Benjamin chuckled gently. “You always took to the rules of the Whitmores so well.”
“I had to,” Francesca said. “I was far away from home, and I was frightened.”
Benjamin was quiet for a moment, introspective in the face of her honesty. “Let’s go outside,” he murmured. “It’s not that cold.”
Francesca and Benjamin walked out through their dilapidated porch, where once upon a time, she and Jefferson Albright had drunk wine and waited for Ronald to return, past the horse stables and toward the beach. The wind whisped at Francesca’s hair. Francesca felt a strange ache in her chest, proof that she and Benjamin were about to get wonderfully and frightfully honest with one another, perhaps in a way they hadn’t been able to when they’d been true partners. It felt bizarre that somewhere, their marriage license would still hold up in a court of law. This was her husband. She’d never married anyone else.
Benjamin and Francesca sat on the soft white sand, watching the water without speaking. Francesca remembered doing this with him when she’d first moved to the United States, gazing out across the Atlantic and thinking about how far away Italy really was.
“That dinner was the best I’ve had in years,” Benjamin said finally. “I can’t believe we were all together.”
“Jack wasn’t there,” Francesca reminded him, her tone colder than she’d planned for.
“No. He wasn’t.” Benjamin sighed and dropped his head. “Francesca, I know you came here to get an explanation out of me. I know you want answers. Ever since I saw you the other day, I’ve been going over and over it in my mind, trying to come up with a story that would make sense to you. But it’s a story thatmakes me so ashamed.” He swallowed. “Do you remember when I left after Ronald died?”
Francesca blinked back tears at that memory, those anxious and dark and exhilarating months when she’d allowed herself to fall for Jefferson. “Where did you go?”
“I wandered around,” Benjamin said. “I went to Manhattan, Maine, and Washington, DC. I made up different identities and tried to be someone else, anyone else. But at night, I dreamed of you and of Ronald and of the White Oak Lodge. I never imagined you’d take me back. Sometimes I don’t think you should have. But then we wouldn’t have had Jack.”
“We wouldn’t have had Jack,” Francesca agreed softly, thinking of the devastating day that she’d learned of Nina’s arrival in the world and how certain she’d been that it was her comeuppance for having Charlotte with Jefferson Albright.
“My years since the fire have been similarly aimless,” Benjamin said. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I did and how wrong it was. You know I didn’t start the fire. I never could have struck the match to let this place go. But in many ways, I let it go long before July 4, 1998. I’m sure you remember the early nineties, how we divided up tasks. You took over the majority of the event logistics and kept up with our social calendar, and I handled the finances. I hate to say it, but this was the beginning of the end of the Lodge.”
Francesca tilted her head with surprise. She remembered the conversation wherein Benjamin had said he’d control their finances and give her a break from the bookkeeping. She’d been happy to step away from such a tedious task, as dealing with numbers always made her recall how beautiful film school had been and how much she’d failed herself as an artist. When Benjamin had taken over such a dull task, she’d begun to paint and draw, finding within herself a creativity she’d thought was dead.
“What do you mean?” Francesca asked finally.
“I don’t know how it happened,” Benjamin breathed. “We started losing money hand over fist. Maybe I wasn’t such a genius at the money logistics after all. Maybe things became impossible to keep up with. By the end of 1996, I thought we were going to lose the Lodge. I was in total despair. I was looking for every possible answer.”
Francesca tilted her head back, searching his face. It was then that it hit her: “Oh. No, Benjamin. You didn’t.”
Benjamin put his face in his hands. “I knew Angelo was up to something. I finally cornered him and demanded information about his drug trafficking scheme. It terrified me. But I threatened him and said I’d turn him in if he didn’t loop me in and help the Lodge make money again. I didn’t want to be responsible for selling anything. I wanted to be above it all, to handle the logistics of shipments and so on while he got his hands dirty. Honestly, I didn’t know Jack was involved until long after that—and it broke my heart. I’d been instrumental in facilitating my son’s collapse. I’d been instrumental in a sinister drug ring. I’d thought that my hands weren’t dirty because I was pretending to be this family man who handled a luxurious hotel. But I was worse than anyone I knew.”
