“Where are we going?” one of the Cougars finally asked.
“We have to get past land by twilight,” he said. They sat quietly in the stern. He finally stopped the boat at a spot he knew well, where the chop wasn’t too bad. Behind them, fading into the distance, was the entire North Shore, and to the south the vague outline of the Boston skyline. But straight ahead, if you didn’t look back, was a clear horizon line.
“It’s a bit rough out here,” another student said.
“Not at all,” Hawk replied.
“What if we’re in the middle of a shipping lane?”
“Sometimes a shipping lane is a perfect place to be,” he said, laughing.
They all looked around nervously.
“Relax,” he said. “We’re not in a shipping lane.”
“Phew.”
“But can anyone tell me when a shipping lane might be a place you’d want to be?”
They all looked at each other.
Finally, one of the shyer women spoke up. “If you get in trouble and need to be rescued,” she said. “A shipping lane would be a good place to get to. Like if you’re breaking down or something.”
“Are we breaking down?” Another woman asked, horrified.
“Relax, ladies, we’re not in a shipping lane, and we’re not breaking down. But I’m glad to see someone has been reading the book.”
One of the women had pulled out a bottle of wine and was looking for a corkscrew.
“I didn’t know this was a party,” Hawk said.
“I generally like to have a little wine before I rock my sextant,” the woman said.
The other women giggled, and Hawk hoped he wasn’t blushing.
“You ladies are relentless,” he said.
“We prefer to think of ourselves as focused,” one of them said.
“I think you’ll focus better without the wine,” he said.
“You’re not very playful.” The woman sounded disappointed.
“Work now, play later,” Hawk said, taking the bottle and putting it back in the bag.
They got out their notebooks and their plastic sextants, things Hawk hated but had to admit were adequate for this class. He kept one of them himself as a backup, though if he had to, he could get a reading without a sextant at all. Watches were another matter. In order to get an accurate reading, you had to track Greenwich Mean Time to the second. If you spent enough time on the water, you planned for all possible worst-case scenarios. He knew at least three sailors who had horror stories about failed GPS devices. Some were ocean legend, but he knew that at least a few of them were true.
Tonight the ladies were all wearing quartz wristwatches, something you didn’t see much in these days of cell phones. Hawk turned on the shortwave and tuned in to WWV to sync with Greenwich Mean Time. He listened to the tick and the tones until the time was announced, and he looked on as the women checked their watches. So far they seemed to know what they were doing. A good sign, he thought.
Only one of the women hadn’t brought a watch, and he quietly handed her his. He had at least two more of them in the cabin—more worst-case-scenario planning. It was possible to figure Greenwich Mean Time by taking moon sights, but it was difficult and not nearly as accurate, and he didn’t like to do it except in an extreme emergency. He wasn’t going to even bring up moon sights tonight. He didn’t want to confuse them. Let them master using the sextant first.
“OKAY,” HE SAID. “FIND A spot you’re comfortable with and set up your sextants.”
He watched as the women positioned themselves in the stern, setting up their instruments and consulting their almanacs.
“Have you all done your calculations? Do you know what stars you’re looking for?”
They couldn’t have tracked their present location in preparation for tonight, but they were close enough to where they started that the locator stars should be the same. He walked around, checking their calculations. They looked pretty accurate.
“Now what?” a woman said.
“Now we wait.”
Hawk went below and checked the time. He had hoped to be back in time to do Zee’s railing tonight.
“May I please use the head?” one of the women asked him.
Hawk pointed her to the bow of the boat.
When she came out, she spotted the brass sextant in the mahogany case that sat open on the table.
“That’s a beautiful sextant,” she said. “Is it an antique?”
“It was my grandfather’s,” he said.
“May I try it?”
“Sorry,” he said. “There’s an aluminum one over there, if you want to give that one a try, but this one’s off-limits.”
He handed the other sextant to her, and she went back on deck looking as if she had just won a prize.
“Hey, where’d you get that?” one of the other women asked.
“Jealous?” She laughed and set up the aluminum sextant in the stern.
Hawk came out on deck and checked the sunset. In the distance the landscape of Boston glimmered red and purple.
Seeing the trace of Boston skyline, Hawk’s mind jumped to Lilly Braedon and her fall into those same waters. Though it hadn’t happened that way at all, in his mind’s eye her fall was in slow motion, the cell phone falling with her as it dropped out of her hand. It seemed such a surreal sight that his mind played it in slow motion frame by frame until she disappeared into the shining sapphire of the water below, slow, dreamlike, impossible to believe even in memory.
Quickly he turned away from the image and in the opposite direction, toward the horizon line. The sun had set about ten minutes ago. It was twilight.
“Check your watches,” he said. “It’s time.”
The chatter that had been a low part of the sound level stopped.
“Tonight we’re looking to fix our position on at least two of the three stars you have chosen. With any luck we will be able to see all three. They should be low on the horizon. This won’t be like the sights you took from the Friendship. There’s a lot more motion out here. You will want to rock the sextants back and forth, watching the arc, and keep adjusting until the star you sight is sitting directly on the horizon line.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “These instruments are built for chop. It’s actually easier to get a reading on a moving ship than from a fixed position.”
