“Fuck you, cunt,” he snarled.
The door opened and two security guards appeared just as Max was prepared to hurl another Lion. “You better walk me out,” she advised them. “If this asshole does anything to me, I’ll own the whole place.”
That evening, she kicked off her shoes on the train and didn’t bother to slip them back on when they reached the Mattauk stop. As Harriett strolled home from the train station barefoot in the rain, she knew the neighbors were peeping at her through the blinds, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass. She felt totally free for the first time in her life.
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?”