Chapter 37 Lili
Thirty-Seven
Lili
I pedal down Main Street, my awareness of every cobblestone and each blooming flower less desperate than it had been at the
start of summer. Back then, Nantucket truly felt like the Faraway Land. Now, the sun is warm at my back, as though it’s gently
guiding me forward, and I don’t feel the need to stop and stare at each and every detail like I need to grab hold of it all
while I still can.
I pass the Whaling Museum without a second glance, its iconic brick facade quickly fading from view. I don’t stop to read
the hand-painted signs hanging from shops or slow to admire their colorful awnings. They blur together as I speed up, the
wind against my face, until I end up right back where I started all those weeks ago.
It took me all weekend to figure it out. Mom even let me skip lunch at Graham’s after church yesterday, especially since he’d
been finding excuses to stop by the house every day anyway. I’d seen enough to know that he may be the key to helping her
fall just a little bit in love with Nantucket too. He’s taking her and Goldie on a picnic today, followed by a stroll down
Sconset Bluff Walk. When I left, she was humming to herself while getting ready.
But I did figure it out, and I made the only decision I thought I could. I talked with Goldie and she agreed. Now there’s only one person left to convince.
It had felt like the right choice last night, but as I push open the heavy door of McCleave’s, my certainty falters.
It’s late morning, and the place is bustling with people. Even so, it’s easy to spot Tate behind the counter at the gift shop.
He’s ringing up a few small plush mermaids, tossing each one in the air before catching it in a bag behind his back. He catches
two in a row before noticing me and dropping the third.
The wide-eyed shock on his face instantly snuffs out the hesitant smile I’d tried to muster. He hastily finishes with his
customer, then pulls out a Be Right Back sign from under the counter before vaulting over it to reach me.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m not staying. I just need to give something to Wren, and then I promise I’m gone.” Tate and I were on the verge of becoming
friends before everything happened, but it still stings to know we’ll never get the chance now.
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 to keep 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—the table—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 letter from 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 his finger 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.
“I found this in my dad’s study.” I start to unwind the string wrapping around the fasteners. “I never thought to check under
the rug, especially once I realized how much time he spent pacing over it. It wasn’t until we started packing up the room
that I rolled it away and noticed the loose flooring.” I tip out the contents. “You were right, he did have pictures of the
diary. He also had pictures of the letters and map. I didn’t remember it until I saw them, but that first day I met you, Mrs.
Mayhew told me he used to help get her Christmas decorations down from her attic. I don’t know if that was an excuse to look
for something he already suspected was there, or if he stumbled upon the album while actually trying to do something kind
for her.”
I show him another picture without any writing on the back to indicate where it was taken. The front shows a close-up of an
auction listing from 1918 for a lot of early American artifacts from Nantucket that included “a diary of unknown authorship
thought to date back to the late eighteenth century, containing entries that may shed light upon the coastal life and trade
of the period.” It was marked as sold to Mr. Harold W. McCleave of Nantucket for $135.
“That’s my great-great-grandfather,” Wren says, sounding almost impressed as he moves farther down the table to look at more.
“So that’s how your dad knew to look for the diary at the museum.”
Finally, I lay out the pieces of paper, side by side, even though it’s obvious what they are from a single glance, especially
once I open my dad’s notebook beside them.
The pages were cut out of his notebook so neatly, so close to the spine, that we missed them time and time again, but it’s clear now. “Those entries we thought he didn’t transcribe? He did, and he figured out everything.”
I mentally fought against the accepted narrative surrounding Kezia for so long, not because of some deep-seated need to exonerate
my ancestor, but because I wanted to exonerate my dad. And instead, I found all I’d ever need to condemn him for what he took
from us.
“All those maybes I said to you last time we were here? They weren’t maybes. I think that’s why he tried to hide all of this.