Chapter One
Summer 1969
On the evening before Francesca’s final day of school, her father, Enzo, gathered their family on the veranda of their palazzo in Tuscany and told them the news. With his massive hands on his linen pants, he regarded Francesca, her little brother Angelo, and her mother Maria Accetta with a stoic smile and said, “This summer, I’m not filming a thing. I want to spend time with my family, away from all this. We’re going to Nantucket Island.”
In an instant, Francesca’s mother was on her feet, gushing with a mix of excitement, fear, and confusion. But Francesca, who was seventeen years old and at odds with everything her parents usually did, leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms, and said, “Where in the world is Nantucket Island?” It wasn’t Florence. It wasn’t Rome. It wasn’t even London or New York. So why did it matter?
The story was that her father, the famous director Enzo Accetta, hadn’t received the salary he thought appropriate forhis upcoming film. Now that the studio was grappling with what to do and how much to give him, he’d decided to take a leave of absence and wait for them to recognize his talent and how much they needed him (which they always did, eventually). He’d met an American man in Rome, a man named Charles Whitmore who’d boasted of owning and operating “a luxury resort on a miraculous island in the Atlantic.”
To Francesca, her father said gently, “People from all over the world spend their summers there. They ride horses, play tennis, swim in the sea, go sailing… It’s a place full of possibilities. You’ll make lifelong friends—I’m sure of it.” Francesca pointed out that her English was still pathetic, to which her father shrugged. “You’ll have to learn, won’t you?”
Francesca considered putting up a fight. She couldn’t fathom what America could do for her. Her plan for the summer had been to make little documentaries with her friends, or write plays and perform them, or paint murals in the town square. But the truth was, many of her friends were also being taken away to spend months on Mediterranean islands, and it was likely she’d spend her time in Tuscany alone. Begrudgingly, she went upstairs to pack, making sure to include numerous books. If she were bored, she could spend all summer on the beach, working on her tan and reading.
The following week, they were taken to the airport, where they boarded a private plane and flew from Rome to New York City and from New York City to Nantucket Island. Angelo slept all the way across the Atlantic and woke up with a terrible stomachache that terrified the rest of the family. Francesca’s mother doted on him, pouring him glasses of ginger ale and wiping his brow of sweat. Francesca watched on helplessly. Ever since she could remember, her little brother had been a troublemaker of sorts, always the first to get sick or skip school or put up a fight. For this reason, Francesca often felt that shehad to be the “good” child, the one who didn’t cause too much of a ruckus. By the time they landed in Nantucket, Angelo had fallen asleep again, and their father carried him from the plane and put him in the back of the rental car that awaited them.
Also awaiting them was Charles Whitmore, her father’s new friend, and Charles’s wife, Elaine. They were approximately the same age as Francesca’s parents, but they looked entirely different, their skin tones pinker and softer, their eyes bluish. When they spoke to Francesca, their English was far too quick for her to make sense of. She grimaced and shook their hands, the way you were supposed to in America. She heard her father say that her English would get better quickly. But what if it didn’t?
In their rental car, Francesca sat with her brother’s legs on her lap and gazed out the window at a landscape that felt entirely foreign to Italy. Her heart thumped with what could only be homesickness, even though they’d just arrived. They followed Charles and Elaine to a grand-looking luxury resort with a sign out front that read: THE WHITE OAK LODGE. Francesca blinked at it, a shiver racing down her spine. She couldn’t have known yet that this was where she’d spend so much of her life. But something in the view felt familiar to her already. It was eerie.
After her father handed the keys to the valet and carried Angelo to their family quarters, the three Accettas were introduced to the other guests at the Lodge—Hollywood people, writers from New York, a banker from Miami, and a professional tennis player and his wife. Francesca practiced a fake smile that felt similar to Elaine Whitmore’s. Jet lag was catching up to her, and she longed to go to the beach, swim in the sea, and rest a while.
But it was after the introductions of all the staff members that Charles led them to the other side of the property, where abonfire flickered against the sunset. Three teenagers sat around the bonfire, eating burnt marshmallows and listening to music. The eldest caught Francesca’s eye right away. He was maybe a little bit older than she was, with broad shoulders and shaggy dark-blond hair and cheekbones like a Scandinavian man she’d met once. When he turned to look at her, a smile lit up his face. He handed her a roasted marshmallow and said something in English she didn’t understand. When she asked him to speak more slowly, he said, “I will help you make a s’more.” Next, he put two crackers and a piece of chocolate around the marshmallow, forming a sandwich. Francesca frowned but took a bite. The goo of the chocolate and marshmallow came together beautifully. She closed her eyes.
Charles introduced his three children: Benjamin, Ronald, and their little sister, Quinn, who appeared to be the same age as Angelo. Francesca’s father urged her to sit with them, and because it seemed preferable to hanging with the adults, she did, reaching for a soda from the bag near Benjamin. Her heart thudded. She couldn’t understand half of what the three Whitmore teenagers said, but she was captivated by them. These were Americans, just like the Americans she’d seen in movies. They were loud, confident, athletic, and fun. She laughed at almost everything Benjamin said, feeling like a foolish girl. Maybe the jet lag was making her loopy.
