“She always loved you the best,” Nina chirped. “She’ll be overjoyed.”
Alexander put his face in his hands and counted to one hundred, trying to calm down.
When they pulled in front of his mother’s villa, the villa where she’d lived since she’d left Nantucket after the fire and moved back to Italy, Alexander watched the shadows for signs of his mother, both nervous and excited to see her again. Through the years, he’d been to this villa a handful of times, but he’d thought the greater the distance between himself and his original nuclear family, the better.
But now that everything was exploding before his eyes, maybe it didn’t matter.
Nina traipsed up the steps and used a key hidden under the mat to open the door. It reminded Alexander of the key they’d hidden under one of the mats at the Lodge.
“She texted to say she’s napping,” Charlotte whispered to Alexander, “so I suggest we take some wine to the veranda and catch up. What do you say?”
Alexander nodded. The first thing he needed was a drink, and then he could ask the hundreds of questions zipping through his mind. They owed him an explanation, at least.
It was surreal that Ned had only recently been here to spy on his mother, and now Alexander himself was here.
Alexander inhaled the old-world smells of this ornate villa in the middle of Tuscany. As he sauntered through the foyer, the living room, the library, and out onto the terrace, he recognized his mother’s design in every choice, some of which echoed what had been on display at the White Oak Lodge. He hadn’t realized how much of the Lodge had been from Francesca’s own mind. Charlotte disappeared into the kitchen and returned with wineglasses and a bottle of Tuscan red, which she opened on the back table, her eyes dark and furtive. Alexander’s throat was thick. He didn’t want to admit he was terrified. Maybe they could sense it.
Charlotte poured their glasses and raised hers, saying, “To being back together again.”
Nina and Alexander murmured in agreement and sipped their wine. It was evening, and purple clouds rolled along the far horizon. But it was still terribly hot and humid, and Alexander’s shirt was wet with sweat.
“How did you know I was here?” Alexander asked again. His shoulders were heavy.
Nina and Charlotte exchanged glances. Alexander wanted to tell them to stop having conversations through the air. More than that, he wanted to ask how they’d gotten to know one another so well. Back when they’d been a real family, back when they’d been the iconic Whitmores of Nantucket Island, Charlotte had been much older than Nina, and after the fire, Nina hadbeen sent to live with their great-aunt Genevieve in Michigan. It meant they couldn’t have known one another so well back then.
There was so much he didn’t know.
“We’ll tell you that,” Nina said, “when you tell us something else.”
Alexander’s heart pumped. “Okay?”
Charlotte cleared her throat. “Why did you send a private detective after us?”
Alexander closed his eyes and cursed Ned. Clearly, he wasn’t as secretive as he thought he was. Clearly, he’d made bigger messes than either of them could fathom.
“I mean, you’ve had the same investigator for years,” Charlotte continued when Alexander didn’t answer. “I met him back in the early 2000s. He came after me. We talked in my kitchen. He pestered me about where Jack was. I was terrified. Gosh, it felt like a nightmare to see him again. Here! At Mom’s villa!”
“It’s awful,” Nina said.
“But I never would have guessed that you’d be the one to send him after us!” Charlotte cried. “I thought you were all the way out of our lives, flying planes all over the world and pretending the White Oak Lodge was dust. I thought you wanted nothing to do with us.”
Nina continued to gaze at Alexander, mystified. It killed Alexander to see his kid sister like this. It made him feel like an enormous failure. Wasn’t the eldest brother supposed to protect the youngest kid? And Nina had been so adorable back in the nineties, all knobby knees and secrets. Because her siblings were so much older, she hadn’t really had anyone to play with, and she’d made up stories for herself, amusing herself, creating a sort of fantasy world within the White Oak Lodge.
She’d loved Jack, Alexander remembered. He’d been her favorite. Did she know where Jack was? Was she the key?Alexander had discredited her because she’d been taken away. Maybe that was wrong. Once a Whitmore, always a Whitmore, he knew.
Suddenly, it was like the storm in the distance welled up in Alexander’s chest. Tears filled his eyes. Was he going to burst into sobs? He bit his tongue, but there was no keeping it in for long. “You don’t understand,” he whispered. “I’ve lived with what happened that night for almost thirty years. I’ve carried these secrets for so long that they’ve started to break me down. Now, my contract’s been suspended. My wife has taken the kids and left me. I’m a broken man.”
Charlotte and Nina remained quiet and captivated. Their eyes told him to go on.
“In the early 2000s, not long after my daughter was born, I started receiving strange messages. Letters, mostly, but also phone calls. Post-its from the airline secretary, passing along messages from whoever had called for me. The messages were always sinister. Sometimes they were simple, just saying, ‘July 4th, 1998.’ Or things along the line of ‘I could ruin you. Remember what happened. Remember that your life is a facade that will break and show who you really are.’ Sometimes the messages were just a list of the people who supposedly died in the fire. Dad. Tio Angelo. Jack. Sometimes the messages just told me to stay on my toes.” Alexander sniffed and squeezed his eyes shut. “It felt like someone was sneaking up on me, watching me, preparing to destroy my life the minute they decided it would benefit them.”
Charlotte’s and Nina’s eyes were enormous, taking this in. He understood that the story was so much bigger than they’d previously fathomed.
“I panicked, obviously, and hired a private detective, this guy named Ned Fulton, who I’d known back in flight school,” Alexander continued. He didn’t add that Ned was a terribledetective because he knew that wouldn’t help his case. “I wanted him to track down who was sending the messages, and when he couldn’t do that, I had him track you down, Charlotte. I’m sorry.”
Charlotte looked quizzical. “Why me?”
“I knew where Nina was. I knew where Mom was. I knew where Allegra and Lorelei were,” Alexander said. “I thought, maybe, that Dad, Tio Angelo, and Jack were dead, although I don’t think that anymore.” He waited, checking their faces to see if they were surprised, but Nina and Charlotte seemed on board with the idea that nobody had died in the fire. None of their family members, anyway.
