Alexander gasped. He tried to imagine it: Charlotte, young and beautiful, at the start of her life, and Jack, destroying her plans with his reckless driving and raucousness.
“After my fiancé got better, he left me,” Charlotte said with a wry smile. “I think it was for the best.”
“You’re better off with Vincent,” Nina said.
Alexander’s ears rang in recognition. “Vincent? Like, high school Vincent?”
Charlotte grinned mischievously. “I can’t believe it either. I ran into him on Nantucket. Actually, funnily enough, it was when I took Jack’s wife out to dinner.”
Alexander couldn’t fully fathom these next factoids about his disappeared brother: that he had a family in Hawaii, that his wife, Addison, thought his name was Seth Green, and that he’d disappeared again. “About four months ago, he left with some guy,” Charlotte explained with a shrug. “That’s all we know. Addison had to go back to Hawaii to take care of her kids. She’s broken up about it.”
“It’s a mess,” Nina agreed.
When Alexander asked Nina what had led her back to Nantucket, Nina groaned and proceeded to update him on the mess of her own life: her anthropology background and the anthropology professor she’d married, who’d always known more about the Whitmore family than he’d let on. “He even forced me to go to Nantucket Island for our honeymoon,” she said. “He knew how devastating that would be for me. I think he wanted to watch me squirm.”
Nina went on to say that at a fancy restaurant on the island, she’d discovered an old photograph within which was a man who looked so much like Jack Whitmore that she’d stolen it and kept it for herself. When she’d learned that her husband was having an affair with one of his students, she’d taken the kids to camp and come to Nantucket Island—maybe to search for Jack, maybeto search for herself. “I met Amos on the first night, and things have really spiraled from there,” she said. “When I tracked down ‘Seth Green’s house’ on Madequecham Beach, you’ll never guess who answered the door.”
Charlotte waved her hand, and Alexander gasped.
And then he burst with, “I have the worst private detective in the world.”
Nina, Charlotte, and Alexander laughed so uproariously that they surely woke their mother, if only momentarily. It took ages for them to settle down. But this story was rife with humor if you looked past the death, sorrow, and pain. It was hard to believe it was real.
“What was your husband after?” he finally asked Nina, wiping tears from beneath his eyes. “Why was he so obsessed with the Whitmores?”
Nina raised her shoulders. “I think he subscribes to the Whitmore treasure theory.”
Alexander snorted. “You’re kidding me. A super-intelligent guy like that?”
“He thinks he’s smart,” Nina said sadly.
“That ridiculous treasure,” Alexander said. “In all your times in the tunnels under the Lodge, did you ever find anything?”
Nina and Charlotte shook their heads.
“Of course not,” Charlotte said.
“I always wanted to,” Nina said. “But I was too afraid to go down there by myself, and you were all too old to play with me.”
“Too old, too cynical,” Alexander said. “I’m sorry, Nina. I wish we’d been there for you.” He remembered how little she was when she’d been shipped off to live with Aunt Genevieve. When he’d thought about it during the months and years after, he’d always pictured her, freezing in the frozen snowy hills of Michigan, homesick and frightened.
But Nina had turned into a remarkable woman.
“You know what?” Charlotte said, as though she’d just remembered. “I always sort of thought you were the one who set the fire.”
Alexander’s eyes widened with surprise. Never had he thought someone would accuse him of that. “You did?”
Charlotte tried to laugh, but it sounded false. “I mean, I knew how much you came to hate the Lodge,” she said. “Mom and Dad were never going to let you do what you wanted to do. I figured you wanted a path out of there.”
Alexander’s heart pounded. “Did you really think I was capable of that?”Of a fire that supposedly killed three of my family members, he didn’t add.
Charlotte grimaced. “Not at first. It occurred to me after you were already gone. After all of us were already gone. I started adding up what I knew about our family. I started to pin the blame.” She sighed, looking sorrowful and old. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Alexander was quiet and contemplative, crossing and uncrossing his ankles.
Finally, Alexander burst with another question. “Do you think there’s something wrong with Mom?”
“Wrong? What do you mean?” Charlotte looked pleased that he was letting her off the hook about the fire accusation.
