at the time, she had rushed to get dressed and hurried away, embarrassed, not really certain how everything had moved so quickly and yet happy about it, giddy even.

Standing there later in front of Jessina, she’d felt like a teenager about to be caught. She had dressed hastily, and she hoped like hell she hadn’t put her shirt on backward or, God forbid, inside out.

28

IN THE WEEKS THAT followed, they talked about a lot of things. He had gone to school in England, Hawk told her, to study celestial navigation, a field for which there wasn’t much demand, especially in the United States these days. “Which is why I’m a carpenter,” he said.

“You’re not a carpenter, you’re a rigger,” she said, quoting the remark he’d made the first day they met.

Zee told Hawk about Finch and Melville and about Maureen and the way she’d died. Later, to lighten the mood a bit, she told him that she was the girl who had stolen his neighbor’s cuddy-cabin cruiser.

“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.”

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