The Map of True Places

by Brunonia Barry

  At the door she realized she had locked herself out. She’d left the interior door unlocked, but the screen door had clicked shut and locked behind her, an extra precaution she had set up to stop Finch’s wandering. Hawk tried one of the side windows, but they were also locked. Then, looking up, he spotted the vine that led to the open window in Maureen’s room. Zee stood watching as he climbed the vine in the same easy way he’d climbed the rigging that first day she’d seen him, and for just a moment she saw him as the young sailor in her mother’s story.

  When Hawk let her in the kitchen door, Finch’s alarm was going off. He stood at the far end of the tilting hallway, staring at Hawk.

  “It’s okay,” Zee said. “You remember Hawk. I locked myself out, and he let me back in.”

  Finch didn’t answer but just stood staring at them both. “Let me get you back to bed,” Zee said.

  By the time she got him settled and calmed him down, Hawk was gone.

  THE NEXT NIGHT ZEE ASKED Jessina to stay late.

  She walked down to the Friendship and then to Hawk’s boat, moored at one of the slips on Pickering Wharf. He wasn’t there. She found him at Capt.’s, sitting at the bar with the rest of the crew. All heads turned as she entered.

  Hawk stood and came over. “Two nights in a row,” he said. “Lucky me.”

  She realized she could take the remark two different ways.

  “I wanted to thank you,” she said.

  “For what?” he asked.

  “For walking me home. For your jacket. For not having me arrested.”

  He laughed.

  She handed him the jacket. He put it on and went outside with her, holding the door as they exited.

  They walked down the wharf, past the Friendship and the dog walkers and the granite benches to the tiny lighthouse almost half a mile out into the harbor. They sat on the bench.

  She had expected to have to offer him an explanation, had been working on what she would say for most of the afternoon, but everything she could think of sounded lame.

  But he didn’t ask her. Instead he sat looking out across the harbor.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked.

  “The house I grew up in,” he said, pointing to the Marblehead side of the harbor.

  “Which one?” She could see two houses, both with wharves.

  He pointed to a blue house.

  Her face went red. “You didn’t have a cuddy-cabin cruiser, did you?”

  “Our neighbors had the cuddy,” he said.

  It was the boat she had stolen, the crime for which she’d been arrested and Melville had posted bail.

  “Why?”

  “No reason,” she said.

  He looked at her curiously. “You’re an odd woman, Dr. Finch.”

  “You have no idea,” she said.

  He laughed, his smile catching her by surprise. It was that smile, she decided, that’s what the attraction was. It had been a long time since she’d been attracted to anyone but Michael, and there had not been a lot of smiling lately.

  It was more grin than smile, she thought, still trying to analyze what was happening to her when he leaned over and kissed her.

  That first kiss and the feeling of electricity that passed between them took her by surprise. He was watching her now, to see how she felt about it.

  He didn’t have to wait long for her answer. The kiss had effectively stalled any objective analysis she’d been trying to perform. She kissed him back.

  SHE DIDN’T GET HOME UNTIL after midnight. They had gone back to his boat, and afterward, when she looked at the time, she had rushed to get dressed and hurried away, embarrassed, not really certain how everything had moved so quickly and yet happy about it, giddy even.

  Standing there later in front of Jessina, she’d felt like a teenager about to be caught. She had dressed hastily, and she hoped like hell she hadn’t put her shirt on backward or, God forbid, inside out.

  28

  IN THE WEEKS THAT followed, they talked about a lot of things. He had gone to school in England, Hawk told her, to study celestial navigation, a field for which there wasn’t much demand, especially in the United States these days. “Which is why I’m a carpenter,” he said.

  “You’re not a carpenter, you’re a rigger,” she said, quoting the remark he’d made the first day they met.

  Zee told Hawk about Finch and Melville and about Maureen and the way she’d died. Later, to lighten the mood a bit, she told him that she was the girl who had stolen his neighbor’s cuddy-cabin cruiser.

  “I remember when that happened,” he said.

  “I was a wild child,” she said.

  He laughed. “You’re a fairly wild adult.”

  She smiled to think how most people she knew these days would disagree. Certainly Michael had never had such a thought about her.

  “Seriously, didn’t you go to jail for that?”

  “What?”

  “My mother told me that the cuddy thief was doing time.”

  “Probation,” she said. “And a lot of community service.”

  “I was relieved when they caught you,” he said. “Before that, I was certain our neighbor suspected me,” Hawk added, kissing her playfully.

  They were lying in bed looking up at the ceiling and the sliver of moonlight coming through what appeared to be a skylight.

  “What’s up there?” he asked.

  “It was the widow’s walk.”

  He thought for a minute and then said, “I never noticed a widow’s walk from the outside.”

  “We don’t have it anymore, a previous owner cut it down. Way back in the early 1800s.”

  “Mind if I take a look?” he asked.

  “Be my guest.”

  He got out of bed and walked to the center of the room, drawing over the chair from Maureen’s writing desk. He reached up and opened the hatch. Then he pulled himself up. “Great view,” he said, looking back down at her. “You want to come up?”

