Francesca took a sharp breath. But her chest gushed with sudden love for him, a love that felt misplaced yet so real, yet so unfathomable. Never had she imagined she would feel anything for a man who wasn’t Benjamin Whitmore. But where was Benjamin Whitmore now? Why had he left her here to tend to his family’s Lodge and raise his children? Tears spilled from her eyes. She set down her drink and muttered, “I can’t handle my alcohol.”
Jefferson touched her cheek gently. His lips were so close to hers, liquid-smooth. “I can’t believe he left you,” he whispered. “Who could ever leave a perfect woman like you?”
It happened quickly after that: lips and bodies coming together, hearts pounding as snow filled the windowpanes and blocked out the moonlight. Francesca felt all the loneliness drift out of her body, replaced with something else. Jefferson was tender and strong and wonderful. He made her forget, if only for a moment, that she’d given everything up for this cold and lonely life.
Their brief affair was fiery and charged. Francesca was sure her mother knew about it, half hoping Francesca would find a way to divorce Benjamin, marry Jefferson, and take the kids back to Italy. Francesca felt torn between two worlds. Twice that November, she cut ties with Jefferson, only to return to him, crying and saying she couldn’t understand her own mind. She didn’t tell him how much she still loved Benjamin and prayed he’d come back.
But when Benjamin appeared early on Thanksgiving morning, a pumpkin pie balanced in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, Francesca nearly fell to her knees. Alexander, Lorelei, Allegra, her mother, Charles, Elaine, Jefferson Albright, and several other members of the staff who stayed on for the autumn and winter seasons were waiting for them in the dining hall. When Benjamin walked in, most everyone erupted with excitement for his return. Charles and Elaine hurried to greet their son, weeping. Only Jefferson’s face was difficult to read. It flickered with contempt. Francesca could hardly look at him. Her stomach thrashed.
Alexander threw himself on his father, asking, “Daddy, where did you go? Daddy, what happened?” Lorelei and Allegra acted similarly, their faces cherry-red with emotion. At that moment, Francesca knew that she couldn’t leave Benjamin. She couldn’t tear her family apart. Her affair with Jefferson Albright—an emotional bright light during a heinous and dark year—had to be over. She would also help her mother return to Italy, returnto her father, and her life. She would hire another babysitter. The Whitmores would move on from this era. They would find relief.
In the lead-up to Christmas, Francesca threw herself into preparations for the White Oak Lodge holiday party. Benjamin slept in their bed every night, ate their dinners, played with their children, and seemed relatively healed, all things considered. They’d only kissed once. Their romance felt icy at best. A part of Francesca wondered if Benjamin sensed she’d fallen for someone else. Maybe he’d had a romance elsewhere as well. Maybe he’d allowed himself another story to get over the story of his brother’s death. She decided immediately to forgive him.
A few days before the Christmas party, Francesca put on her bravest face. She met Jefferson Albright in the stables to discuss the horse-and-carriage rides they were offering guests. Jefferson was professional and sharp, answering her questions and providing detailed information about the event and its safety protocols. Twice, Francesca felt a wave of nausea, perhaps proof of how confused her body felt in Jefferson’s presence. The way Jefferson looked at her sometimes felt like the sun shining down upon her. Sometimes their affair felt like the most wonderful of dreams.
As they closed their conversation, Benjamin entered the stables to ask Jefferson something. He stopped short in the doorway, looking at Francesca and Jefferson with questions in his eyes. Francesca wondered if her attraction to Jefferson was plain as day, if Benjamin could feel it pulsating in the air. She made a quick excuse and cut across the grounds, her heart pounding.You left me first, she imagined saying to Benjamin, but it felt weak. Upstairs in her bedroom, she wept.
It wasn’t till a few weeks after Christmas that Francesca realized she was pregnant. Panic shot through her, for she knew in her heart of hearts that this was not a proper Whitmore baby.This was Jefferson’s. She wondered who she could talk to about this, who she could call. She considered her old friends Rosa and Barbara, but they were far and away in Italy, managing their own households, and probably unable to support her. They wouldn’t know what to say.
Francesca tried to imagine herself telling Benjamin about the baby. She tried to imagine telling Jefferson, too. But each time, her mind got tangled in Italian and English expressions that felt meaningless. And as she thought about it and became increasingly anxious, the baby continued to grow and grow.
It was the week she discovered her pregnancy when Benjamin came to bed late, grunting with annoyance. He collapsed on their mattress and gazed through the darkness. It was clear that he wanted Francesca to ask him what was wrong, so she did.
“I found Jefferson in the tunnels,” he said after a dramatic pause.
“Okay?” Francesca knew they kept plenty of random supplies down there. Jefferson might have been fetching horse feed or something like that.
“You don’t understand,” Benjamin said, turning onto his side. “He was deep in those tunnels. Looking for something.” His eyes lit up. “Baby, I think he was looking for the Whitmore treasure, if you can believe it.”
Francesca’s heart burned with nausea and fear. “No,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like him.”
But Benjamin made a pretty good case. “Jefferson came out of nowhere. He said he heard about the Lodge from people in, what, Denver? I’m sure they told him about the treasure.”
“But why would he wait till winter to look for it?” Francesca demanded.
Benjamin thought for a moment, rolling his bottom lip beneath his teeth. “Maybe he’s realized there’s nothing left here for him. He wants to run.”
Francesca felt the words like a knife in her stomach. She rolled away from him and stared through the darkness, listening to her own heart thud.
“I let him go immediately,” Benjamin said softly. “He’s out of our hair, now.”
Lying in the dark, Francesca felt her eyes smart. Although she’d longed for Jefferson to leave the White Oak Lodge, to make things easier on her heart and her mind, she understood that Benjamin was, in a sense, sending him away from her. He didn’t trust them alone. She had no idea if he guessed that something had happened between them.
She wondered if he’d made up the treasure story.
She wondered if it was fair to her baby to send its father away.
Not long after Jefferson left, Francesca announced her pregnancy, hired a new babysitter, and bought a plane ticket to send her mother back to Italy. Benjamin was overjoyed to extend their family and seemed none the wiser about the baby’s father. But Francesca’s mother seemed to get it. At the airport, after she covered Francesca in kisses and wept into her shoulder, her mother breathed, “I hope you know what you’re doing.” Francesca didn’t know if she did.
Chapter Eighteen
Present Day
It was the evening after their first Whitmore family dinner in decades. What had begun and prevailed as a stormy day had now filtered into a soft, purple evening. While Allegra, Lorelei, Alexander, Nina, and Charlotte poured fresh glasses of wine and regaled one another in stories from both their shared pasts and their years apart, Benjamin caught Francesca’s eye over the table and beckoned for her to follow him. Francesca walked through the hallway after him, her heart pounding. When he led her to the entry of their old family quarters, her breath caught in her throat. There they were in their old kitchen, which was still busted out and graffiti-covered from years of break-ins.
“I wanted to wait to get your opinion on how to redecorate and refurbish the old family quarters,” Benjamin said quietly, standing there in the dark, his face lit up by the moon.
Francesca walked toward the broken windows and gazed out at the water. “This isn’t my home anymore,” she said.“Whitmores are meant to move on and leave the family space to the next generation.”
