Zee sat for a very long time. “You’re right. ‘Simple, simple, case closed,’” she said, quoting Mattei.
“You, my friend, are far from simple.” Mattei smiled.
Zee tried to smile.
“Of course there’s another possibility we’ve neglected to talk about,” Mattei said.
Zee was surprised. Mattei had so clearly nailed it that there didn’t seem to be any other possibility. “What’s that?”
“There’s the possibility that the psychic your mother dragged you to was right, that the story Maureen wrote was really your destiny. That you and Hawk were the young lovers in the story.”
Zee stared at her. Never in all her time with Mattei had she heard anything so out of character. “You don’t believe that for a minute,” Zee said.
Mattei threw her a “gotcha” smile. “Of course I don’t.”
47
ZEE DIDN’T KNOW HOW she felt about her lunch with Mattei.
She was tense and confused. Still, she knew that something had changed. She felt the way people often feel immediately after a breakthrough in treatment, more at odds and more vulnerable than ever.
And, if the truth were known, all she could think about was Hawk.
It took several days before she decided to do something about it. She was hoping the urge to see him would go away. Or that he would call. When neither of those things happened, she decided she had go to him.
She was nervous boarding his boat. What was she going to say to him? That she’d made a mistake? She wasn’t altogether sure that she had. But the fact was, she wanted to see him again.
She let herself onto the boat and started down the steps when she came face-to-face with Hawk’s friend Josh. She recognized him from the Friendship.
“Is Hawk here?” she asked.
“No,” Josh said. “He quit. He rented me his boat for the rest of the season.”
“Do you have any idea where he is?”
“I know,” Josh said. “But I’m not so sure he wants me to tell you.”
“Please,” she said. “I really need to talk to him.” She took a breath and tried to compose herself. “I made a mistake.”
He thought about it. He looked around and found the address. Still skeptical, he copied it down and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said.
AS SHE DROVE TO MARBLEHEAD, she tried to figure out what to say. He had every right to hate her, but she hoped he didn’t. Maybe she would say that, she thought. She tried to figure out what she wanted from the relationship, but it was too early to know. If he asked her, she’d have to admit she had no idea. All she knew was that she couldn’t stand the prospect of never seeing him again.
His apartment was on a busy part of Pleasant Street. She couldn’t find a parking space on the right side of the street, so she turned around in the bank’s parking lot and parked in front of the Spirit of ’76 Bookstore. She waited for the light, then crossed in front of the Rip Tide and walked down a few houses until she found the number Josh had written on the paper. There was a seamstress shop on the first floor of the building and an outside staircase leading to an apartment on the second floor. Hawk’s van was in the driveway. The upstairs windows were open. He was home.
She told herself to calm down as she climbed the stairs and rang the bell. The name on the mailbox read MOHAWK.
She couldn’t tell if the doorbell had rung-she couldn’t hear it. She waited. When no one came to the door, she decided to knock. Her heart was pounding.
Hawk opened the door and stared at her. “What are you doing here?”
“May I come in?”
He held the door open, and she walked into the room.
“I went to your boat… You weren’t there.” It was probably the stupidest thing she had ever said.
He looked at her. He said nothing.
“I’ll go, if you want.”
“No,” he said. “Just give me a minute.” He walked to the other room and finished a phone call. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to a plush green couch against the back wall.
She took a seat. The couch was more comfortable than it looked. She sank into it. She sat there, looking around the room, surprised by how familiar it seemed to her, how it made her feel. Though she was nervous about what she was going to say to him, she felt something different here. Safe, she thought.
A few minutes later, he came back and took a seat across from her in a straight chair that looked anything but comfortable.
“I wanted to apologize,” she said.
“You don’t need to,” he said, shrugging it off.
“Yes, I do,” she said.
He looked at her.
“I’m really sorry,” she said.
“Okay,” he said.
She had no idea what to say next. She looked around the room. “I feel as if I’ve been here before,” she said. Then she searched for something else to say. “I thought you lived on the Salem Harbor side of town.”
“I grew up there. My mother lives there now.”
She nodded. “I have the weirdest feeling I’ve been here before.”
“So you came all the way over here just to tell me you’ve been here before?”
“I came to apologize.”
“No need,” he said again.
“You want me to leave?”
“I don’t know what I want,” he said.
“I don’t know what I want either,” she said.
They sat for a long time. “I’m lying,” she said. “I do know.”
“And what is that?”
“I want to see you again.”
“You sure about that?”
“I’m not sure about anything,” she said. “I’m just trying to go with my feelings here. Forgive me, it’s all rather new.”
A sound from outside interrupted the conversation: something slamming, metal on metal followed by the sound of breaking glass. Hawk rushed to the window. “Damn,” he said, running to the door. “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled down the stairs.
“Stay here!” he yelled back at Zee as he rushed down the front stairs.
By the time Zee got to the doorway, Hawk had someone pinned against the van. His passenger-side window was smashed, and his tools were scattered in the driveway. A crowd from the Rip Tide was gathering to watch.
Her heart began to pound, and she had to hold on to the doorframe to fight the dizzy feeling that was overtaking her.
The soothing music from the ballet school across the street was the wrong sound track for what was happening in the driveway.
Hawk released the man he had pinned against the car.
The man cursed. “You owe me a fucking hammer,” he said, swiping one out of Hawk’s tool kit and starting down the driveway.
“Nice,” Hawk said. “Very civilized.”
As the man left the driveway, he paused and looked up at Zee.
It was Adam.
He spotted her before she had a chance to step back into the shadows. He stared up at her, then looked at Hawk. Then he started to laugh. “That fucking figures,” he said, slamming the hammer against the side of Hawk’s van as hard as he could, leaving a huge dent in the door. He looked up at Zee one more time and pointed the hammer at her to make sure she had understood the threat. Before Hawk had a chance to get to him again, he was out of the driveway.
Hawk rushed up the stairs. “Are you okay?”
Zee nodded, stunned.
“He knows you,” he said.
“He came to my office and made some threats,” she said.
“His name is Adam.”
Hawk looked at her strangely. “His name is Roy,” he said.
She looked at him. “What?”
“My name is Adam.”
THE GREEN COUCH. THE SIGN in the window. The music from the ballet school across the street. The safe feeling she’d had a few minutes ago, the one she realized now had been the feeling of safety that Lilly had described when she talked about this room, had completely disappeared. Safe was the last thing she was feeling now.
48