He makes a show of scanning the area behind me. “Uh, yeah, I don’t see him anywhere. Why don’t you leave it with me, and I’ll let him know you dropped it off?” He reaches for the box I’m holding, but I twist it away.
“I’d like to give it to him myself, if that’s all right. Isn’t he in the back room?”
Tate freezes for a beat. “I’ll go check. Maybe you can help a few of the customers here—you know, for old times’ sake?” Then he’s off, sprinting through the crowd before I can respond.
I don’t understand what he’s doing or why he’s so determined tokeep me from seeing Wren. But it took a lot for me to come back here today, and I’m not leaving without talking to him. I head toward the back room too, moving more carefully through the crowd than Tate did.
Pausing with my hand on the door, I take a deep breath, then open it.
Inside, Tate darts away from one corner while Wren hastily gathers a pile of papers in another. They turn in unison to stare at me. Finally, Wren pushes forward.
“What are you doing here?”
I’d heard those exact words from Tate not five minutes ago, but it’s Wren’s reaction that makes me want to turn and run. I’d hoped that these days apart would’ve given him time to calm down, reflect, and maybe understand why I had to quit. But he seems just as upset as the last time we spoke.
And it hurts just as much.
“Good luck,” Tate mutters to Wren as he passes by me in the doorway. “You too,Lili.” The door shuts behind him, leaving Wren and me in a room that suddenly feels far too big.
I search Wren’s face for any sign of softness, but all I see is discomfort. The last flicker of hope inside me snuffs out. It was never strong, just a tiny ember refusing to die despite the impossibility of it all.
Forcing a smile I don’t remotely feel, I walk past him to our table—thetable—and set the box down. “This is what I’m doing here.” I start pulling out the notebooks, photos, every bit of research I’d collected, and pages filled with the new notes I’d made. “I figured it out, Wren. I know what my dad discovered, what the letterfrom Edmund Harrington means, and how the map fits in too.” I push everything toward him. “All of it.”
He stares at me, and then slightly shakes his head. “You did what? How—when?”
“The how came with an assist from Goldie.” I start to sift through everything looking for my copy of the letter. “She noticed something about Harrington’s letter that we missed.”
“Wait, let me get you the originals.” Wren spins away, grabbing the album from his desk rather than from a box somewhere, which makes me wonder if he’d been unable to let our project go either.
His eyes meet mine when he hands it to me and I can see the same nervous excitement I feel buzzing through him too. “Show me?”
I do.
I point out the number of lines in the letter and watch his face when I turn to one of the pages in my dad’s journal with “forty-three” written on it.
Wren pushes both hands through his hair as his eyes dart from one to the other and back again. I can almost see his mind running through the possible implications just as I had. But he’s still missing the final piece of the puzzle.
Carefully, I unfold the map and watch Wren’s eyes snap to it, searching. He’s significantly more familiar with all the original maps of Nantucket, so what took me hours and countless Google searches to notice takes him only minutes.
“It’s the coastal hachure border. That’s it, isn’t it?” He sounds almost awestruck by the realization. “Those little lines extending out from the island don’t represent just the slope or direction of the shoreline, they’re too spaced out. They’re markers.” He hovers hisfinger over each one, counting though he already knows exactly how many there are. “Forty-three.”
I breathe out half a laugh when he turns his wide eyes to me.
“So that’s how they communicated? The number of lines in a letter corresponded—”
“—to a location around the island,” I finish for him. “Yeah, I think so. That way he could tell her which points to sail through in order to avoid shifting patrols or British surveillance.”
He barely blinks as he tries to take in every detail on the map, searching for other markers he may have dismissed earlier. I’m sure there are more, similarly disguised as decorative embellishments, maybe even markers for a smuggler’s hole far from any blackberry bushes. But then he stops, and I know why.
“I wanted her to be innocent.” His gaze lifts to mine, making me feel like he’s holding me the only way he can. “I wanted that for you.”
I nod, too quickly, and my chin trembles. “I wanted it too. But Kezia was exactly who they said she was—a smuggler. Her actions, and the actions of people like her, helped destroy Nantucket’s economy during the war. She flooded the market with cheap, stolen goods, driving up prices and crushing local businesses. But she didn’t care—she was happy making money while everyone else suffered.”
“Hey,” he says when I’m quiet for too long. “So she was a smuggler. Lawrence McCleave the First lied about capturing a mermaid.” Wren offers me a small smile. “Nobody’s family is perfect.”
I try to smile back, I really do. But then I sniff a little and square my shoulders. “I know, and if it were just that, I’d be okay. But it’s not.” Slowly, I reach back into the box and pull out an old manila envelope and set that down too.
Wren doesn’t ask the obvious question, just looks at me, waiting.
