When night fell, a half-moon low in the sky spread a stripe of white light over the ocean. I set the piece of hair on my windowsill and tamped it under a hunk of white quartz. I added the bandana, too, smoothing it alongside the hair—maybe there was a reason that I’d been compelled to take it, after all. Before I fell asleep, I felt for the place at the base of my skull where the hair had come from, the short spikes sharp to the touch. I dozed off looking at the quartz, bright in the moonlight, the hair a streak of red beneath it, and waited to see what the world would offer me in exchange for this little piece of myself, what kind of secrets it might tell.

AS SOON as I woke up the next morning a vision came over me. At first, the only thing I saw was a pale shape against a splotchy background. I couldn’t make sense of it, nor could I push it away. The throbbing began in the middle of my forehead and spread behind my eyes. I tried to focus on whatever this vision was asking me to see. A whitish square. Smears of red around it. Crisscrossing lines, like wrinkles. Skin. My mouth filled with the slightly sweet, metallic taste of blood and my stomach lurched, which was how I realized that the pale shape was a tooth that had come loose.

I came to, feeling disoriented, dizzy. The vision didn’t make sense to me. The bloody tooth had no origin, no context, no person attached to it, someone on the other side yearning to be seen or told something. There had always been rules, limits to how my gift worked. Some clients thought I could see their entire futures like a film reel—beginning, middle, end. But usually, what I saw was a glimpse of the past—a moment that pulsed with intensity for them. Something essential to their personalities, an instance in their life that shaped the way they thought. So what was this? Whose tooth?

And why? Once again, I ached for my mother. I reached for the letters I kept in a shoebox under the bed.

Dear Ava,

If you are anything like me, this is the year when you will come to realize the power of your intuition. You’ll be able to see things that no one else can see. Women like us have power, have a deeper understanding, a greater capacity for attention than most. All you have to do is step out of your own way and believe in it. There will be things you know without reason or proof. You’ll see things that should be impossible for you to see. Don’t be afraid. Embrace it. You have more power than you can even imagine. You have more to learn, and I can teach you.