He walked back and forth, helping the women position their instruments. “Don’t be fooled by the planets. We’re looking for stars. Planets look more like disks—they don’t twinkle.”
It took a while, but they all seemed to get it. When they began to take their readings, the group grew even quieter. The shyest of them gasped. Hawk leaned over and took a quick look at her sight, then smiled at her.
“Nice, huh?” he said.
“Beautiful.” She seemed amazed.
He had done this thousands of times, but it never failed to fill him with awe. There was a moment when you spotted that first star, a pinpoint of light just where (if you had done your calculations correctly) it was supposed to be in the sky. He’d heard it described as a religious experience. He wasn’t sure about that. But when you spotted that first star or when the stars crossed exactly where they were supposed to cross, there was nothing better. Even if you’d been dead reckoning in the middle of a storm, or if overnight the Gulf Stream had taken you a hundred miles off course. If you had done your calculations properly, there would be a moment when you found that the star you were looking for was exactly where it should be on the horizon. In that instant the universe made sense, and you knew that no matter what else happened in the world, the stars would always tell you where you were, and when they did, you would always be able to find your way home.
The group was quiet on the way back to Salem. Some of them were writing in their logbooks, some just watching the stars as the sky grew darker and the constellations moved higher in the sky.
When he pulled into his slip, some of the crew were there to meet them. Hi
s friend Josh tied them up, and another crew member handed him a six-pack of beer he’d brought along.
“You can open the wine now,” Hawk told the ladies.
“Really?” They seemed surprised.
“Sure,” he said. “You earned it.”
Josh handed Hawk a beer. Hawk looked at his watch. It was almost eleven. He definitely wasn’t going to get to Zee’s railing tonight.
24
ZEE ATTENDED THE CAREGIVER-SUPPORT meeting at Salem Hospital. The room was surprisingly crowded. There were coffee and pastries in the back. It was rather more like a twelve-step program than she had expected. One by one, the people got up and told their stories.
A low level of depression seemed to run through the group, or maybe it was exhaustion. Certainly there was disillusionment and resentment, tales of siblings who didn’t help enough or of parental demands that put such a strain on the caregivers that for the most part they seemed to have given up their lives. One woman, who had teenagers at home, talked about the stresses of trying to care for an ailing parent and deal with teenagers and menopause at the same time. Several other members of the group commiserated or nodded approval.
“Aren’t you a little young to be here?” one of the women asked Zee.
“My father is in his late sixties,” Zee said. “And he has Parkinson’s.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said.
Though Zee got some good and practical tips for Finch’s care, for the most part this group was depressing. She couldn’t help but wonder if Mattei had known it would be. Perhaps this was a cautionary tale.
“Caring for an ailing parent is a lot like caring for a baby,” the group’s moderator said. “Except with a baby, you get to look forward to the results.”
THAT ZEE WAS ALREADY A bit depressed seemed evident to Jessina, who kept making excuses to stay a little later each day and to try to engage her in conversation, often talking about her son, whom she clearly adored. Tonight she told Zee that Danny wasn’t home and that she’d been wanting to bake a cake for Finch. She didn’t have a proper mixer or the right pans at her apartment, she said. Zee knew it was an excuse, because Jessina had just recently baked Finch a cake at home. So far that cake was only half eaten. Jessina hovered around her and kept asking if there was anything she needed. She didn’t need anything, Zee said, but she appreciated the offer.
At seven forty-five, Jessina finally went home, leaving a spice cake with white frosting in the refrigerator for Finch. At eight o’clock, someone knocked on the front door. At first Zee thought that Jessina had forgotten something, but no, she always came in the kitchen door at the other end of the house, and she had a key. Zee found herself holding her breath, hoping it wasn’t Michael.
In the events of the last few days, she’d almost forgotten about Hawk and the handrails, but she found herself relieved to see him standing here now. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and was carrying a tool bag.
“I have to take some measurements for the railing,” he said, as if thinking Zee might have forgotten why he was there. “Sorry it took me so long to get here.”
She led him to the hallway.
“Is this an okay time to do this?” he asked, seeing her expression. “I can come back tomorrow if you want.”
“No,” she said. “Now is fine.”
She showed him where the OT had said the railing should go, about thirty inches off the floor.
“Usually they’re thirty-four.”
“The OT gave me the height,” she said. “She wants it to match the height of my father’s walker.”
“Makes sense,” he said. He looked inside the tool bag, cursed, then went out to the blue van for a tape measure.
When he came back, she was still standing in the hallway. He made her hold one end of the tape while he measured the wall once and then again.
“I’ve got to run up to Home Depot to get the stock,” he said.
She nodded. “You want some money?”
He shook his head. “Just pay me when I finish the job.”
WHEN HE RETURNED THE NEXT night, Hawk started trying to guess where he knew her from. Over the course of the evening, it had become a joke between them—a game, really—and the only conversation they made.