  She had never particularly wanted to go up there. It was too much a part of her mother’s story. Plus, Finch always told her it was dangerous. But tonight her curiosity got the best of her. She stood on the chair, and he reached down with both hands and pulled her up through the opening. They stood together on a small perch mid-roof. There was no platform anymore; the captain, in his fit of rage, had chopped it away, leaving only the sharp shards of splintered frame to hint at its existence. Hawk examined the gashes from the captain’s ax that were still visible on the hatch frame.

  “It leaks sometimes,” she said. “If we get a really heavy rain.”

  “I could fix that,” he said. “It wouldn’t be difficult.” Then, tracing what was left of the frame, he added, “I could rebuild the entire widow’s walk if you wanted me to. I couldn’t do it until October, though.”

  “It’s not my house,” she said.

  “Just a thought,” he said, then added, grinning, “It would be nice to make love up on the widow’s walk.”

  It was a little too close to her mother’s story, and it bothered her. “Not in October, it wouldn’t,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself.

  Hawk looked at her strangely.

  “It’s cold up here,” she said.

  They stood looking at each other for a long moment.

  “Did I say something that offended you?”

  “October,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You said the word ‘October,’” she lied. There was no way she was going to tell him that this was about a fairy tale.

  “I’ll remove the word permanently from my vocabulary.”

  She laughed.

  Talking about restoring the widow’s walk had been too close to Maureen’s story for Zee. Not that she believed in reincarnation or anything. She had thought about it a while back, even read some books, but in the end the theory just didn’t resonate with her the way it had with Maureen. Her objection was much more practical than that. Restoring the widow’s walk
would be something Mattei would see as an attempt to fulfill the mother’s dream. Just the thought of it made Zee uncomfortable.

  “Let’s go back inside,” she said. “I’m cold.”

  HAWK BROUGHT UP THE SUBJECT of Lilly Braedon on a number of occasions. It was always tentative, a testing of the waters that Zee recognized from her practice. Sometimes it was an offhand remark or even a question that hung at the edges of the confidentiality issue but didn’t exactly breach it. How long had Zee been treating Lilly? Had she ever met her children?

  “I can’t talk about Lilly Braedon with you,” she said. “I can’t even talk about her with her own family.”

  It’s not that Zee didn’t want to talk about Lilly. In one way he would have been the perfect person to talk with. He’d been an eyewitness, and, as was typical in such cases, he felt a certain connection to Lilly and her fate. She knew he would always wonder if he could have saved her. He’d told her as much. But Zee knew that if she started talking about Lilly with Hawk, it would be difficult to stop. Lilly was in her thoughts more and more these days. Zee ran the risk not only of crossing the lines of confidentiality but of using the relationship as a substitute for the therapy she obviously needed, something that she was aware she might already be doing, though in a different way. She genuinely liked Hawk, she didn’t want to use him in any way. She was well aware that she needed therapy concerning the death of her patient, but she wasn’t ready, not yet.

  BY THE THIRD WEEK OF July, she was as ready as she would ever be, and so she booked a session with Mattei and drove to Boston.

  Mattei looked surprisingly different—she was quite tanned and dressed in a skirt that looked like it was out of the early sixties.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a skirt,” Zee said.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever worn one,” Mattei said with a laugh. “I’m practicing for the wedding.” She walked across the room to demonstrate. “I’m feeling very Betty Draper.”

  Zee took a seat. “So how are things going here?”

  “Not too bad. Michelle has taken two of your patients, and Greta has the rest of them. They all want you back, but for the most part everyone’s doing pretty well. I had to increase Mr. Goodhue’s meds.”

  “We knew that was coming,” Zee said.

  “I’ve been sending anyone new over to Greta. There’s one guy who keeps asking for you and saying he’ll wait.”

  “What guy?”

  “He says his name is Reynaldo. He’s evidently a referral.”

  Zee knew the name. She had heard it before. But she couldn’t remember where. “A referral from whom?”

  “I’m not sure. I can find out.”

  “No,” Zee said. “It’s not important.”

  “So what do you want to talk about today?” Mattei asked. “I’m sure you didn’t come all the way in here to chat about the office.”

  “I want to talk about Lilly,” Zee said.

  “I was expecting that you might,” Mattei said.

  Zee sat for a minute but didn’t say anything. Finally, and with difficulty, she spoke up. “I still don’t think her death was a suicide,” Zee said.

  “All evidence to the contrary.”

  “She didn’t leave a note.”

  “Not all suicides do.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Your own mother didn’t leave a note.”

  Zee stopped. “Why did you mention my mother?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “I don’t know how it happened. Lilly was doing better.”

  “As is often the case.”

  “No, this was different.” Zee could feel her face getting red.

  “You’re angry,” Mattei said.

  Zee nodded.

  “At whom?”

  “Right now at you,” Zee said.

  “Who else?”

  “At myself.”

  “Why are you angry at yourself?” Mattei said.

  “Because I could have stopped it.”

