Brunonia Barry - The Map of True Places

Jessina turned the photo over. The label on the back read simply Honeymoon. Niagara Falls.

“This should definitely be in a frame and put out for everyone to see.” Jessina held it up to a shelf to indicate a possible display location.

“No,” Zee said, taking the photo.

She stared at it. Though she had always known that Maureen’s stories were embellished, it shocked her to think that her mother had lied about her honeymoon. Maureen had looked so happy in the photograph that it seemed odd she would have bothered to create a whole fantasy around Baker’s Island. Had Finch been telling the truth when he said he’d never been there? Zee had dismissed his statement as part of his dementia, but now she was inclined to believe him.

In a flash, Zee realized the real reason she kept getting Maureen and Lilly mixed up. It wasn’t that they were both bipolar. It wasn’t even that they had both committed suicide. It was something else that they had in common, and it had nothing to do with their illnesses. Mattei’s old adage came to Zee’s mind now: Everybody lies. Maureen and Lilly had both lied to Zee. That was no big surprise. But it was more than that, she realized now. The lies or stories that Maureen and Lilly told were not lies they were telling Zee, they were the mythology they were creating for themselves. When they were no longer able to believe their own fairy tales, they lost all hope.

It was a huge revelation, and it explained a lot.

THAT NIGHT JESSINA AND DANNY stayed around until they were certain that Zee was all right. It surprised Zee to find that she was not only all right but that she was better than she’d been for a long while. She was understandably sad about everything that had happened that summer. But something had changed inside her when she saw the happy picture of Maureen. Something had lifted.

“I’m okay,” she said to Jessina. “I really am.”

MATTEI AND RHONDA WERE GETTING married on the Sunday of the long Labor Day weekend. As fate would have it, Sunday was both the last day of August and Zee’s birthday, and somehow she had let this slip to Jessina, who was busy at work making her a birthday cake when Zee had to leave to meet Melville.

“I’ll put it on the table when I go,” Jessina said. “It’s chocolate with white vanilla frosting,” she said. “Your favorite.”

“Sounds delicious,” Zee said. “Thank you.”

Zee had to leave earlier than Jessina had planned. Melville made her promise to meet him for an early birthday dinner at Finz before she caught the ferry into Boston for the wedding. Though there would be dinner at the wedding, she agreed to meet. She needed to talk to him about Finch’s advance directives.

STAR ISLAND WAS CROWDED with spectators. Many had come in their own boats to watch the tall ships sail in, and even more had come by ferry for the festivities on the island.

After the Friendship was anchored and her sails finally lowered, Hawk went onto the island with the rest of the crew.

He followed Josh through the crowds, past the encampment where the pirates had spent the last three days without breaking character. A wench in a low-cut top smiled at Hawk and asked if he’d like some grog. He smiled a weak smile and kept walking.

“Oh, man,” Josh said. “You’ve got it bad. That wench was a fox.”

They grabbed two beers at the concession stand.

“Come on,” Josh said, spotting a tent at the far end of a line of buildings. “This is the one I was looking for.”

The tent was hot and crowded. Inside, people sat cross-legged on the grass as a tag team of sailor storytellers engaged in a game of one-upmanship. Right now they were trading sailing superstitions.

“Never sail on a Friday,” one of the sailors offered.

“Hey, we all sailed up here on Friday,” Josh said aloud as he and Hawk sat down.

“A very bad omen,” the host said, and the crowd laughed.

“Never bring a woman on board,” another sailor declared.

“For any number of reasons,” someone else said.

“Never allow a preacher on board,” the first sailor said.

“I would have thought a preacher would be good luck,” the host said.

There was a loud chorus of noes.

“It annoys the devil.”

“You don’t want to do anything to get him too riled.”

“The preacher or the devil?” the host asked, to more laughter.

“The preacher if you’re on land, the devil out at sea.”

One of the sailors stood up and took off his shirt to reveal a cross tattooed on each arm. “This’ll keep you safe,” he said. “But only if you have it on all four limbs.” He started to drop his pants.

Howls of protest rose from the audience. “For God’s sake!” one of the mothers yelled. “There are children present.”

The sailor shrugged and sat back down.

“I take sand on the ship with me,” another sailor said. “To throw at the devil. Like Ahab did.”

“Which worked so well for him,” the host said.

“You can’t say the word ‘pig’ once you’re on board the ship,” another sailor offered. “It’s very bad luck.”

“But if you tattoo a pig on your knee before you get on the ship, it’s good luck.”

The host looked at his watch. “It’s four o’clock,” he said. “We should switch to the storytelling competition, since the ferry’s coming at six.”

“That’s what I came to hear,” Josh said to Hawk.

Two of the more talkative sailors in the group spoke first, recounting stories about the wrecks that had taken place in these waters. The first was the story of a ship called the City of Columbus, which had run aground on a reef off Martha’s Vineyard aptly named the Devil’s Bridge. The ship carried an interesting group of passengers, mostly invalids trying to head south in an effort to escape the harsh winter of 1884. The captain’s attempt to free his ship from the reef only put the craft in more peril, and a rogue wave swept most of the women and children from the deck into the ice-filled waters, where they died almost immediately. The rescue of the remaining passengers was performed by a group of Wampanoag Indians. Unable to get close enough to the ship, they urged the passengers to jump into the frigid waters, and the Indians picked up what survivors they could.

The second story was a more local one that had happened very close by, where the wreck of a Spanish ship had become an early grave for fourteen unfortunate sailors. That wreck took place in the group of islands they were on now, between the two isles of Malaga and Smuttynose.

The minute that Smuttynose was mentioned, another storyteller was on deck waiting to tell the story about the famous ax murders that had happened there back in the late 1800s. Two women were murdered on the island while a third escaped into the rocks, where she hid until morning. The event had inspired a number of books, including Anita Shreve’s The Weight of Water. Today the grisly details of the murders elicited a shudder among the crowd and another warning that there were children present. The storyteller then switched to describing the worn thole pins found in a stolen dory, which became part of the evidence that convicted the killer.

“What are thole pins?” someone in the crowd asked.

“Oarlocks,” the host said.

“More or less,” the storyteller said. “They were usually wooden in some of the older ships.”

“Oarlocks,” the host said again.

“Yes, but made of wood,” the storyteller said. “Kind of like two dowels,” he said. “The man who owned the dory that the killer stole had just replaced them. The fact that they were worn out was evidence that someone had rowed a very long distance.”

One story led into another, and soon a member of the crew of the Friendship was next up. “I have a story about thole pins, or oarlocks or whatever you want to call them, and mine happened earlier than the one on Smuttynose, but worn thole pins were the primary evidence in that case, too.”