As her father had assured her, Francesca picked up English quickly. Within a week of hanging around Benjamin, Ronald, and Quinn, she was speaking twice as much as she had been and even trying out jokes. Her personality flourished in English, and the Whitmores took to her instantly. Angelo, too, caught on to English quickly, although he was more tentative around the Whitmores, less trusting of who they were and what they offered. He went off by himself often, and Francesca caughtherself being grateful for that, as it allowed her more time to spend with Benjamin without her brother’s watchful eyes.
Her brother’s unhappiness so often felt like something she had to deal with, which didn’t always feel fair.
It wasn’t till the Fourth of July that Benjamin kissed her for the first time. It had been building for weeks, and Francesca had thought she was going to go crazy, waiting for him to make a move. When he did, she teased him. “What took you so long?”
They were on the beach, watching fireworks explode over the White Oak Lodge. Benjamin scooped her in a beautiful hug, a hug that protected her, a hug that reminded her of how large his body was and how small hers was, here at the edge of the dark Atlantic. “You’ve been driving me crazy,” he told her, his breath hot in her ear. “But you scare me, too.”
Francesca knew what he meant. Francesca was seventeen, and Benjamin was nineteen, and their lives were only beginning. Benjamin had told her that he was bound to the White Oak Lodge, that he would take over as soon as his father decided to retire. Ronald and Quinn were allowed to do whatever they pleased, although Benjamin privately hoped that at least Ronald would stick around to help out. The two brothers were as thick as thieves but yin and yang, as far as Francesca understood it. Ronald was quieter, moodier, more like Angelo. Benjamin told her that Ronald had run away once, and that Benjamin and his father had spent all day searching for him before learning that Ronald had been in a car accident in Boston. “My mother wept and wept and couldn’t get out of bed for days,” Benjamin explained.
After their first kiss on the Fourth of July, Francesca and Benjamin began a gorgeous and uninhibited summer romance, the sort that Francesca thought was only allowed in books and movies. Never could she have imagined that she’d feel so much for someone. This autumn, she was bound for film school inRome, but she half expected that she wouldn’t bother, that she’d stay in Nantucket with Benjamin and abandon her dreams and have his children.
Angelo reminded her how stupid that idea was. As the end of August neared and their parents spoke about returning to Tuscany for Angelo’s schooling and Francesca’s move to Rome, Francesca confessed to Angelo that she wanted to stay. Angelo stiffened and gave her a look that meant he thought she was insane or close to it. “You’re so good at everything,” he told her. “Why would you throw that all away to build a family with some random American guy?”
The thought niggled Francesca’s mind for days after that. It became like a poison, destroying her sense of self and her view of Benjamin. A few days before her flight back to Italy, Benjamin took her to the beach for a picnic and asked if she would consider staying. She’d waited weeks for him to ask her that. Francesca bit her lip and reminded him that she was an artist. She was going to become someone.
“You can become someone here,” he told her. “After the tourist season is through, we don’t get many guests. You can work on your scripts. You can write plays. You can make a film, right here. I’ll help you.”
But Francesca was terrified that he was lying to her. She was only seventeen, and she’d hardly dated anyone before. The fire in her chest felt like nothing she knew, but she was naive enough to think that that sort of fire could be felt elsewhere, with others, later in life. She kissed Benjamin, tears in her eyes, and told him she had to go.
Benjamin came with his father to see the Accetta family off at the airport. He shook the famous director’s hand and hugged Francesca goodbye, as they didn’t want to kiss in front of their families. Francesca bit her tongue to keep from sobbing. She tried to beg Benjamin to write her letters, to keep their love alive.She wanted to tell him that she’d visit next summer and the one after that, that this didn’t have to be the end. But she didn’t want to sound pathetic either. “It was a spectacular summer,” she told him in her newfound English. “I will never forget you.”
As the plane ripped into the morning sky over Nantucket, she pressed her hand to the pane and wondered when, if ever, she’d see Benjamin and the White Oak Lodge again. It was bizarre to her that she still felt as though it was her destiny, as though it was waiting for her in some unknown future. Beside her, Angelo slept on, uncaring about the future and all the people he’d one day hurt.
Chapter Two
September 2025
What Francesca hadn’t told Charlotte, Alexander, or even Nina during their time in Italy was that she wasn’t entirely well. It had been her first time seeing Nina since she was eleven, Charlotte’s first visit in ages, and the first time she and Alexander had crossed paths in far too long. She hadn’t wanted to taint their reunion of sorts (as dramatic as it turned out to be, especially when the gardener turned out to be a private detective hired by Alexander, for goodness’ sake) with news of her ailments. She hadn’t wanted to see pity in her children’s eyes.
But now, as she sat in the doctor’s office here in Tuscany, her slender ankles folded and her spine as straight as a pine, she saw in her doctor’s eyes far more worry than she’d bargained for. All summer, she’d had radiation treatments to attack the cancerous cells in her breasts, and as traumatic as that had seemed, she’d assumed her cancer was over and done with. Not so, according to her doctor. Surgery was the name of the game now,followed by chemotherapy—that most sinister of treatments that Francesca had seen wipe out several of her friends, taking their hair, their energy, and their excitement to live.
“I don’t want it,” Francesca shot back to the white-jacketed man before her, crossing her arms in the way she had as a teenager, when her father had asked of her something she didn’t want to do. “It sounds dreadful.”
