The Map of True Places Read Online Free PDF

time, she wondered if she would ever be able to take the bridge again.
    Both Mattei and Michael had told Zee not to go to Lilly’s funeral.
    â€œWhy would you do that?” Mattei asked.
    â€œBecause she was my patient,” Zee said. “Because I’m a human being.”
    â€œI hope you don’t have any delusions that the family will welcome you,” Mattei said.
    â€œI’m going,” Zee said.
    Â 
    Z EE HAD PLANNED TO STOP to see her father before the funeral, but she was running late. These days she didn’t drive enough to know how bad the traffic would be this time of day. The Big Dig might officially be over, but traffic was still a mess. She had planned to go directly to Salem and surprise Finch with a visit. She was worried about him. Lately she had only seen him in Boston when he came in for his doctor’s appointments. He seemed frail and weak. And she couldn’t help but feel that he was hiding something from her. So today she planned to drop in unannounced to see for herself. But it was too late to go to Salem now. She’d have to see Finch after Lilly’s funeral.
    She altered her route, electing to take the coast road directly to Marblehead, winding along the golden crescent of beach that stretches from Lynn through Swampscott to the town line. At the last minute, she decided to take a shorter route through downtown Lynn, not counting on road construction. It was summer. Road crews were everywhere, the required extra-shift cops sleepily directing traffic.
    Zee hadn’t been on this road for a long time. Mostly the streets were as she remembered them. Roast-beef and pizza places lined every block. Popping up next to them were bodegas, nail salons, and the occasional package store. The businesses were essentially the same. But the ethnicity had changed. Small groceries sat next to each other, their signs in Spanish, Korean, Arabic, Russian. Lynn had always had a diverse population. These days there were more than forty languages spoken in the Lynn schools. Zee forgot who had told her that. Probably it had been her Uncle Mickey.
    Her mother’s people, including Uncle Mickey, were from Lynn,though they were originally Derry Irish. They had come over from Ireland to become factory workers at a company on Eastern Avenue that made shoe boxes.
    They were all IRA, or at least the two brothers had been, Uncle Mickey and his brother Liam, who died in an explosion in Ireland. Zee remembered her mother telling her that their emigration had been sudden. Maureen’s reluctance to say more about it left Zee wondering about the details. It was out of character for Maureen to hold back any details when she was telling a story. Whatever it was that had happened, the family had no longer been safe in Ireland. They’d had to leave the country overnight, taking only what they could carry.
    Maureen had told her all this in such a matter-of-fact tone that Zee had never quite believed the story.
    â€œMake no mistake,” her mother had said many times. “We are, every one of us, capable of murder. Given the right circumstances, it is within each of us to take a life.”
    Zee never knew whether by “every one of us” her mother had meant all of humanity or simply all of the Doherty clan. She had often thought about asking that question, but she never did. In the end she decided she really didn’t want to know.
    Their house had been on Eastern Avenue, near the factory but farther down the street, closer to the beach. Zee doubted if she could find the place now. It was so long ago that her grandmother had died. Her mother died only a few years later, just after Zee turned thirteen. Besides Zee, Mickey was the only Doherty left.
    The factory where they’d once worked had long since closed. A sign on the front of the building read KING’S BEACH APARTMENTS . It was directly across from Monte’s Restaurant, where she used to go for pizza with her