Benjamin touched her cheek gently. Francesca opened her eyes and gazed up at him. His face was focused and worried.
“I have been a terrible husband and a terrible father,” he said.
“No,” Francesca said. It simplified the story too much to speak in those terms.
“Maybe I was never good enough for any of you,” Benjamin said. “But I want to try to be better. I want to be there for you every step of the way. Will you let me do that?”
Francesca was struck dumb. Slowly, she shifted back to sitting and cupped her elbows with her hands. Now that Benjamin knew her truth, she felt utterly exposed.
“I am not naive enough to ask you to love me again,” Benjamin said. “Too much time has passed. I know that. But I want to be your dearest friend. I want to hold your hand before and after surgery. I want to be there for you as you get well again.” He blinked and widened his eyes. “And together we’ll find Jack, Francesca. We’ll bring all our family here to Nantucket. And we’ll reopen the White Oak Lodge and make it better than it ever was before.”
Francesca didn’t know whether to believe him or not. She didn’t know where to focus the anxious love swirling in her heart. But as the moon glowed above them, she felt a sense of magic and hope that she hadn’t had back in Italy, alone in her villa. She set her head on Benjamin’s shoulder and allowed herself to inhale his musk, scents that had followed her through so much of her past life. “Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter Nineteen
After the Fire: Tuscany
When Jefferson Albright returned to Francesca’s life, she was a widow living in a Tuscan villa with her three eldest daughters—Lorelei, Allegra, and Charlotte. It had been twenty years since Francesca and Jefferson had the affair that changed the course of both of their lives forever and brought Charlotte into the world. Brokenhearted after the supposed death of her beloved Benjamin and the loss of the White Oak Lodge, Francesca wasn’t initially sure if she could find love in her heart for Jefferson again. She wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted him around: a ghost from a distant past, a time when things were so murky that she thought she might fall apart or run.
They kept things slow, at first. Jefferson took her for long horseback riding trips through the rolling Tuscan hills and told her stories about the years since they’d last seen one another. He said that after Benjamin fired him, he went to Manhattan for a little while before returning to Europe. “I haven’t left thecontinent since,” he said, eyeing her from high up on horseback, brow arched. He explained that he’d never gotten married, that he’d decided that wasn’t the course he wanted his life to take. “I brought one child into the world,” he said knowingly. “That felt like enough damage for one lifetime.”
After Jefferson’s return from the United States, he lived briefly in London before setting up shop in France, where he taught wealthy people how to ride horses and got serious about betting on horse races. “I made a quiet fortune,” he said to Francesca with a soft smile. “There’s an art form to it, I think. You have to know when to stop yourself. You have to know how to trust your instincts.”
When he pushed her for details about her own life since 1978, Francesca stalled. Gripping the reins of her horse, she went through the dramatic eras of her life, the childbirths, the homework on the kitchen table, and the thousands upon thousands of White Oak Lodge guests. She thought about little Nina, whom, after the fire, she’d sent to Michigan to live with Great-Aunt Genevieve. Nina, who made her ache with guilt. How could she describe to Jefferson Albright that life had been far more interesting and far more frightening than she’d reckoned for? How could she explain that she still sometimes thought she felt Benjamin in bed beside her despite the fact that he’d been gone since July 4th, 1998?
And Jack! How was it possible that she’d lost Jack!
And Angelo! Her darling little brother, the black sheep of the family, the one she never should have invited to come live with them. She throbbed with anger at herself and anger at what life had done to her. How much of it is my fault? She asked the universe, but got no answer.
Jefferson was patient with her. Just once, he reached for her hand and kissed it, sending cold shivers through her body. She knew that her daughters had caught wind of his identity and thatCharlotte knew Jefferson was her real father. The facts of this swirled in her mind.
It was Francesca’s mother who, six months after Jefferson arrived, pulled Francesca aside and said, “He came here for you.”
Francesca blinked at her mother, overwhelmed with what was so obviously true. Her mother had been on Nantucket in 1978. She’d seen the broiling intensity between her and Jefferson. She knew precisely what Jefferson wanted.
“I don’t know what to do, Mama,” Francesca said, tears filling her eyes.
“Ask your heart,” her mother told her. “Listen to what it says.”
Not everyone is allowed a love story in life, Francesca knew. It meant she was fortunate to have two: the first with Benjamin when she was little more than a girl, and a second with Jefferson when she was in her forties. It wasn’t till after Charlotte left for Manhattan to make it in documentary film that Francesca allowed Jefferson to properly court her. They went on glorious dates in Florence. They dined at exquisite restaurants. They walked beneath a sky speckled with splendorous stars. Francesca told Jefferson that she felt her marriage to Benjamin had often been dishonest. “We didn’t always know how to talk to each other. We had so many children and so many tasks to tend to at the Lodge. It meant our relationship often played third or fourth fiddle.”
Jefferson listened intently and never made her feel guilty for wanting to pore over the details of her marriage to Benjamin. It was as though he sensed she needed to process it all, that it had been a tumultuous few decades. Francesca would never forget his kindness during this time. It felt unfathomable that he’d come into her life at such a wonderful time.
They’d been dating for about four years before Jefferson moved into the villa full-time. By then, Lorelei and Allegra had gotten places of their own and begun their own Italian lives. Francesca no longer worried about them. She allowed herself to fully invest in her own happiness, her own future. Many times, she and Jefferson discussed getting married, but ultimately decided not to bother. They were happy and in love. They didn’t need paperwork to complicate things. Francesca adored calling Jefferson her “boyfriend,” as though she were much younger, as though they’d just begun their lives.
In 2005, Francesca and Jefferson took a train journey first to Venice, then up through Vienna and into Prague, before finally landing in Berlin. Francesca hadn’t been to Berlin since she was a high school student, back before the Berlin Wall fell, and she was mesmerized by the history of the old city, stepping from one side of the once-divided city to the other.
At a bar one evening, they overheard a younger American couple talking about “Nazi gold” and where it was hidden. It triggered a memory in Francesca: the Whitmore treasure and all the rumors surrounding it. She recalled Benjamin’s lie about finding Jefferson in the tunnels under the Lodge, where he’d apparently been “searching for treasure.”
Feeling loose from her beer, Francesca recounted the story to Jefferson, saying, “I can’t believe he lied about you looking for the treasure. You were never so foolish as to believe a story like that.”
A flicker of recognition went across Jefferson’s face. Francesca’s smile faltered.
“What was that?” she demanded. “What are you thinking about?”
Jefferson leaned closer to her so that his nose was half an inch from hers. “I’ll tell you at the hotel.” He winked. For a moment, Francesca guessed he was teasing her, putting on ashow. But all the way back to their room, he glanced from side to side anxiously, as though he was worried they were being followed. She’d never seen him act like this.
Back in their hotel, they lay on their bed and gazed into one another’s eyes.
