Chapter 33 Wren
Thirty-Three
Wren
“So where do you want them?” Tate hoists a large file box into the back room, interrupting my lunch. His voice is casual,
but there’s a coolness in his tone that pulls my attention away from my sandwich.
Lili bursts in a beat later, slightly out of breath, her cheeks flushed. She must have run after him.
“Is that—?” Her eyes widen, darting between the box and Tate’s face, a hint of hope lighting up her expression.
“Box one of twelve,” he answers, then shifts his focus back to me. “And I’m gonna drop it here if you don’t tell me where
to put it.”
“On the table,” Lili and I say in unison. Our eyes meet for a fleeting moment, a spark of connection amid the ever-present
tension between us now.
Tate groans, not from the weight of the box, before trudging over to the table and lowering it with a thud. He starts walking
back to the door, then stops and eyes both of us. “A little help?”
We hurry out after him.
The boxes make a daunting stack once we have them all together on the table. I expect to see Lili smiling, but she’s just staring at them and twisting one hand in the other.
“This is going to take a long time to go through.” She looks at the clock on the wall and twists her hands tighter. “I only
have fifteen minutes left on my lunch break before I’m supposed to be back in the gift shop.”
Tate glances between the two of us and eventually mumbles that he’ll cover the gift shop this afternoon.
“Thanks,” Lili says quietly. She doesn’t sound like she means it.
“But you owe me, Tourist Girl.” Tate gives her a mock solute as he backs out the door. “And you two kids better not play too
nice.”
My jaw clenches at his parting barb, while Lili turns away to hide her flush.
I know Eryn is talking to him again, or at least she’s gone back to making him lunch, based on the Petticoat Café bag he had
earlier, but beyond the occasional word or two, he and I haven’t spoken.
I want to tell Lili not to let him get to her, but she’s already moving toward the boxes, her shoulders tense.
“Okay to start with the one on top?” she asks, her voice slightly strained.
“As opposed to the one on the bottom?”
“Yes, as opposed to the one on the bottom.” There’s a ghost of a smile in her voice, even if her face doesn’t show it. She
lifts the lid off the box and looks inside.
The hours pass, filled with the rustle of paper, the scrape of cardboard, and the occasional grumble of disappointment before
we both push back from the table, the final box emptied.
Lili had the idea to sort things into piles, the largest by far comprised of less-obvious fakes, followed closely by weird cat stuff that got inadvertently packed and needs to be returned to Mrs. Mayhew.
There are some interesting items in the historically significant pile, but far fewer in the Nantucket specific pile.
And nothing beyond the letters and the map, which I spent the last few days authenticating while Lili transcribed a copy, that connects to Kezia Gardner.
“I don’t understand.” Lili picks up a porcelain statue of a cat in fisherman’s garb, her brow furrowed. “Where are the other
letters?”
“Maybe he only wrote one.” I shrug, the tedium of the last several hours with almost nothing to show for it making my response
clipped. “Maybe she destroyed the others, or time did that for her.”
Her sharp glance changes my tone.
“Or maybe we just haven’t found them yet,” I offer. “The Mayhews aren’t the only people on this island with boxes in their
attics. Maybe they’re just hiding in someone else’s.”
But her expression falls further, and she sinks into a chair, staring at the piles as if they hold answers we can’t see. “Since
when are you the optimistic one?”
I almost say Since I met you, but instead I settle on, “Someone has to be.”
There’s silence after that while I continue searching for Mr. Mayhew’s personal ledger that will hopefully establish provenance
for some of these items.
“Wren.” Her voice is quiet, almost a whisper.
I turn, thinking she’s finally found something. But she hasn’t moved.
“How long have we been doing this?”
I check my watch. “The museum closed an hour ago.”
“No, I mean all this. Kezia Gardner.”
I don’t know what she’s getting at, but I answer anyway. “Since the start of summer, I guess. Why?”
She slides the album in front of her and flips to the first letter, the one we’ve read a dozen times already and still can’t
make sense of. “Do you know what I’ve figured out about this?” Her voice hardens. “Nothing. It’s all rambling. No reference
to the war, the Prohibitory Act, nothing of importance. Look at how he starts it: ‘I hope this letter finds you in the best
of health, as I remain, for the most part, in a state of tolerable comfort. It is no small matter that the wind has lately
shifted with a rather peculiar disposition. I am not entirely certain of its cause, yet it brings to mind a most curious reflection
on the state of my window shutters today, and though they have been in place for some time, I find them not so secure as they
once were. It is likely of little consequence, but they may require adjustment before long. The clock upon the mantle also
strikes with a rather unusual chime.’
