“Is this the same brother who sent a private investigator to pretend to be the gardener at your villa?” Allegra demanded haughtily. She probably wouldn’t forgive Alexander for that.
But Francesca didn’t have time to pick that apart, not any longer. She explained what Alexander had told her, dropping the bomb that Benjamin was back and eager to reopen the White Oak Lodge. “And the cops don’t think he actually burned the Lodge down. Otherwise, they would have arrested him, surely,” Francesca said. “It doesn’t make sense to me either.”
Privately, she’d always assumed the fire was her brother Angelo’s doing, accident or no. Always, when you smelled smoke, regardless of whether it was metaphorical smoke or the real thing, Angelo was the culprit. But she’d never managed to say her suspicions aloud.Bringing Angelo to the White Oak Lodge was one of the biggest mistakes of my life, she thought now. If Angelo were dead (which she’d always doubted, she realized now, as a part of her had always assumed her little brother to be immortal), she didn’t want to speak ill of him, not even in her head. She still loved her little brother. She always would, even if it pained her.
“Come to Rome,” Allegra said after a long, dramatic sigh. “We’ll meet with Lorelei and talk about it.”
“We have to go to Nantucket,” Francesca said, a catch in her voice.
“I don’t know about that,” Allegra said sadly. “But the three of us should be together, Mama. You don’t sound like yourself.”
Francesca wanted to throw the phone across the room, to tell her daughter that she, in fact, sounded more like herself than she had in five years, to tell her that “the three of them” being together was less than half of the Whitmore family. But she didn’t want to make Allegra angry, not now that she’d invited her to Rome. She also didn’t want to clue Allegra in that anything was desperately wrong with Francesca, health-wise. She said, “I’ll book a train for tomorrow,” and hung up, her thoughts reeling, her heart pounding. Surgery could wait, she decided. This was more important.
Chapter Three
On the train journey from Tuscany to Rome, Francesca was seated not far from what sounded like an American couple on their honeymoon. The twentysomethings spoke slow and sultry American English with a vague Southern twang, held hands between the seats, and often kissed with their eyes closed, as though nobody else in the carriage existed at all. Francesca had forgotten her headphones and couldn’t blot out the sound of other people’s happiness, a joy that reminded her far too much of her own past, her own loves. Now, she was a cancer-ridden seventy-something. Her future was unknown and probably brief.
When the train lurched to a stop at the central station, Francesca wheeled her suitcase onto the platform. At once, she spotted her daughter, Allegra, and her granddaughter Tatiana, standing near a little coffee kiosk. Tenderness flushed through Francesca’s chest. When Tatiana spotted her, she hurried over, a sweep of black hair out behind her, and kissed her grandmother on both cheeks before taking her suitcase. “Nonna,” she called, “it’s so good to see you again.”
Francesca allowed her granddaughter and daughter to guide her to a waiting taxi, which took them to the glorious villathat Allegra shared with her husband. Now that Tatiana and Teresa were both going to university, they lived outside the home but came and went as they pleased, always eager to eat their mother’s cooking and hang out with their father, a brilliant intellectual man named Martino. The fact that two of Francesca’s daughters had gone on to embrace Italian culture and even marry Italian men pleased Francesca. Sometimes she wondered why she had never fallen in love with an Italian. Her best guess was that Benjamin had infected her at an early age and had taught her the mysteries and beauty of dating American men. Jefferson Albright’s Englishness had also intrigued her. Maybe Italian men had seemed too simple to her, too understandable.
A few minutes after their arrival, Allegra fielded an angry phone call from one of her clients, an American actress who’d sought Allegra’s talents in the field of fashion and demanded a perfect dress for the closing party of a film festival in Milan. For the first time in years, Francesca heard Allegra’s American accent, still nearly perfect despite her years away. Francesca was frozen in the living room, listening and watching Allegra, feeling as though she’d been transported through time. She remembered Allegra in the kitchen of their home at the White Oak Lodge, twisting her finger around the phone cord and talking to boys (until Francesca had insisted she get off the phone and tend to her tasks at the Lodge, of course).
When Allegra got off the phone, she winced and told her mother and Tatiana that she had a fashion emergency and needed to meet this American actress pronto. “I’ll meet you at dinner later,” she promised, “but I don’t think I’ll make it out before then.”
