“Hello.” Ronald turned and looked at her.
Francesca pulled up a chair. “Do you mind if I sit with you a while? The nanny’s here, and I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“I don’t know what to do with myself either,” Ronald said.
Francesca’s throat felt taut, but she offered him a soft smile and said, “You’ve been working hard all winter long. I feel like you haven’t taken a break in ages.”
Ronald rolled his shoulders back. “Benjamin doesn’t take breaks either.”
“Yes, but…” But he’s obsessive. But the Lodge is his. But he has a family, a wife, something to live for. “But I know you’ve been through a lot,” she pressed on. “Have you considered going on vacation somewhere? Meeting friends, maybe?”
Ronald gave her a look she knew meant: "What friends?" She shuddered, thinking of her dear friends Rosa and Barbara, who communicated only infrequently by letter. Someday soon, she knew, they wouldn’t keep in touch at all anymore.
“I have been thinking about going down to Florida,” Ronald said, surprising her. “A few friends set up a shop in Miami, and I’ve always wanted to see it.”
Francesca encouraged Ronald to go to Florida. “It will be a blast,” she said. But what she didn’t say was how certain she was that Ronald needed a fresh perspective, a new way of thinking about himself within the world and outside the parameters of the Whitmores.
A few days later, Ronald set a date for his trip and informed Benjamin and Charles that he was going away. Benjamin looked confused but happy for him and assured him that he’d be able to manage the Lodge without him for a little while. “But we need you back before mid-April,” he said, fake-punching Ronald’s left shoulder.
Before his flight, Francesca packed Ronald with numerous Italian snacks and made him promise to write down everything he experienced in a journal so he wouldn’t forget anything. Ronald blushed with thanks and said he’d put it all down. “It’s my first adventure in a while,” he said as he gathered his suitcase and proceeded down the hall.
Francesca realized that Ronald was only twenty-four, a year and a half younger than she was. Sometimes he seemed dramatically younger, and at other times, he appeared decades older, nearing the end of his life. Francesca couldn’t understand why she thought that.
During the two weeks of Ronald’s vacation, Jefferson Albright moved into the staff quarters of the White Oak Lodge. He proceeded to tighten up the horseback riding stables, creating a better cleaning and organizing schedule and instilling order among the stable employees beneath him. Benjamin talked about Jefferson quite often, indicating that Jefferson was the best new-hire the Lodge had seen in Benjamin’s time. Even Charles took to Jefferson, sometimes jokingly calling him the son he’d never had. Francesca was grateful that Ronald wasn’t around to hear that. He’d take it to mean that Charles liked Jefferson more than Ronald—and Francesca wasn’t entirely sure that wasn’t what he meant.
So early in her motherhood journey, Francesca couldn’t fathom loving one of her children more than the rest. But the love she had for her children often threatened to overtake her. When Benjamin suggested that they have more children, she winced and said she wasn’t ready. Alexander, Lorelei, and Allegra were perfect. And wasn’t three enough?
It wasn’t till Ronald returned from Miami that things took a turn.
Francesca was the one who picked him up from the Nantucket airport. The nanny was tending to her children,Benjamin was dealing with a staffing issue, and Charles and Elaine were at a charity event in the main square. Francesca waited outside the car, feeling the sunshine on her face, as Ronald slumped from the airport and walked in a haze toward her car. Francesca bolted over to him and put her hands on his shoulders. His eyes were glazed.
“Ronald?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
But Ronald couldn’t say. He dropped into the passenger seat and put his face in his hands. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I really don’t know.”
When Francesca drove him home, he disappeared into his bedroom for three full days, only leaving to use the bathroom or drink water. Francesca brought him food, probably more often than he wanted it. Benjamin and Charles were too busy with the Lodge to recognize how bad Ronald was feeling, so Francesca lied and said that he’d gotten the flu in Florida. “He’ll be fine soon. He needs to rest.”
But something had happened to Ronald in Florida, something that Francesca couldn’t guess. On the third day after his return, Francesca finally got up the nerve to ask him, but Ronald gritted his teeth and said, “I’m fine! Can’t you people leave me alone?” He slammed the door in her face, waking baby Allegra down the hall. She wailed and wailed.
As Francesca rocked Allegra back to sleep, her heart pounded with the realization that she’d been the one to tell Ronald to go to Florida. That she’d pushed him to take a risk. She wondered if he blamed her for whatever had happened, if their beautiful in-law relationship had been destroyed forever. She prayed he would be all right. She prayed he would return to her, her sweet and heartfelt friend.
Chapter Twelve
Present Day
It took Allegra and Lorelei ten minutes of demanding, but Francesca finally agreed to return to the rental house and get some rest before she continued her search for her past. Twice, she had to bite her tongue to keep from telling them: I don’t have so much time left. I need to use every moment that I have. You can’t tell me what to do. She didn’t want them to know about her cancer, but at the same time, it would really make everything easier. They would probably let her do whatever she wanted. But they’d watch her nervously, as though she were breakable. She didn’t like the idea of that either.
At the door of Alexander’s, they hugged and kissed one another goodbye, their stomachs sloshing with pasta and soda and wine. Allegra refused to let Francesca drive and took her keys, following Lorelei’s rental as they drove the eight minutes to their place. Francesca sat quietly beside her third-eldest child, her hands folded on her lap, her mind whirring.
“I forgot what a little place this island is,” Allegra mumbled when they reached the driveway, cutting the engine and glancing at her mother. The air had chilled, and the house they’d rented sat before them, completely dark and ominous. “I can’t believe I just saw Alexander,” Allegra finally offered. “I can’t believe I met his kids.”
Francesca touched her daughter’s head gently and closed her eyes.
“It scares me,” Allegra said finally. “Being here. Does it scare you, too?”
Francesca admitted that it did. “But I don’t want to be struck down by my own emotions. I want to control them.”
Allegra took a breath. “It’s much easier to control my emotions at home. I mean, in Italy.”