“And it goes on like that for dozens of lines, talking about absolutely nothing. Why send something like that, much less preserve
it well enough for us to be reading it two hundred and fifty years later?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, my frustration mirroring her own now. “That’s why we have to keep looking.”
Her gaze flickers, and she lets out a sad laugh. “You sound like my dad. He’d say there is always another book or another
map or another piece of evidence and all we have to do is keep searching.”
I give her a tired smile and reach into another box. “In that respect, I’d say I agree with him.”
Her expression darkens, and she shakes her head, a deep sigh escaping her. “In that respect, and so many others, I wouldn’t.”
A tightness grips my chest as I push toward her, moving around to her side of the table. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means everything, all of this. I think my dad was wrong, and that maybe he even knew it, which would explain why he never
let me come here.” Her voice cracks the slightest bit, but she shakes it off. “Maybe he realized that he wasted his life on
this and couldn’t bear to look me in the eye when I found out he chose nothing over his family.” She sucks in a deep, steadying
breath. “Maybe he sat at his ridiculously expensive desk, looked over his collection of books and notes, and realized he had
nothing to show for it except a worn-out rug.”
“So, what, you want to quit?” I can hear the disbelief in my voice, the panic pouring out before I can mask it. “Just like
that?”
“No, not just like that,” she counters, her voice thick with emotion. “I’ve been through his notebook backward and forward
and I don’t know if there’s anything left to find. I hoped that maybe there’d be something in one of these boxes today, but
there wasn’t. I just don’t think I can keep doing it, or . . .” She takes a deep breath. “Or keep seeing you.”
A ringing starts in my ears.
“Think about it. What have we actually accomplished?” She glances at a spot not ten feet away, where I once held not a box
in my lap, but her. “I think we’ve done more harm than good, and maybe it’s time we walk away.”
One of my legs starts to spasm as I tense up.
“Wait, just hold on a second.” Blood pounds in my head, making it impossible to think clearly.
“We had a deal. You were supposed to help me find something real for the museum, and I was supposed to help you figure out the truth about Kezia. Well, we’re about to dump another”—I bite back an expletive—“mermaid skeleton in the lobby, and this is when you want to give up?” Both of my legs bounce now, the soles of my shoes hitting the footplate with a loud, rhythmic thud.
“Where’s my real piece of history? Isn’t that what you promised me? ”
“I’m sorry you didn’t get much out of this,” she says, and I can tell tears aren’t far away. “But I think we both know this
is the right thing to do.”
“What if I don’t? What if I say you haven’t held up your end of the bargain?”
“Then I’d say please, because I can’t stay here and watch you and Eryn try to go back to the way things were. You can’t ask
me to do that.”
“Eryn,” I breathe, and the panic surges again. “This isn’t about Eryn.”
But it is. I know it is. Everything is about her. The guilt. The feelings that churn in my gut, twisting, making it hard to
breathe. I press both hands down on my legs as they bounce harder. “Don’t do this now, okay? Not now. What about the number
forty-three in your dad’s notebook? Or the rest of the diary pages he didn’t transcribe?” I’m reaching, but I can’t think
of anything else to keep her here.
“You’re not hearing me,” she whispers. “I haven’t been staring at a notebook or diary all these weeks, I’ve been staring at
you.” Her face flushes but she keeps going, “I’m not allowed to have these feelings for you, but I do, and I don’t know how
to make them stop.”
I lean forward, gripping the edge of the table to steady myself, but I can’t. How can she leave now? We’re so close. We just need more time. I need more time. “So that’s it? Tourist Girl came, had her fun in the sun, and now she’s ready to let everyone else deal with the mess she’s leaving behind?”
“Don’t say that.” It’s maybe the most broken I’ve ever heard her sound when what I need is for her to get mad.
“Prove me wrong,” I say, when what I really mean is Don’t leave.
A tear slips down her cheek, but she brushes it away quickly, like she’s trying to hide the hurt. “Call me a tourist then.
It’s what I am. But you know I’m right.”
Nothing about this feels right.
She pushes to her feet. “I hope things work out for you, Wren, for the museum and everything else.”
“Sure,” I say, my anger burning like a shield, when inside it feels like I might never be warm again. Spinning my back to
her, I grab the album before she can reach for it. “This stays, by the way. I get whatever we find, remember? You’re welcome
to keep your employee shirt though. I know how you tourists love your souvenirs.”