Francesca could hardly breathe. But anger rippled through her, disallowing her from touching Benjamin or asking the right questions or doing anything but staring at him and waiting.He put Jack in danger, she thought, but it all felt so tangled up in her mind. Angelo came and blew up my family, but Benjamin helped. He was always too weak.
“The night of the fire, I told Angelo it was over,” Benjamin stammered. “I told him that he needed to leave the island immediately or else I’d turn both him and myself in. But Angelo threatened not only me but the White Oak Lodge and Jack. He said that Jack would go to prison for a long time, that I’dalready destroyed Jack’s future, and that there was nothing to be done. We got into a crazy argument that turned into a fist fight. Jack discovered us, and I was screaming at them both, out of my mind. It was around then that the fire started—right down there where Angelo kept all the drugs and money. I knew that the cops would discover it and question Angelo, that we were done for. As we ran away from the fire, from the cops, from everything, all I could fixate on was Jack and Jack’s safety and Jack’s future. I knew I had to get him as far away from the Lodge as I could. I knew that after what I’d done, I didn’t deserve your love anymore. I knew that you would be done with me, that you wanted to go back to Italy anyway, that it was over.”
Francesca closed her eyes for a long time, picturing her youngest son and the man she’d once loved so desperately, racing through the chaotic dark, ducking out of the world and into a sinister and strange one. Could she trust Benjamin when he said he hadn’t known about Jack selling drugs for Angelo? She supposed she had to if she wanted to move forward. It was a bitter feeling in her gut, but it also felt like the truth.
“I’m so sorry, Francesca,” Benjamin whispered. “I imagine you regret the day you followed me from Rome and came here. I imagine you wish your life had gone entirely differently.”
Francesca sniffed and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “How can you say that?” she whispered, surprising herself. “This is the only life I’ve ever known, and it is precious to me.” At once, she pictured the cancer, tracing its way across her breasts, threatening to strike her down. She let a single wail escape. She had to see Jack again.
“My guess is that Angelo bribed one of his cop friends to say that we were dead,” Benjamin said. “Jack got a real kick out of that when we found out. He said he wanted to try out a new name, a new life. We moved to the seaside for a little while, until Jack got antsy and went on his way. I’ve only seen him sparinglysince then. I know he went by Seth Green. That sometimes he came back to Nantucket, almost like he was flirting with his old life again.”
Francesca felt suddenly desperate. “But when did you last see him?”
Benjamin rubbed the back of his neck. “I went to Hawaii to tell him that I thought Angelo was trying to blackmail me again. This was before I knew he was also blackmailing Alexander. You know, Jack has a whole family down in Hawaii? Kids and a wife. He seemed happy until he disappeared. I don’t know what happened to him.”
Francesca felt suddenly exhausted, as though she hadn’t slept for months. Despite not having a blanket or a towel beneath them, she stretched out on the sand, letting her hair spill over it. She would be a mess later. She couldn’t care.
“It’s all too much,” Benjamin said. “I know that. I know there’s no way to make you forgive me. I’m beyond that.”
Francesca closed her eyes and felt the world beneath her, turning and turning. Before she knew what she planned to say, she heard herself speak. “I’m sick, Benjamin.”
Benjamin was quiet for a moment. “You’re sick. Sick how?”
Francesca felt his hand drop into hers on the sand. “I have cancer,” she said. “Breast cancer.” She told him about the radiation treatments and her doctor’s desire that she have surgery followed by chemotherapy. “But I’m terrified,” she explained. “I knew I needed to come to Nantucket and see it before I…” She trailed off, thinking of her own death, of the deaths of every person she’d ever loved. She imagined herself joining them, wherever they were: a gorgeous white-clouded heaven, she hoped. “I can’t go through with this without my family.”
