“Early 1800s.”
“Okay yeah, before that.”
I frown. “You have something that was written in the eighteenth century?”
She bites her lips and nods.
I throw my hand out and make a half circle in the room. Everything I see looks like cats. I’m trying to think of the oldest cat book I know and I’m coming up blank. “I don’t know,Puss in Bootsor something?”
She starts to shake her head again but must sense that I’m getting tired of this game. “Fine, I’ll give you a hint. Her initials are K. G.”
“K. G.? And it’s a her, from the eighteenth century?”
Goldie looks ready to burst.
“What? What am I not getting—” And then I feel the blood drain from my face. “Kezia Gardner. Are you trying to tell me you found another one of Kezia Gardner’s diaries?”
“Not exactly.” Goldie whips the book out from behind her back, and the next second she’s shoving it into my hands.
I stare down at an obviously faux leather cover that’s starting to crack and lift away from the corners. And then I sigh. “Goldie, this looks like a photo album from the 1980s. You’re about two hundred years off.”
“Just look inside,” she insists, leaning closer.
I flip open the cover, expecting to see yellowed photographs or postcards from decades earlier. Instead, my eyes land on handwriting—unfamiliar but unmistakably old. I scan it quickly, not comprehending anything until the name at the top snags my eye.
My breath catches in my throat.
The world seems to shrink around me, focusing solely on the inked letters. My heart pounds as the lines sharpen, revealing the name I’ve been obsessing over since finding Dad’s notebook:Kezia Gardner.
I run my fingers lightly over the plastic-covered page. The room around me fades away, replaced by the weight of history, the whispers of the past echoing in the strokes of each letter. And there’s a date at the top:1776 Sunday, December 22. She would have received this letter mere days after the most recent diary entries Wren and I transcribed, where she wrote about the increasing restrictions for Nantucket vessels and strongly condemned the revolutionary cause. I close the album with shaking hands. Because there’s another name on this letter, and I recognize it too.
Slowly, I sit down in the nearest chair, the magnitude of what I might be holding sinking in.
Goldie watches me, her earlier excitement now tinged with concern. “I thought you’d be more impressed,” she says quietly. “I know it’s kind of hard to read, but that’s her name at the top, isn’t it?”
I nod, barely able to process her words. “Where did you find this?” My voice comes out quieter than I intended, almost reverent.
“Mrs. Mayhew’s husband collected a lot of old stuff about Nantucket,” Goldie explains, her voice a distant hum in my ears. “I started going through it to help her sell it, but then I found a bunch of letters and stuff like this—”
I grab her arm, the urgency bubbling up. “More letters? You found more letters to Kezia Gardner?”
She twists free, her excitement reignited. “There are a lot of boxes in the attic. But it’s cramped and dusty up there so I didn’t look long. Maybe.”
I stare at her, my brain barely processing the information. Each word she says adds to the growing storm of thoughts in my head. The only clear, solid thought is a name: Wren.
I carefully set the album on the table beside me and pull out my phone.
Twenty-Five
Wren
It takes Eryn less than ten minutes to dash into her house and shower off the last bit of her mermaid makeup following our early—and thankfully only—mermaid-sighting tour of the day.
When she gets back into my truck, she leans over to give me a quick, almost perfunctory kiss. A hollowness hits me when I realize I can’t remember how long it’s been since it felt like more than that from either of us.
“Aren’t we going to eat?” she asks when I don’t start the engine right away. “Because the brunch crowd is going to be intense if we wait much longer.”
I’m not thinking about food though, and I think she can tell. She meets my gaze.