Tatiana suggested that she and Francesca enjoy the sunny afternoon in a nearby square. Francesca hesitated, thinking it might be better to rest, think, and plan her next steps, butquickly remembered that she was very sick and needed to take every opportunity she could to be with family. She put on a bright shade of lipstick and followed the gorgeous twenty-one-year-old Tatiana to the piazza, where they ordered midafternoon Aperol Spritzes and flirted with the handsome server, who doted on them and gave them free snacks. Francesca marveled at Tatiana’s intelligence and wit and wondered if she’d ever seemed like that to her own grandparents. She wished she could fully remember what she’d been like when she’d first met Benjamin at seventeen—four years younger than Tatiana was now!
Over drinks, Tatiana met Francesca’s gaze and gave her a stern smile. “My mother mentioned something,” she said. “Something about my grandfather? You’re going to see him?”
Francesca’s stomach tied itself into knots. “How much of your mother’s American story do you know, darling?”
“Mom never talks about the United States. Dad says that he had to fight to get her to speak English to us as kids. She wanted to abandon her past altogether.” Tatiana sipped her drink. “Is that what you wanted?”
“I suppose it was for a long time,” Francesca said. She didn’t want to burst the perfectly cultivated bubble Allegra had formed for her daughters. She didn’t want to be the first to mention the fire, or her Uncle Jack’s supposed death, or what had happened with Benjamin and Angelo. “There are many unresolved stories in Nantucket. I haven’t seen your grandfather since I was in my forties, which feels like a lifetime ago. Benjamin and I made many mistakes, and I didn’t always know how to forgive him. Our marriage nearly ended a few times before he disappeared.”
Tatiana’s eyes glinted. Francesca grew weary, realizing she’d already said too much. But wasn’t it the job of the elder to impart wisdom from the past to the younger generations? She saw the way Tatiana flirted with the server. She saw how handsome passersby regarded her. Tatiana needed to know how to protectherself. She needed to know that no matter which direction she leaped, she’d probably take a tumble and get her heart broken. Such was life.
Later, Tatiana and Francesca walked five blocks to the restaurant that Lorelei and her husband, Roberto, had opened ten years earlier. Roberto was a top chef who’d trained in London, New York, and Paris before returning to Rome, where he’d met Lorelei and gone on to have three children: Pino, Aurora, and Nadia. Tatiana’s sister, Teresa, was waiting for them, wearing a sleek black dress and high heels. Her dark hair was glossy, like satin.
Lorelei breezed out of the back office, removed her reading glasses, and kissed Francesca on her cheeks to say hello. “What a marvelous surprise,” she said, although her eyes were uncertain and watchful. Allegra had obviously told Lorelei about their father’s return and their mother’s “crazy” idea to go see him.
Just then, Allegra burst through the door, poured herself a glass of wine, and grumbled, “That American actress drives me insane.”
Francesca scoffed. “Darling, we’re Americans. All three of us,” she reminded her daughters, remembering the citizenship test she’d taken, the pledge she’d given in front of the American authorities, the pride she’d had when she’d received her first American passport.
Allegra and Lorelei exchanged worried glances. Allegra sipped her wine and said, “You were so eager to get us out of there, Mama. You hated America. Don’t you remember?”
But what Francesca remembered was all-encompassing pain. She remembered mountains of black smoke, billowing over the White Oak Lodge. She remembered regret. She remembered little Nina, proof of her failure as a wife, evidence of her husband’s infidelity. She remembered her awful desire to get Nina out of her sight, if only so she could live with herself andmove on. But had Francesca ever truly moved on from what had happened? And if she hadn’t moved on, how would her children? She knew Allegra and Lorelei were faking it.
They sat at a long table with wine and appetizers and waited for their pasta dishes, prepared with love by Lorelei’s husband. Tatiana and Teresa were having their own conversation, one that seemed to be about a boy with whom Teresa had a complicated relationship. Francesca dared to wonder how her Italian grandchildren would get along with her American grandchildren. She wondered—if she didn’t survive surgery and chemotherapy—where they would hold her funeral and if Benjamin would attend.Would he dare make a speech about why he left her, or what she did to his heart, or what he, in turn, did to hers?
“I am going, my darlings,” Francesca said to her daughters, interrupting their conversation about the American actress. “I’m going to Nantucket. I’m going to face what happened.”
Lorelei let her fork drop a few inches. She looked miffed.
“How often do you think about it?” Francesca asked Lorelei and Allegra under her breath. “How often do you have nightmares about that night?”
Allegra pressed her lips together. Quiet churned over the table until Lorelei admitted, “All the time.”
