have said if they’d known there was a monster lurking in the shadows of their storybook town. Someone was murdering girls. Not the girls who lived in the big, tasteful houses. Not the girls whose parents were lawyers or doctors or investment bankers. He was taking poor girls—the kind who lived in trailers that could be hitched to a truck and carted off. He was stealing them, using them, and throwing them away because the world considered them trash. Would that have come as a surprise to her parents? Or had they known, deep inside, that that’s how things worked—even in pretty little places like Mattauk.
Nessa passed the courthouse and the police department, where Franklin’s car still sat outside. She was headed for the far edge of town, beyond the hospital and medical offices, to a seventies-era building she’d never set foot in and had always done her best to avoid.
The county morgue’s front desk was empty, but just as Nessa had expected, there was someone standing in the parking lot outside. The outline of a figure was all Nessa could make out in the dark, but she knew who it was. She threw on her turn signal and pulled the car into the lot. The girl in the blue dress focused her unblinking stare straight at Nessa’s headlights, as though she’d been waiting for her ride to arrive. Inside the morgue, her cold, naked body had been lying on a sliding steel drawer inside a refrigerated cabinet for two days. Nessa stopped beside the girl and got out of the car. She walked over to the passenger side and opened the door. The girl in the blue dress climbed in.
On the way home, Nessa stole peeks at her passenger, but the girl never looked back. Her eyes remained focused on the road in front of them. Nessa wondered what it was like to be trapped between this world and the next. Whatever discomfort the girl felt, she seemed determined to endure it. She wasn’t going to disappear until she knew her people would find her. Her connection to them was the source of great power.
Nessa’s phone pinged as she pulled into her driveway and parked the car. A text had arrived from Jo, with her first good news in days: Harriett had finagled invitations to a party on Culling Pointe. They would have a chance to speak to the rich people Mattauk’s cops refused to bother. At least it was something, Nessa thought, as she walked around to the other side of the car.
She opened the passenger-side door and motioned for the dead girl to get out. Then Nessa guided her guest through her house to the couch in the living room. When the girl took a seat, Nessa saw that she’d been taught to sit with her back straight, her knees together, and her ankles crossed. She kept her little black bag in her lap with her hands folded over it. For the first time, Nessa noticed a gold chain, so thin it was almost invisible, hanging around the girl’s neck. A pendant was hidden beneath the dress’s demure neckline. Nessa assumed that a cross lay near the girl’s heart.
The girl’s eyes followed Nessa as though she were waiting for something to happen.
Nessa sat down across from her guest and flipped open her sketch pad. “I’m trying,” she said, hoping that counted for something. “I’m new to all this, and it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be.”
The girl sat there, polite but persistent. She reminded Nessa of the girl she’d once been.
“Your mama must be losing her mind,” Nessa said. “Until we find her, you should stay here with me.”
The ghost’s brown eyes stayed locked on Nessa as Nessa began to sketch the contours of her face. She seemed curious.
“Don’t get your hopes up about the portrait,” Nessa warned her. “I’m not the world’s best artist, but let’s see if I can do you some justice.”
When she was finished, she showed the girl what she’d drawn. It was an excellent likeness, Nessa thought—better than the ones she’d sketched from memory. It would make it much easier for the girl’s family to be found. The ghost said nothing, but by the way her gaze lingered on the page, Nessa knew she recognized herself. When Nessa showed the girl sketches she’d made of the other two victims, her eyes went blank. It was clear she’d never seen them before.
At five o’clock in the morning, Nessa arranged her drawings on the dining-room table and closed her sketch pad. Just as dawn broke, she finally fell asleep.
She woke at noon knowing exactly what she needed to do. As soon as she’d showered and her makeup was on, she grabbed her phone and dialed Franklin’s number. When he picked up, she heard noises in the background and knew without asking that he was at lunch. “I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind stopping by when you have a chance?” she said. “I have something to show you.”
He didn’t ask what it was. He didn’t put her off or tell her he’d come when he could. “I’ll be there in five,” he said.
She waited at the window for him to arrive. When Franklin pulled into the drive, she felt glad to see him—and that felt wrong. Her pulse quickened when the car door opened and his form rose to full height. Since the day she’d met Jonathan, other men’s charms had always bounced right off her. Now there was a chink in her armor. Nessa didn’t know where it was, but she knew she was vulnerable. That didn’t keep her from rushing to greet him.
“You okay?” Franklin asked as he walked up the flagstone path to her door.
She wasn’t sure she should answer that question. “Come in,” she said instead.
Nessa ushered Franklin through the house to the dining room, where she’d spread out the portraits of the three dead girls on the table.
“What are these?” he asked.
Nessa placed a finger on the portrait of the girl in the blue dress. “This is the girl I found in the trash bag by Danskammer Beach.” She slid her finger over to the next two drawings. “I saw these girls there, too. They were standing in the water. I went back to sketch them yesterday.”
“So there were three girls, not two?” Franklin asked.
Nessa nodded.