“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.