  “How?” Mattei asked. “How could you have stopped it if you couldn’t see it coming?”

  “I could have stopped him,” Zee said.

  “Adam?”

  “Yes, Adam. Who do you think I’m talking about?”

  “How could you have stopped him?” Mattei asked.

  “I could have insisted that the police do something,” Zee said.

  “I think you have to let yourself off the hook for that. You did everything that could possibly be done. More, actually.”

  “You think I crossed a line,” Zee said.

  “Is that what you think?”

  Many lines, Zee thought. She had attended the funeral. She had treated Lilly at home. She had given unasked-for advice.

  Zee had also let the line blur between Lilly and Maureen, so much so that she wondered every day if she’d been objective enough, or if her wish to make this case turn out differently from her mother’s had made her too involved with Lilly’s case and that that involvement had somehow blinded her. The day she told Lilly that she had to leave Adam had been the turning point, the day Zee crossed the first big line. And the worst part of it was that she knew she would do it again. You were supposed to let the patient find her own course of action. But if it happened now, Zee would have tried to do more to stop it, not less. Which was another reason she had recently begun to question her choice of career.

  “I crossed more lines with Lilly than you know,” Zee said.

  Mattei looked at her, waiting.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Zee said.

  They sat silently for a while. When it was clear that Zee was not going to explain, Mattei spoke. “Losing your first patient is very difficult.”

  “Are you telling me there will be more?”

  “Probably,” Mattei said.

  “How many have you lost?”

  “A few,” Mattei said.

  “How many?”

  “Is that important to you?”

  “Yes,” Zee said.

  “Why?”

  Zee didn’t answer. She knew that it was an attempt to make Mattei cross the same kinds of lines she had been crossing, and she knew that Mattei was wise to her tactics.

  Mattei considered for a long time before answering. “Three.”

  Zee felt immediately sorry. But at the same time, she was grateful.

  “How do you live with that?” It was a sincere question.

  “Day by day,” Mattei said.

  “I don’t think I’m cut out for this,” Zee said.

  “You’re absolutely cut out for this,” Mattei said. “I wouldn’t have hired you if you weren’t.”

  She looked at her computer, scribbled down a name and number on a piece of paper, and slid it across the table to Zee.

  “What’s this?”

  “The shrink’s shrink,” she said. “He’s very good. I go to him myself on occasion. You need to talk to someone about this, and it can no longer be me.”

  “Thanks,” Zee said, meaning it. The line they’d crossed had been blurring for years, and a new one had now taken its place. At this moment they were no longer doctor and patient, or even employer and employee. They were friends.

  ZEE MADE AN APPOINTMENT FOR the following week with the new therapist. It went as well as could be expected, considering that it would take a while for him to get to know her. But at least she was talking to someone, she thought. After that first appointment, she stopped by the office to pick up some of her things as well as turn over some files to the people who were covering her patients.

  It was a day for cleaning things out. Once she’d finished at the office, she headed over to Michael’s condo on Beacon Hill to clean out the rest of her things. She had arranged to do it on a day he would be out of town, so there’d be no chance of running into him. Zee had hoped to be done by rush hour, but she’d gotten a late start. By the time she had emptied her closet and made three trips down to the Volvo, it was five-thirty.

  Fi
nally finished cleaning out the closet, she walked through the house, looking around, surprised by how few things in the place were actually hers. There were a few CDs that she’d picked up in college, a few more books, and the cowboy coffeepot that Melville had given her. Everything else in the house belonged to Michael. It hadn’t seemed odd to her when she lived here, particularly since she had moved into his house. Still, it seemed strange now, as if she’d never really been anything but a visitor and, on some level, had never intended to stay.

  Zee left her engagement ring in Michael’s top drawer. She had planned to leave a note with it, but she couldn’t find any words that didn’t sound wrong. She let herself out through the back door, leaving her set of keys on the kitchen counter so he would see them as soon as he walked in.

  ZEE DIDN’T NOTICE THE RED truck behind her as she pulled out of the driveway, just as she hadn’t noticed it follow her out of her office parking lot, where it had been parked every late afternoon for the last two weeks. She turned from Joy Street onto Pinckney. When she got to Charles Street, she stepped hard on the gas to avoid a cross light. The engine sputtered as she floored it, and she made a mental note to have it tuned. The Volvo was the last car across as the sign changed to WALK, and Zee was looking ahead toward Storrow Drive. She had wanted to head north before the rush-hour traffic got too bad, but now she found herself in the thick of it. The light turned just as she cleared the intersection, and the red truck sat stuck halfway into the crosswalk, as pedestrians crossed both in front of it and behind.

  29

  IT WAS SCRABBLE NIGHT at the Salem Athenaeum, the historic membership library where Melville had worked for the last several years. Though he wasn’t playing tonight, he had volunteered to stay. After they finished, as Melville was locking the front door, he ran into Ann Chase. She was coming from the public library across the street.

  “What are you doing on my side of town?” he called out.

  “Slumming,” she replied, and since the McIntyre was probably the prettiest historic district in town, they both laughed at her joke.