Page 13 of In the Pursuit of Haven
Proctor just got special treatment as my favorite.
I pressed the penny into the cold granite. Those accused of witchcraft weren’t allowed to be buried on holy land back in the day. That would’ve been the fate of Jessie’s pirate ancestor too. Their families had all secretly dug up their bodies from their shallow graves at the gallows and found proper burial on their private properties, but… of course, no one knew where. Their secrets died with them… just like with that treasure.
Strange that one of the worst scandals in American history was the very thing that made our town famous—the movieHocus Pocusdid its part too. Tourism was what kept this place running. Good thing, since the Crabbs ran every other business into the ground.
Grimacing, I pulled away from the memorial. I had another coin in my purse, but that was for Haven’s grave. She’d been buried in The Old Burying Hill, Marblehead’s oldest cemetery. Our contemporary dead usually didn’t get that kind of celebrity treatment, unless they had connections—and she had plenty.
Our roots ran deep here, even if I didn’t know what mine actually were.
It was strange that for one who loved history as much as I did that I didn’t know my own. Haven had always generously donated her family tree to my adopted mother and me, but it just wasn’t the same. The thread that knit me together with my ancestors was missing.
After my dad left, it became hard not to take my lack of connection to my actual bloodlines personally. And now that familiar aching pain of abandonment was coming for me again.
I was pretty sure if I ran from Jessie first, it wouldn’t hurt as bad. I should’ve done that long ago.
Haven’s grave would have to wait for another day, when I could get a few minutes to breathe. I’d put the coin on her gravestone and show her my divorce papers, and by then they’d be signed.
I shuddered at the thought and fought through my tears as I headed for Derby Street. Maybe I could pass them off as mourning for my aunt. Of course, Haven would’ve seen right through me. Would she have tried to talk me out of this?
Not likely.
I crossed the busy street. A few hundred years ago, the cemetery would’ve sat on the coastline, Derby Street would’ve been underwater, and the rest of Salem covered in hills—that was until the richest man in town, Elias Hasket Derby, took the dirt from those hills to pull the coastline out farther. Rumor was that he’d put smuggling tunnels under those new streets, too. Anything to avoid Thomas Jefferson’s overbearing customs.
And that was just a horrible conspiracy! Never mind those smuggling doors at the bottom of all the old buildings built in the 1800s.“No one had better poke around down there!”
Yeah, we had our secrets in this town, and I loved every one of them.
I made my way to the wharf, past houses from every era and in every style imaginable. Those structures from the 1800s weren’t the oldest ones on the block, either. Plaques showing off dates as early as 1664 were branded on the side of almost every building. Historical downtown was an outdoor museum. We stepped on ghosts here.
It was a dream come true for a history buff like me, and in January, I practically had these streets to myself—not like in October when Salem became a type of ghoulish Woodstock.
Of course, that also meant there was no getting lost in the crowds today. Down the wharf past the replica ship of the Friendship of Salem, Jessie was waiting for me… waiting to give me a shoulder to cry on, to give me pitying looks, to let me down gently and kick me to the curb.
Oh, Mom, why didn’t I learn from your mistakes?
I quickened my steps, ducking into a back alley so I wouldn’t be seen from the docks.
Forget Ruth or anyone else calling me an outsider. These were my haunting grounds. Past Derby’s Custom House was the old tavern that Zak owned, further down the way was Bette Ann’s candy shop—the one with the most colorful history in America—across from the Hawthorne House, and past that I found Haven’s motorboat.
The cruiser was as original as my auntie used to be, with wooden siding and interior. The boat might’ve been built in the ’70s and just like everything else in her life, she took good care of it so that it lasted.
She should’ve lasted too.
I shoved the keys into the ignition, feeling the smooth rumbling of its engine beneath the planked floorboards. The journey to Baker’s Island wasn’t a long one, though it was freezing. I’d definitely dressed wrong. The traffic, however, was practically nonexistent over these clear gray waters.
The serenity left too much room for thinking.
Jessie kissed my cheek as the wind whipped my hair around us. “When are you going to stop leaving Salem?” he asked. “I’m tired of goodbyes.”
I leaned back against him as he navigated us through the harbor. “Well, I’ve got all those school loans I have pay off,” I said. “Luther doesn’t have any job openings at the Salem Museum for me… and anyway, I’d have to take his job as the Museum Director if I wanted to get paid as much as what I’d get in Boston as an archivist.”
“There are better things than money,” he said, reminding me of our first conversation on Brown’s Island all those years ago.
I turned to him, my heart leaping all over myself so that I couldn’t even smile through my sudden rush of happiness. I could always read his passionate eyes, just like I knew when he was going to kiss me; there was something else gleaming in those dark depths of his.
“Are there better things than this place?” I asked him. I wasn’t sure if he’d ever leave Salem to come with me to Boston. He belonged to his hometown as much as his ancestors did.
He smoothed back my hair and kissed my neck. “Marry me, Roxy, and let’s never say goodbye again.”
