ZEE KEPT HERSELF BUSY CLEANING all day. But she couldn’t stop thinking about what she was going to say to Hawk. Finally she realized that the only logical thing to do was to tell him that they’d seen each other at Lilly’s funeral and stop the game. She had a certain curiosity about what had made him attend the funeral in the first place, though it was not that uncommon among witnesses. But she knew she wouldn’t ask him that. And she couldn’t discuss anything about Lilly. She would tell him that she’d seen him there and hope that ended it. She was pretty certain it would, along with any attraction that he either did or did not feel for her.
Zee tried to keep busy and not think too much more about what she was going to say. But as the day wore on, she found herself growing more and more agitated.
At five-thirty she opened a bottle of wine. She sat on the deck drinking and watching the boats.
At six o’clock Jessina brought her out some cheese and crackers to go with the wine. “You shouldn’t drink that with no food in the stomach,” she said.
Zee thanked her and was about to invite her to join her for some wine when the doorbell rang. Jessina hurried to answer it.
Zee watched as Jessina led Hawk to the deck.
“Nice view,” he said.
“Pretty much the same as yours,” she said, looking back toward the Friendship.
“Yeah, but you own yours,” he said.
She smiled. “I don’t, my father does.”
She got her checkbook and started to write. Then she looked in her wallet and realized she had money she hadn’t used to reimburse Jessina for groceries. “Would you rather have cash?”
“Always,” he said.
She was a little altered from the wine. She saw him notice the bottle.
“Would you like a glass?”
“I’m not much of a wine drinker,” he said.
“How about a cracker?” she asked. “The cheese is pretty good.”
He took a cracker, but he didn’t sit down.
If she was going to say anything, it had to be now. “Please,” she said. “Sit.”
He took a seat opposite her at the table.
There was no way to say it but straight out. Emboldened by the wine, she went ahead. “I’m going to tell you where we saw each other,” she said.
He looked at her.
“It was at Lilly Braedon’s funeral.”
“What?” He couldn’t have looked more surprised.
“You were the eyewitness on the bridge,” she said.
He was quiet for a long time. “Were you a friend of Lilly’s?” he finally asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
She had resolved not to tell him more, but she found herself explaining. “I was her therapist.”
It was worse than she’d thought it would be. She should never have said anything. If she hadn’t been a little buzzed, she never would have opened her mouth. She could feel his eyes on her, judging her. I couldn’t save her, she wanted to say, but instead she just sat there waiting for him to say something.
It took a long time for him to speak.
“Damn,” he finally said.
PART 3: July 2008
Even with the advent of modern navigational tools, it is still prudent to verify one’s course by the taking of daily sun and star sights: one at noon and then again in the twilights of both dawn and dusk in those brief moments when the stars and horizon are both still visible, just before the horizon merges with the darkness or the stars are consumed by the light of day.
25
THE REENACTORS WERE ON the benches outside Ann’s store again, and this time they were drunk. Not all of them. None of the pirates (not even the ones who sang the sea chanteys) seemed to be drinking, and they drank most of the time. No, this time it was the Revolutionary War reenactors who were sitting on the benches, sipping out of flasks or bottles concealed in paper bags. The redcoats and patriots sat on opposing sides hurling Colonial-era locker-room insults at each other.
This was too much, Ann thought. They were probably very good at what they did-they were certainly staying in character-but they were taking the whole Fourth of July thing way too seriously. Ann thought she noticed a bit more bravado than they’d shown in previous years, probably a result of the HBO John Adams miniseries, which had just come out. They seemed to have picked up a little more historical accuracy as welclass="underline" the clip-on ponytails they sported better matched their hair colors, and several carried powder horns or wore hobnail shoes that fastened with large rectangular metal buckles.
Some of the patriots broke into a song meant to further taunt the redcoats:
Why come ye hither, Redcoats,
Your mind what madness fills?
In our valley there is danger,
And there’s danger on our hills.
Oh, hear ye not the singing of the bugle wild and free?
And soon you’ll know the ringing of the rifle from the tree.
At the end of the song, one of the patriots lifted his rifle and fired it into the air.
“Enough!” Ann said.
Long famous for its witches and even for pirates, Salem had never been known for having Revolutionary War reenactors. Though the first blood of the Revolution was actually spilled in Salem, the reenactments always took place in towns like Concord and Lexington. So it was particularly irksome to Ann to see the Revolutionary soldiers on the bench outside her store today. Why couldn’t they stay on their own turf to party? Why did they always have to come to Mickey’s?
Ann frowned at them from her doorway. “Could you gentlemen please move along? You’re scaring my customers,” she said.
“We’re scaring them?” a redcoat with a perfect Sussex accent said to her. The thought seemed terrifically funny to the soldiers. In honor of the holiday, Ann was dressed in her full witch regalia. Last night she had tinted her almost-waist-length red hair with black henna, and the result was a color that seemed to morph as she moved, creating a vaguely iridescent, hallucinogenic effect. “You’re scaring the hell out of us.”
“I can manage to scare you a whole lot more if you don’t move along,” she offered.
“It’s a free country,” the one costumed as Paul Revere said. “It’s the Fourth of July, for God’s sake.”
The Fourth of July was one of the busiest days of the year for Ann. Not only did people like to buy souvenirs on Independence Day, but for some reason they seemed to like to have their fortunes told as well. She had appointments booked throughout the day, but the big traffic would be the walk-ins. Her girls would all be busy today. On the holiday Ann brought in almost double what she made on a regular weekend-that is, if people would actually come into the store, and she was sure as hell not going to let these guys intimidate her clientele.
She was contemplating how best to scare them. She could pretty much count on their scattering the minute she started to chant, but that might drive away some of the potential customers who were lingering at the wharf taking in the water views or waiting to get into one of the waterfront restaurants. She needed something subtler. She had all but decided to sprinkle some fairy dust on them. It wouldn’t teach them to fly, but it smelled pervasively of heliotrope, a very feminine scent that spread quick and wide. It occurred to her then that she could just as easily call her friend Rafferty and have them cited for public drunkenness, but Rafferty wasn’t a beat cop, or even a detective anymore. He was chief of police and probably too busy to bother with something so petty. Besides, Ann didn’t have anything against drunkenness, public or otherwise-she just didn’t want it interfering with business. No, she wouldn’t call Rafferty. Instead she picked a package out of one of the bins in the front of the store, something meant to repel rodents, a horrid herbal blend she had created by accident one day when she was mixing potions. She and her girls had nicknamed it “stink-bomb herb.” She stood in the doorway, checking out the wind direction before she let it loose, when Mickey Doherty suddenly appeared on the sidewalk dressed in his pirate costume, complete with eye patch and three-cornered hat and with a capuchin monkey on his shoulder.