“You called the Harding guy’s wife,” Nessa said. “You warned her.”
“Yeah.” Rosamund Harding had politely thanked Jo for calling and assured her it was all a misunderstanding. But she hadn’t been back to the gym since. “Maybe I’m just paranoid. I looked up Spencer Harding. He’s an art dealer, for God’s sake, not some kind of supervillain. But why is he sending some thug to hunt down his wife? It’s like the start of a Newsnight episode. This kind of shit is how women end up getting hurt. I shouldn’t have let the bodyguard get away with it.”
“Well, he didn’t get away with it completely,” Nessa pointed out. “You did kick his ass.”
Jo gasped. “Nessa,” she said. “Did you just say ass?”
“I did,” Nessa responded proudly, like a kid holding out a straight-A report card.
“Sweetheart, that is some motherfucking excellent progress.”
“Awww, thanks, baby,” Nessa cooed. “I owe it all to you.”
Jo turned her eyes back to the road and whistled. “Would you look at that.” She slowed the car down to appreciate the sight of Brendon Baker’s yard. A week had passed since she’d spotted Brendon doing battle with the giant plant in his lawn. Now no trace remained of his perfect green carpet of grass. Weeds bursting with spiny seedpods or shiny black berries now competed for every square inch of space. Poison ivy climbed the trees, and thick green stalks shot out of the earth, exploding into umbrellas of little white blooms ten feet off the ground. “Those giant flowers weren’t here the last time I drove by. I like them. They add a certain Seussian touch.”
“You haven’t spent much time in the country, have you? That’s hogweed,” Nessa informed her. “Brush up against it, and it’ll scar you for life. The rest of those plants are dangerous, too. Nightshade. Jimson weed. Hemlock. The guy who mows my lawn told me all the landscapers think Baker’s been cursed. That’s one of the reasons he can’t pay anyone to come clear it out.”
“One of the reasons?” Jo was loving it. “What are the others?”
“Well, look at it! No one wants to mess with a thing of beauty. The tyrant of the HOA gets kicked to the curb for failing to obey his own rules? That’s some first-class poetic justice right there,” Nessa said. “Serves him right for harassing that woman.”
“Harriett Osborne,” Jo said.
The name, said out loud, seemed to cast a spell of its own. “You ever meet her?” Nessa asked.
“A long time ago. If I thought she’d remember me, I’d go knock on her door and shake her damn hand. Getting Brendon Baker kicked off the HOA board was the best thing that’s happened to Mattauk in years.”
“He’s still telling anyone who’ll listen that she’s responsible for destroying his lawn.” Nessa looked over at Jo. “What do you think?”
“I think if you’re gonna go around saying shit like that, you better have proof. There have to be a thousand security cameras between here and her house. As far as I know, not a single one of them got a picture of Harriett Osborne,” Jo said. Then she smirked. “Though I’m not sure that means she’s innocent. Have you seen her property lately?”
“She lives half a mile from me. I walk past it every night,” Nessa said.
“Harriett’s got quite a green thumb.”
“That’s the other reason nobody wants to help clean up Brendon’s yard. They say the Osborne lady has powers. Nobody wants to get in her way.”
“Do you think she has powers?” Jo asked carefully, feeling her friend out. She’d considered telling Nessa about the ball of fire, but she hadn’t quite worked up the nerve.
“Seems pretty obvious to me,” Nessa said. “Brendon Baker messed with the wrong bitch.”
The Quiet Life
The moment Nessa entered her house and shut the front door behind her, the silence surrounded her. As always, she stood still in the foyer, closed her eyes, and listened. It was still there. When she’d first heard it weeks ago, the sound had been so faint that Nessa needed days to identify it. Now it was louder—the crash of waves. For a while, she’d held out hope that it might just be the ocean. She asked the neighbors if they heard it too. They politely reminded her that the nearest beach was more than three miles away.
Yesterday, Nessa had heard something new—a whisper that seemed to roll in with the waves. Here, a girl said. Over three decades had passed since Nessa’s ears had picked up anything like it. Still, she knew it was a message, and she knew what it meant. Someone was lost and wanted to be found.
Her grandmother Dolores called it the gift. Before Nessa was born, Dolores had started a tradition that no one in the family dared abandon. Every time one of Dolores’s granddaughters turned twelve, the girl was required to spend a summer with her in South Carolina. Despite their protests, granddaughters had been shipped down from all over the country. Nessa’s cousin Melinda, whose parents were both in the army, had been flown in from Japan. Nessa was the sixth girl to go. Before she boarded the train, she’d met her grandmother only twice.
That was the year she learned what she’d inherited. One night, she’d woken to hear a woman moaning. It wasn’t her grandmother, and the two of them were alone in the house. She knew the sound came from far away, somewhere in the swampy wilderness beyond town. But the moan held such misery and pain, there was no thought of ignoring it. A woman out there in the darkness needed help. When Nessa went to get her grandmother, she found Dolores in the living room slipping into her sandals.
“You hear that?” her grandmother asked the twelve-year-old girl.
Nessa nodded, not sure if it was a good thing.
“Should have known. It’s always the quiet ones,” her grandmother said. “Go on, then. Get your shoes.”
The air outside was so thick, they might as well have been swimming. They could see the whole universe in the sky above. They hadn’t taken a flashlight. Neither one of them had ever been afraid of the dark. Mosquitoes buzzed around but only seemed to bite Nessa. She swatted them away and never once thought about turning back. Her grandmother was a serious, hardworking woman who’d never been prone to fits of fancy. Wherever she was going was important, and she wouldn’t have let Nessa come unless her presence was necessary.