Xander was flustered, squeezing and pulling the curls on either side of his head. “You’re the one who made me get the job in the first place,” he reminded her.
“And now I’m telling you it’s over.” She spun on her heel in the doorway, eager to get away from her children’s prying eyes.They’d never seen their mother like this. “You have one hour to pack. Let’s get this show on the road.”
Chapter Four
July 2025
Florence, Italy
Alexander couldn’t blame Ned for taking another opportunity, one that would whisk him out of Florence and away from Alexander and his painful lineage. “Like I said,” Ned offered in the downstairs bar of the hotel during his last evening in Florence, “I’d love to try another strategy to find your lost family members. I have several ideas. But if you don’t give me the okay, I can’t move forward.” Alexander sipped his red wine and studied the rain as it pounded the sidewalk outside. According to the hotel employees, it rarely rained in Tuscany during this time of year, and everyone considered it a bad omen.
He knew how superstitious Italians could be because he was basically one of them. He also knew how superstitious hotel employees could be, because in his heart, he’d always be one of them as well.
“No.” Alexander rubbed the back of his neck. “You should go.”
Ned looked hurt, almost as though he wanted Alexander to beg him to quit his other job before it began and stick around with Alexander, hunting for the long-lost Whitmores. But in the previous few days since Ned’s last failure with Francesca, Alexander hadn’t found himself convinced of any of Ned’s new strategies. It meant that Alexander had to face the music, somehow.
A sense of dread followed him wherever he went.
Ned sipped his wine and let his eyes drop. Alexander realized he knew very little of Ned’s real life outside of private detective-ing and decided to ask him about it, if only to distract himself from his own useless fears. He began with an easy question. “Were you ever married?”
“Marriage? I tried it.” Ned tapped the tips of his fingers against his glass. “I really loved her, I think. If I’m even capable of it.”
Alexander furrowed his brow and tried to picture whoever it was Ned had ended up with, before it had fallen apart. “What do you mean? You don’t think you’re capable?”
Ned raised his shoulders. “I’m all over the place, emotionally. I never know if what I’m feeling or doing is honest the moment it happens. I’d listen to myself tell my wife that I loved her, and I’d feel a twinge in my heart that told me no, maybe I don’t. It didn’t feel fair to her.”
“Maybe you were with the wrong woman,” Alexander said, mystified. He’d never felt this way about his wife. Now that she refused to answer his calls and didn’t want to call him back, he felt his love for her like a fire that was apt to burn him up. Was she falling out of love with him? What had she learned about what was going on with the rest of the Whitmores? Was it a deal-breaker? Would a divorce lawyer contact him any minute? Oh, if only Ned had done the job he’d set out to do!
Ned shook his head. “Maybe. Who knows when they’re with the wrong person? And what does the ‘wrong’ person even mean? She was kind to me. We slept in a bed together every night. She knew how I took my coffee. And she knew not to ask questions when I went off to do my work for months at a time.” He sniffed. “That must be how Janie lives, right? You’re a pilot.” He said it as though it were an insult, although Alexander knew how much Ned had wanted to be a pilot himself. “You’re gone for long stretches, aren’t you?”
Alexander nodded. “It hurts her, I think. She doesn’t like it.” He didn’t add,I don’t really like it either.He’d missed so many of his kids’ birthday parties, basketball games, and dance competitions. He’d missed so much of their development, their essential questions, and conversations they’d had with their mother without him. Often, he wondered if Janie resented him for all the time he’d lost. Maybe his children would never forgive him.
“You never wanted kids?” he asked Ned now, crossing his arms.
Ned raised his shoulders. “We tried for a little while.”
Alexander’s ears rang with surprise. “You tried?”
Ned beckoned for the hotel server to come over so he could order another drink. It looked like he didn’t want to talk about the kid thing, but Alexander pushed it.
Finally, Ned admitted, “She got pregnant once. I hate to admit how happy it made me. It was like I could finally picture a future with her. But we lost the baby after about seven weeks. She was heartbroken, and I didn’t know how to handle it. We tried again when we could, but it never really took. After that, I started going after jobs that were farther and farther away.” He took a drink and shifted so that his face was pointed away from Alexander’s.
Alexander couldn’t believe that he’d spent years telling Ned so much about himself, only for Ned to carry around his own secrets, his own sorrows. Did Ned have anyone to talk to? Or was he alone in his emotions, lost in his own heartache? Was that why he buried himself in other people’s secrets?
Alexander tried to ask Ned a few more questions, but it seemed like Ned was stuck in his head, thinking back to those long-lost days with his ex-wife. Maybe he could still feel the optimism they’d shared when she’d first gotten pregnant. Alexander could still remember when Janie had told him about their first pregnancy—the baby that would grow up to be Xander, his eldest. There was a pain in his chest, and he pressed his hand against it.
Ned stood a few minutes later and admitted that he had to get back to his room. “It’s been good to see you again, man.” Ned shook Alexander’s hand.
Alexander could hardly speak. Something about this goodbye felt permanent, but he couldn’t say why. “You got the payment, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Ned said. “Thank you. You’ve been a wonderful client.”
Alexander got up and towered over Ned, who was inches from six feet. “I hope you remember me as a friend, Ned.”
“Of course, man,” Ned said. “Longtime friends.”
Alexander remained in the hotel bar for a good hour after Ned went to bed, nursing a Negroni and watching hotel guests come and go. After growing up at the White Oak Lodge, he was very good at gauging relationships, mannerisms, and guest secrets. For example, he always knew when people were at the hotel to hide their romantic affairs from their partners. He always knew who at the hotel bar was on vacation alone, trying to hide from their own broken hearts. He and one of his sisters, usually Allegra, often made bets about how longcertain bickering married couples would stay together after their time at the Lodge. By next summer, the husband would return with a brand-new girlfriend, typically one twenty years younger. “Everyone is so obvious,” Allegra had always said, rolling her eyes.
