It was Nessa’s frantic call that led to Jonathan’s body being discovered. Another detective, a man named Franklin Rees, later told Nessa that Jonathan might have been alive at the time of her call. That thought had weighed on her mind for nine long years. She’d been powerless to save the person she loved most in the world.
After Jonathan’s death, Nessa and her daughters had moved out of the city to live with her parents. Both former schoolteachers from Brooklyn, they’d met on a beach near Mattauk as teenagers and retired to the island fifty years later. Nessa took a job at a clinic where no one had cause to pass away, and for years, she didn’t hear from the dead. She thought maybe she’d lost the ability, but her mother thought not. Nessa still had the gift. Her life was just too loud to make use of it. Then the girls left for college at Barnard. A year later, after her mother was diagnosed with cancer, Nessa quit her job. Her parents had helped her raise her daughters, and the time had come to help them die. Her mother went quickly and her father followed shortly after. The house that had once been home to a boisterous family was now silent. If Jonathan had been there with her, it would have been different. Without him, the loneliness started to pull her under.
Nessa threw herself into redecorating the home her parents had left her, but those efforts only made her feel more cut off from the past. She’d left most of her friends back in the city, and without a job, she had no way to meet new people. Back in her grade-school days, the village just west of Mattauk had still been known as the Oak Bluffs of New York—a vacation haven that had welcomed Black families like Nessa’s for over a century. Most of that formerly vibrant community was now buried beneath condos and hotels. The ladies who lined the pews of the church Nessa attended were in their seventies and eighties. Once they were gone, Mattauk and its surroundings would be Wonder Bread white.
Out on the island without friends or family to anchor her, Nessa felt adrift. Her days were featureless, her destination unknown. She tried therapy until she couldn’t find the energy to drive herself to her appointments. She stopped getting dressed in the morning. She let the sink fill with dishes. When her groceries were delivered, she paid no mind to the handsome deliveryman. Aside from her girls, the only person she spoke to was Jonathan. Finally, she decided she might as well join him. Her girls would always have each other. All she was doing by hanging around was eating through their inheritance.
The night she swallowed too many sleeping pills, her grandmother came to her in a dream. “What the hell are you doing, Nessa? You were chosen for a reason,” the old woman scolded. “You’ve got thirty good years left. You need to stay put and use them. Jonathan will wait for as long as it takes.”
Nessa had woken up at four in the afternoon the next day, her mouth parched and her head pounding. She took her first shower in over a week and never considered suicide again.
Ten minutes after Jo dropped her off, Nessa was out the door once more. She let her feet guide her, and just as they had the day she met Jo, they turned her away from the beach. Nessa had a hunch where they were taking her, but the why was a mystery. She’d always assumed she’d know just what to do when the gift came back. Wisdom and maturity were supposed to go hand in hand. Nessa had turned forty-eight in February, and she still didn’t have a clue.
The homes she walked past were all dark. A dog howled and a second responded. Security lights switched on as she passed and off as soon as she was gone. There were no cars on the road. Nessa knew it was dangerous for a woman to be out so late on her own, but she wasn’t worried. Something had told her to leave her pepper spray and penknife behind. That night, no harm would come her way.
Nessa’s destination appeared on a slight rise ahead of her. The moon hovered just above the jungle that had overtaken the infamous Osborne home. Leaves of every size and description glowed with its silvery light. A dense border of brambles repelled all intruders and shielded the garden from prying eyes. Nessa walked toward the property line and stopped at the thorny barricade. For the life of her, she couldn’t seem to find a way through.
“Hello,” said a woman from somewhere on the other side of the brambles. “Are you here to see me?”
“I think so,” Nessa replied. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, not at all,” the woman assured her, as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Her voice made Nessa think of rich dirt and golden honey. “I’m just doing a bit of gardening.”
“You usually garden this late?” Nessa asked.
“Some plants prefer moonlight. Some people do, too.”
It made perfect sense to her. “My grandmother was like that,” Nessa said. “She never did own a flashlight.” When lightbulbs in her house would burn out, she wouldn’t bother to replace them for weeks at a time.
“And you? You don’t strike me as someone who’s afraid of the dark.” Harriett sounded as if she might be grinning.
“No,” Nessa told her. “Never have been.”
“Nor have I. Would you like me to show you my garden?”
“Yes, please.” Nessa felt a rush of childlike excitement, as though she’d been invited to tour a magical world.
“Then come on through. Just step over the brambles. I know they look bloodthirsty, but I swear they won’t bite.”
Since the night she and her grandmother had found the dead woman, Nessa had always felt the cool calm of the graveyard. When she’d encountered Jo, she had been drawn to her warmth. Together, they balanced each other out. This woman was different—far more powerful and less controlled. She pulled Nessa toward her, and though Nessa was neither scared nor reluctant, she also knew there was no point in resisting. Some forces in life are so strong that the only thing you can do is submit.
As Nessa passed through the briars, not a single thorn scratched her, and when she emerged on the other side, she knew she’d found someone she’d needed to meet. Harriett was tall, her hair woven through with silvery strands that caught the moonlight. Despite the chill in the air, she’d removed her clothes. She stood naked before Nessa, her skin sprinkled with the soil of her garden. Magnificent flora sprouted from the earth all around her. Burdock, poppies, henbane, angel’s trumpet. Hanging from her arm was a basket filled with pale gray fungi that resembled the delicate hands of young girls.
“I’ve never seen mushrooms like those before,” Nessa said, figuring it wouldn’t be proper to acknowledge the woman’s nudity.
Harriett glanced down at them. “No, I suspect not,” she replied. “They aren’t native to this part of the world.”
“What are you going to do with them? They’re poisonous, I’d imagine.”
Harriett picked one up by the stem and twirled it between her fingers. “It depends how you define poisonous. There’s a very fine line between what cures and what kills. Come,” she said. “I don’t have many visitors. This will be fun for me. Let me show you around.”