The window was open. He could smell the sea air from the harbor. Across Turner Street he could see Chanticleer, the rooster, near the gates of the Gables, having escaped the enclosure that old Hepzibah had built to keep him inside. His eyes filled with tears, grateful that the rooster had been able to escape his shackles, so much did he identify with the wiry old bird of Hawthorne’s story that he failed to realize for a moment that it was not the fictional rooster of his imaginings at all but Dusty the cat.
By the time the realization hit him, Finch had climbed out of his bed and was making his way down the hall toward the kitchen and his escape. Behind him the alarm began to sound. Not stopping for his walker, for the first time he used the railing that had so recently been installed. His shaky hands groped their way laboriously not to the front door-which was much closer to his room-for it wasn’t the street he sought, or even the Gables, but something else. Slowly, methodically, he moved down the long hall toward the kitchen with its back entrance that was so much closer to the cool ocean below.
The sound of the alarm faded behind him with every step down the tilted hallway until he could no longer hear it, the rhythmical sound of the gentle harbor waves, real or imagined, muting its incessant whine. He didn’t think of the pain in his legs or of his skin that burned with every brush against rail or wall, but only of the seawater that had the properties to cool and heal, water as salty as blood, a replacement perhaps for his own blood, which betrayed him with every searing step.
He crossed the high threshold to the kitchen. Seven more steps and his hand was on the door. With all the strength he had, he turned the handle, expecting to have to pop the dead bolt, knowing the difficulty of the task. He had tried before, but his fingers worked their own will and not his these days, and he had failed. Tonight, to his good fortune, he realized that the dead bolt was not set, that the only lock was the flimsy one on the door handle. The door opened easily. In one freeing step his bare foot found the deck.
With no rail to grip for support, he crossed the deck painstakingly, finding first a chair, then a table on which to lean, moving from one piece of furniture to another, a zigzag path of navigation to the three stairs that held him above the earth and sea. It might as easily have been a hundred. For a moment he almost turned back, but the sea, which had never called him before, was calling to him now. The harbor spread its cool darkness beyond the small patch of earth below. He could see the jeweled lights around its perimeter. With his last reserve of strength, he gripped the handrail and lowered himself ever so slowly to the earth below.
The beach reeds burned his bare legs. The rocks cut his feet. He could feel their sting, but he could also feel the cool of the sand, and he moved deeper into its coolness until the water found his ankles, his calves. With each step he took, the phosphorescence sparkled and glimmered its healing miracle around him, creating a Masaccio-like halo around him as he moved.
He could feel the water, the cold release of it, as the silt from the mudflats surrounded his feet, holding him steady while the gentle ocean swell moved higher on his bare legs, first to his thighs and then upward to his waist. He sighed at the blessed coolness of its caress.
44
THE SOUND OF FINCH’S alarm woke Hawk first, then Zee. She grabbed her robe and ran downstairs to Finch’s bedroom, but he was not there, nor was he in the den, or even in Zee’s childhood room. She glanced immediately at the front door, which was very close to his room, but it was secure. She told herself to relax, that she’d find him. Then she felt the cross breeze blowing up from the harbor at the rear of the house. Dread filling her, she turned and ran down the hall toward the kitchen. The back door was open.
“He’s outside!” Zee yelled at Hawk.
“What?”
“Finch is outside!” She motioned to the kitchen door.
THEY LOOKED FOR HIM ON the street. Then, because Zee determined it would be the first place Finch would go, Hawk scaled the fence to the House of the Seven Gables and looked around the grounds.
When he wasn’t at the Gables, Hawk ran down Derby Street, looking in every doorway and alley, though he doubted that Finch could make it very far, being so unsteady on his feet. Hawk was dialing the Salem police on his cell when he heard Zee yelling to him.
He found her at the water’s edge, wading in to where Finch was stuck, his feet planted in the mudflats, the harbor water soaking his thin pajama top.
They pulled him out together, bundled him in blankets, and drove him to the emergency room at Salem hospital. He wasn’t hurt, not even slightly hypothermic-he hadn’t been in the water that long. But the hospital wanted to keep him overnight, just to make sure.
HOURS PAST MIDNIGHT HAWK DROVE Zee back to the house. When they pulled into the driveway, she started to cry. Her sobs were huge and wrenching, and he held her for a long time, telling her over and over that everything was going to be all right.
He said it once more after she was calm enough to speak. “It’s going to be all right,” he said.
She turned to him, her face puffy and red from crying.
“That’s just it,” she said. “It isn’t.”
They sat in silence for a long time.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she finally said.
For a brief moment, he thought she meant taking care of Finch. He hoped that was what she meant, both for her sake and for his own. But he knew from the way she looked at him that he was kidding himself. It was over. She had told him just tonight that she wasn’t ready, that this wasn’t the right time for any kind of relationship between them. As much as it hurt him, he knew he was going to have to let her go.
45
WITHOUT ZEE IT WAS too hard for Hawk to be in Salem. He gave his notice to the Park Service. He had committed to one more sail with the Friendship, on Labor Day weekend, and they couldn’t find a replacement. He had paid for his boat slip for the whole season, so he told his friend Josh that he could stay there for the next few weeks. Hawk would go back to his apartment in Marblehead. He didn’t want to run into Zee.
It all happened so quickly, and though he had known it was a bad idea (rebound relationships were never a good idea, were they?) he had fallen hard. He couldn’t explain it; nothing like this had ever happened to him before. It wasn’t just the sex. It was something else. The moment he met her, it seemed as if they’d always known each other.
He’d tried several times to tell her about Lilly, but she blocked him at every turn. She couldn’t even talk about the case with Lilly’s own family, she’d said.
He didn’t know Lilly’s husband, though he had met her children when he’d done carpentry work at their house. They were great kids. Lilly had talked about them all the time, and about her fears that she was a bad mother. Pretty much the same stuff she’d talked about in therapy, if Lilly was to be believed.
If you’re having trouble reconciling your feelings about her death, and you need someone to talk to, Zee had said, I can give you some names. It just can’t be me.
Well, he was having trouble reconciling his feelings, more trouble really than he wanted to admit. He’d been depressed about it, actually. Before he met Zee, he’d been really down. Mostly he was upset that he hadn’t been able to save Lilly. He imagined that it was pretty much the same thing Zee must be feeling, so it was too bad they couldn’t talk about it together. At least that was how he felt on one level. On another he was relieved that she hadn’t allowed him to speak about Lilly. Though he was a pretty honest guy, he realized that one more broaching of the subject of Lilly might drive Zee away, and more than anything he hadn’t wanted that to happen. Ironic that he’d lost her anyway. By all signs, including how horrible he felt right now, he figured he was pretty much in love with Hepzibah T. Finch. For all the good it was going to do him.