“Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Some of it,” she said. She pointed up at the sky. “There’s Gemini,” she said. “There’s Cassiopeia. Virgo has completely disappeared.”
“Where has she gone?” he asked.
“South for the winter, I’d say.”
“Smart lady,” he said.
They walked back to the room together. Bowditch, who had been pacing and whimpering, met them at the door. When he saw her, he dragged himself over and leaned against her leg. She reached down to pat him. He collapsed at her feet and sighed.
66
ZEE AWAKENED JUST BEFORE dawn. Her nose was cold. She could hear the sound of the radiators creaking and groaning, coming on for the first time since spring. The smell brought back a sense memory of the house on Turner Street when she was little. Tears came to her eyes, but they didn’t fall. It wasn’t a sad memory, rather one of security, but she couldn’t place it. While Maureen was alive, maybe? But no, she’d been older than that. She stayed with it for a moment, hoping to pull it forward, but it dissipated like harbor fog. Still, she found herself grateful for that image and not the one of Roy she’d been waking to for the last month and a half, an image she’d had to work hard to push from her consciousness every morning.
From her bed she watched as the horizon line started to appear. A few stars were visible, but she couldn’t identify which ones. She wondered how many navigators were taking sights at this moment, jotting down notes, cross-referencing them as backup to the elaborate systems the ships carried now, ones that weren’t ever supposed to fail but sometimes did, leaving the navigator forever more to take sights every dawn and dusk until he reached his final destination.
She watched the stars along the horizon. Then, remembering something Hawk had told her, she opened the mahogany case and pulled out the sextant. She looked at the star chart. She didn’t have an almanac and wouldn’t really have known how to use it if she had, but she’d been looking at Virgo for so long now that she knew its path across the sky. She moved the bureau in front of the window and set the sextant on top of it, pointing it at the spot in the sky where Virgo should be if she were visible. Then she waited.
Spica’s rising was not as dramatic as the sunrise a few minutes later. It appeared on the horizon as a sparkling dot, stayed there for just a few minutes, before its light was consumed by the illumination of the rising sun. But for those few minutes, it was brighter in the sky than any other star on the horizon, and Zee knew without a doubt what it was she was seeing and how fortunate she was that today was clear and that she just happened to be awake and just happened to unpack the sextant and take a look. Spica would disappear now until next year, when Virgo would again be visible in the northern night sky, but she had seen it, found it for the first time, and for now that was enough.
She watched for a very long time, until the stars disappeared and the sunlight through the wavy glass of the window grew bright and strong. She wondered what time it was. In the doorway between the rooms, Bowditch snored loudly, the rhythm regular on the intake and the exhale, like an old clock or a slow and steady heart. Beyond him she could see Melville, still asleep, with just his blond hair sticking out above the covers. She stood in the window, letting the sun warm her.
There were already a few people on the street below. “It’s Wednesday,” she said aloud, surprised that she knew and surprised again that she hadn’t seemed to know what day it was for a long time.
She pulled on her jeans and Melville’s old sweater that he’d been letting her borrow, then took the back stairs to the street.
When had it turned from summer to fall?
There were pumpkins everywhere. She thought of Salem and Halloween, and she felt a twinge of homesickness. She stood in line at the coffee roasters, bought herself a macchiato, and took it to one of the outside tables. She looked on as the woman opened the bookstore and put a sandwich sign outside.
She watched as people came in to get their coffee, then left again. She wondered about their lives. Mothers walking kids to school, people rushing to work, life as usual, as if nothing alarming were happening, had happened. She wondered about the unfulfilled dreams of the young mother who sat across from her, then realized she hadn’t wondered about anyone for a while. She thought about Finch, and a twinge of something went through her. It took a moment for her to realize what the feeling was. Longing, she thought. It was longing.
When she finished her coffee, Zee went back inside and asked if she could use the phone to make a collect call. She dialed Mattei’s office number and left a message. Then she bought Melville a pumpkin latte and Bowditch a coffee-flavored scone and walked back to the inn.
Bowditch was in Melville’s room.
“Our boy was worried about you,” he said. Both Melville and Bowditch looked relieved to see her.
“Sorry,” she said. Then, hoping to make it better, “I brought coffee.” She handed the latte to Melville and put the scone in Bowditch’s bowl.
Bowditch did as much of a dance as a thirteen-year-old basset hound can manage.
She could see Melville watching her. Something had definitely changed.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Okay,” she said.
They sat sipping their coffee and watching the sunlight play off the water in the harbor. From here you could see Melville’s boat, still at the mooring where they’d left it.
“It’s almost Halloween,” she said.
“That it is,” he said. “Salem is the place to be on Halloween,” she said. “Very true,” he said.
They sat silently for a few more minutes. “Let’s go home,” she said.
EPILOGUE: MAY 2009, MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND
If one knows the latitude of home port and can locate the North Star and keep it at a constant angle, it is possible simply to sail down the latitudes to find the way home.
THE HOUSE ON BAKER’S Island had just been opened for the season. Zee had packed away her mother’s chenille bedspread in the old cedar trunk. She would want to see it again one day, but not now. Today she was having a party on the island.
She’d spent most of the year in Boston, back working again, but only part-time. On weekends she’d been volunteering on Yellow Dog Island, counseling some of the women and children who had been so badly abused. She was good at it. She’d just received an offer of full-time employment from May Whitney, who ran the shelter out there, and she was seriously considering it.
Zee made herself a list of things she’d forgotten to pick up for the party and headed into town, leaving the door open for any guests who arrived early and a welcoming note on the table.
She and Melville were going to see Finch. There was a Memorial Day party at the nursing home today, an event that was doubling as a going-away party for Finch, who would be coming home next week. He didn’t know her name anymore. Didn’t know Melville either. He thought that Melville was someone who worked at the nursing home, someone who came to read to him every afternoon, almost always from Hawthorne, though lately he’d begun to favor Emerson and the other Transcendentalists, who seemed more cheerful to Finch than Hawthorne and seemed to make him happier.
When Melville suggested to them both, as he was visiting one afternoon, that Finch could probably go home if Zee would hire Melville as a full-time caregiver, Finch jumped at the chance. He wasn’t sure where home was, not anymore, but he was certain it was somewhere he’d like to go, and especially if his caregiver was coming along. He remembered something about a big house with a gabled roof and a cat named Dusty. And he seemed to remember a rooster as well.