The bulbs Una had planted in the autumn had survived the winter. Nestled in the soft soil, they’d received all the rain they needed in April and May. By June, every bulb had burst out of the ground, ripening in the sun until the buds fell open to reveal jewel-toned flowers.
The red lilies were especially vibrant. Una had read somewhere that red lilies were a symbol of fertility.
I should bring some to Beth Pulaski next week, Una thought.
She wished she could do more for Beth. If only she could remember which plant her amma would have used to make a fertility tea.
As a girl, she’d had no interest in fertility or childbirth. Her amma’s tinctures and teas meant little to her. It was Amma’s stories Una craved.
For Beth’s sake, Una wanted to remember, so she moved through her garden, touching the plants and whispering their names in her native language, hoping to spark a memory.
She walked to the edge of their property, where the cucumber vines and pole beans covered the back fence in a curtain of green. Next, she checked the vegetables for signs of insect damage. The lettuce leaves had small spots around their ruffled edges, but nothing to be concerned about. The carrot tops looked like a small, lush forest—a place for the elves to hide.
Stepping over a row of onions and radishes, Una saw nectar-dusted honeybees tunneling in and out of the golden lily flowers. She followed the flight of a singular bee for a while before making her way to the herb bed below the kitchen window.
After scanning the tidy rows of dill, basil, and wild garlic surrounded by a border of marigolds, she pinched off a dead marigold head and thought about the tooth Jill had found.
There are no elves in this land. But there are monsters.
Despite being bathed in sunlight, Una shivered and turned toward the north, toward the harbor.
Mrs. Smith was on the other side of town, secreted inside her ash-gray house, but Una could still feel her. She could sense her power.
Her darkness.
Una worried about the two families living in her shadow. No, it was more than worry. She was frightened for Charles Bernstein and the Scott children. She didn’t know Charles well because she usually cleaned for the Bernsteins when he was at school, but she’d seen his shy smile in photos and heard the love in Elaine’s voice when she spoke about him. He seemed like a nice boy. A nice but vulnerable boy.
As for J.J., Jill, and Justin, Una loved them dearly. She’d watched them grow up. They were like a second family. She wanted to shield them from the presence inside Mrs. Smith’s house.
Something was stirring behind the closed door and shuttered windows; she could feel it like the shift in the air before a storm.
Something was waking.
Something strange and terrible.
Una hadn’t shared her fears with Kristofer. He was a man of facts and figures. Of newspapers and biographies. He liked freshly ironed clothes and a ham and cheese sandwich wrapped in wax paper in his lunch box. He listened to classical music on the radio and watched sports on TV. He went to church on Sundays and grabbed a beer with his coworkers on Fridays. His penmanship was neat, his papers were stored in a file cabinet, and his socks were lined up in his dresser drawer like a row of turnips in a garden bed. He kept the gutters cleared and the grass mowed.
Kristofer’s amma never told him the old stories. He didn’tbelieve in hunches. He didn’t think there were messages hidden in a person’s dreams.
Then again, his dreams weren’t haunted. Not like Una’s.
Una believed in the impossible because she had reason to, which was why she’d spent a decade trying to block out Mrs. Smith’s presence and the shadow cast by her sinister house.
But she couldn’t ignore the feeling in her gut. Turning her back and averting her gaze wasn’t going to work anymore. It was time to learn what kind of creature lived next door to the Scotts and the Bernsteins. What sort of monster had human teeth buried in the lawn.
“Kristofer!” she called, entering the kitchen and depositing her coffee cup in the sink. “Ready to go?”
“Ready!”
He met her at the door carrying a tote stuffed with their library books. Una took the tote, and he scooped up the keys from the wobbly clay bowl Gunnar had made. He’d been in the second grade then, a dark-haired, gap-toothed boy, as sweet as the raisin buns Una’s mother used to bake. Like most American children, Gunnar loved hamburgers and hot dogs. He loved Shake ’n Bake pork chops and fried chicken. Kristofer joked that they were raising a giant, and by the end of junior high, his prediction proved to be true. Their bright, handsome college boy was now six-four with linebacker shoulders and lumberjack legs.
Last summer, Gunnar had lived at home. Una had cooked all his favorite meals and fussed over him whenever she got the chance. This year, however, he was working on campus and would spend only the month of August with his parents.
“Gunnar would like today,” Kristofer said as if reading Una’s mind.
“It’s perfect beach weather.”
“Maybe not enough wind. You know he likes big waves. We’ll go to Fire Island when he comes home.”
