Alexander had never heard this narrative before. “Why did she stay if she hated it so much?”
Benjamin thought for a moment. “Probably because of her children.”
Alexander’s guilt sat heavily on his shoulders. “I see.” He swallowed, his eyes smarting from all the exploding fireworks and the tension between them. “Dad, about that. I need to tell you.” Gosh, why was he so nervous? He was almost twenty-four years old. He was a man. “I need to tell you that Janie and I are going to leave. Probably sooner rather than later. Now that the baby didn’t make it, there are things we want to do with our lives.” Alexander felt like he was in a free fall.
Benjamin looked at him, his jaw clenched. His eyes were dangerous. “Don’t you see that this is where you belong? We opened our doors back to you after you left the first time.”
“I know. I know that. And this isn’t to say that we wouldn’t come back,” Alexander tried.
“We gave you everything, Alexander. We gave you what my father gave me, and what his father gave him. You’re a part of a one hundred and fifty-year tradition. Doesn’t that matter to you?”
Alexander realized that he shouldn’t have accosted his father like this, not on the Fourth of July, not standing in the shadow of the glorious White Oak Lodge. If anything, he should havewritten them a letter and taken off in the night.Please don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness, he reminded himself.
But the damage was already done.
“If it’s about Janie,” his father growled, “you can tell her to leave you behind. We don’t need her. She isn’t a Whitmore, not yet, and if she doesn’t want our lifestyle, if she doesn’t want our traditions, then she should leave.”
Alexander gaped at his father. “I don’t want her to leave. I love her.”
Benjamin closed his eyes. “There are so many more important things than love.”
Alexander took a step back. He’d never heard his father talk like this. Suddenly, he remembered Chloe, his father’s potential affair, the destruction both his mother and father had wrought on their family in the past. Before he could stop himself, he shot, “I love Janie. Maybe I love her more than you ever loved Mom. I don’t want her to go and live a life without me. And I don’t want to cheat on her either. With Chloe, Dad? Come on. She worked here. She loved it here. You ruined it, like you ruin everything.” He flared his nostrils, his heart racing. He couldn’t believe he’d gone that far.
Benjamin closed his eyes. The fireworks continued exploding overhead, and Alexander watched his father’s face light up in greens and reds and yellows. He looked sickly.
Slowly, softly, his father said, “I gave Chloe a lot of money to leave our family alone.”
“You paid her off?” Alexander huffed. Was this the cozy family his father demanded he stay with?
Benjamin sighed. “It’s so much more complicated than you can imagine.”
“Why? It sounds pretty clear to me.”
Benjamin turned to watch the fireworks. The air tightened between them. And then he said, “I paid her to stay away fromme, from all of us. But most of all, I paid her to stay away from Nina. Legally, she’s not her daughter. But biologically speaking, she is.”
Alexander was stunned and silent.
Nina, little Nina, whom their mother had always rejected, whom their mother hadn’t taught Italian, whom had always been kept off to the side, like a sinister secret, wasn’t really Francesca’s daughter. She was Chloe’s.
Did that mean Chloe had come back to Nantucket to see Nina again? Alexander tried to recall the party two years ago. Chloe had watched Nina, playing off to the side by herself. Was that the first time Chloe had seen Nina since childbirth? Had there been something in Chloe’s expression to indicate their connection?
“She took the money, Alexander,” Benjamin reminded him quietly, as though that mattered. “To me, that means she doesn’t really care about Nina. Not like we do.”
Suddenly, Benjamin stormed away from Alexander, headed for the Lodge. Alexander watched, frozen, as he entered the back door and went left, toward the staircase that led into the tunnels beneath the White Oak Lodge.The tunnels, where the rumored treasure is housed, Alexander thought darkly. But there was no Whitmore treasure. There was only darkness and filth.
Chapter Twenty
Fourth of July 1998
Nantucket Island
Janie was at the White Oak Lodge Fourth of July bonfire, watching the fireworks explode over the Nantucket Sound. Safe with the secret that she and Alexander were going to flee the island as soon as they could, she felt tender toward the rest of the Whitmores, chatted with Francesca, joked with Allegra and Lorelei, and snacked, drank sweet wine, and danced on the sand. The months since the miscarriage had been grim and strange, and she’d felt terribly alone, always working hard at the front desk, trying to push the Whitmores through another prosperous season. But she didn’t care about their season or their money. She wanted to run away!
Life was complicated. It didn’t take a lot of thought to come to that conclusion. But now that Janie had been living with the Whitmores for a few months, she couldn’t help but think that they made everything far too complicated, far too messy. There were secrets like landmines everywhere.
Alexander had been gone for too long, and Janie felt itchy and eager to find him. She told Francesca she was going back to the Lodge to check on something, but Francesca barely listened and instead wrapped her arm around Allegra’s shoulders. Janie took off through the sand, searching the bluffs for Alexander. But he was nowhere to be found.
As she ran, she thought about Chloe and wondered where on earth she was. A couple of weeks ago, she’d managed to contact her at a hotel in San Francisco, and she’d told her about the miscarriage, about her decision to spend her life at the White Oak Lodge. Chloe had said, “Are you sure about that, honey?” She’d gotten off the phone shortly thereafter, but her words had stuck to Janie like glue. Was she sure? No, she was not.