“The yacht club,” he’d say.
“Not likely.”
“What about Maddie’s?”
“In Marblehead?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Nope. Sorry. Never been there,” she said.
Zee tried to keep things light. But she wished he would give up the game. It made her nervous. The last thing she wanted to do was to explain her relationship with Lilly to Hawk. Patient confidentiality prohibited any discussion of Lilly’s case, any explanation of why, as Lilly’s psychotherapist, Zee had been unable to save her. Not that she had any explanation that would satisfy anyone anyway. The truth was, she hadn’t seen it coming. She had failed.
HAWK CAME BACK THE FOLLOWING night at six, and the night after that, and by the fourth night he had completed the handrail. It was a nice job, rather more finish carpentry than Zee had expected. He had sanded and varnished it so that it was smooth and splinter-free.
“It looks like a ship’s rail,” she said, running her hand across the sanded surface.
He smiled. “At least I didn’t make it out of rope,” he said, and she laughed.
She could see him notice the spot on her finger where the engagement ring used to be, the patch of paler skin that highlighted its absence. She quickly let her hand drop from the railing.
“Really, it’s nice,” she said. “It should work well for him. Thank you.”
“I’ll come back Thursday night to do the grab bars,” he said.
“Thursday’s good.”
He looked at her again.
“What?” she asked.
“I know where I saw you,” he said. “We met at the fund-raiser for the Home for Aged Women.”
“Excuse me?”
He pointed in the general direction of Derby Street.
“Oh.” She laughed, remembering the building from childhood, though they had changed the name on it over the years. “No, I wasn’t invited to that one.”
“I’m not giving up,” he said. “I never forget a face.”
ON THURSDAY NIGHT, JUST BEFORE it was time for him to arrive, she was surprised to find herself peeking in the mirror to check her hair. She realized it had been a while since she’d even bothered to look. But tonight she found herself putting on a little makeup as well, just some mascara and lip gloss, but she noted it, and it surprised her.
Hawk was an attractive guy, dark-haired and good-looking by anyone’s standards. He had a winning smile and a fading scar that ran down the right side of his face, just enough imperfection to make him interesting. But he wasn’t her type. Not that she even knew what her type was. Her mind went to Michael. This was ridiculous, she thought. It was too soon. And there was Lilly.
She put the makeup away and frowned at herself in the bathroom mirror.
INSTEAD OF WAITING AROUND TO see him, Zee took a walk. She wandered down by the Willows and played a game of skee ball, then walked over and got herself some popcorn and sat on a bench listening to music and feeding the gulls. In the cove a class of first-time kayakers practiced rolling over and righting themselves.
When she got back, Hawk was standing in the kitchen, his tools packed away. “The job is finished. You want to see it?” he asked, already leading her down the hall toward the bathroom.
She moved past him in the small space, stepping toward the tub, then turning to face him. “Good work,” she said.
“Didn’t require a lot of skill.” He looked at his work. “I hope the height is okay. This was the only place I could put them that had wall studs.”
“It’s fine,” she said. “Thank you.”
He grinned at her. “So what’s next?”
“I guess we’re done, and I should pay you.”
He laughed. �
�Okay.”
“Let me get my checkbook.”
It was a small bathroom, and as he moved back to let her pass, she brushed by him. He tried to step out of her way, but she miscalculated and went in the same direction, bringing them chest to chest in the tiny space.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Not a problem.” He didn’t move out of the way immediately but stood there looking into her eyes for an extra moment before he stepped back. “After you,” he said finally, acting out as much of a chivalrous bow as the small space permitted.
He smells like the ocean, she thought as she moved past him.
SHE LOOKED EVERYWHERE FOR HER checkbook, but it was nowhere to be found. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is ridiculous. I had it this morning.” She thought about it. “I can drop off a check to you tomorrow when Jessina comes,” she said.
“That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll stop by and pick it up tomorrow night after work.”
“Are you sure?”
“No trouble,” he said.
She walked him to the door. “It gives me one more day to figure out where I’ve seen you,” he said. “Or you could just tell me.”
“What?” she said.
“I could tell that you recognized me that first day on the wharves.” It wasn’t a confrontation, more a statement of fact. “So I figure you can just tell me so we can stop this dumb game we’ve been playing and maybe move on to something more interesting.”
He smiled at her, and she felt herself flush. Damned Irish skin, she thought.
Not giving her a chance to answer, he turned quickly, and before she could say anything, he was gone.
ZEE HAD TROUBLE SLEEPING THAT night. She kept thinking about Lilly Braedon and the funeral and whether or not she should tell Hawk where he had seen her. She didn’t mind him knowing, but she didn’t want him to ask a lot of questions. As Lilly’s therapist she had confidentiality issues, to be sure. But it was more than that. Whether or not he was attracted to her, Zee knew that the minute she admitted it, she would be judged. Therapist of a suicide? He would judge her the same way she’d been judging herself.
The Map of True Places Page 20
