Page 11 of The White Oak Lodge

“Dinner sounds good,” he said, smiling as he removed ten dollars from his wallet and slipped it across the table—more than enough for breakfast, coffee, and a tip. “I have to run.”

Before Calvin could say another word, Amos grabbed his jean jacket and fled the diner, bursting out into the clear and blue-skied afternoon, his eyes on the swinging door of the Nantucket Historical Society. In the basement were the archives, and he had a hunch that that was where Nina was headed.

Chapter Six

Nina

June 2025

It shouldn’t have surprised Nina that Jeremy was still working the archives of the Nantucket Historical Society. After all, it was only thirteen years after her first visit in 2012—a lifetime, in her case, but only a blip on an island like Nantucket, where the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Jeremy was no longer the strapping young jock of his youth, the football player who’d suffered greatly after a major car accident, but he’d transformed into what amounted to a very handsome middle-aged father with a wedding band on his left ring finger and, on his desk, a photograph of a recent wedding day and another of a very young woman who might have been his daughter. Nina searched his face for some memory that they’d met before—that, once upon a time, she’d been a twenty-five-year-old brand-new bride who’d let her new husband con her into coming to Nantucket to “dig around herpast.” But Jeremy gave no indication of recognizing her face. He stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Jeremy. How can I help you?”

Despite her years of living and working as a professional anthropologist—after managing to communicate with tribes in South America and monks in Asia, Nina wasn’t yet sure how to attack the situation, which was, ironically, on her island home. She shook his hand and said, “Hi. I’m Nina, a professor of anthropology at Princeton.”

Jeremy’s face brightened with excitement. “Princeton! Anthropology! What a pleasure to meet you. It isn’t every day we get people of that caliber down here in the basement archives. Dare I say you’re researching something?”

Nina smiled and scanned the drawers where, back in 2012, she and Daniel had dipped their toes into initial White Oak Lodge history. She’d run out of here, too frightened to face her past and angering Daniel, who’d wanted to dig deeper to expose the roots of Whitmore pain. Why had he wanted to do that—so soon after their wedded bliss had begun? Never, in all their years of marriage since, had they talked about it. She wondered what Daniel would say if he knew she’d come back here alone.

“I’m conducting research on old historical families in Nantucket,” Nina explained, hoping that Jeremy didn’t know so much about anthropology as to suggest this sort of thing wasn’t exactly anthropology-based research. Her story was half baked at best. “Namely, the Whitmores.”

Suddenly, there was a creak on the staircase, and Nina and Jeremy spun around to see none other than Alana Copperfield—a beautiful ex-model who, if Nina remembered correctly, had been the reason for Jeremy’s long-ago car accident, the high school girlfriend who’d done him wrong. The year before Nina left the island, the Copperfields had been shamed, their father thrown into prison, and the children rushing out into the four winds. It was a story not entirely unlike the Whitmores’, savefor what had happened recently. Nina had caught a newspaper headline about the family, one that cited Bernard’s innocence, but she’d been so lost in the chaos of her own life that she hadn’t put too much time into discovering more. Now, to her disbelief, Alana cleared the distance between the staircase and the desk and greeted Jeremy with a light kiss. She was the woman in the wedding photo.

“What are you doing here?” Jeremy said.

“I thought we could grab lunch,” Alana said, her smile every bit as sensational as the one that had graced the cover of countless magazines over the years. How much older than Nina was she? Nina thought she was maybe Jack’s age—seven or eight years older and therefore forty-four or forty-five. No surprise she’d aged like a dream.

Jeremy winced and glanced at Nina, who, she knew, he was meant to “babysit” during her time in the archives. Just when he was about to tell Alana he couldn’t, Nina piped up to say, “It isn’t my first rodeo with historical documents. You can call Princeton and ask them to vouch for me.”

To add credence, she fished her Princeton professor badge from her wallet and flashed it—feeling like a cop overseeing a crime scene.

Jeremy let out a soft laugh of what seemed like relief. “No need to call Princeton. I trust you. Think you’ll be longer than an hour? That’s when I’ll be back.”

“Not sure,” she said. “But anything I find, I can just take photographs of. I don’t need to check anything out.” Not yet, anyway.

Jeremy reached for his keys and looped his arm around Alana’s back. He reminded Nina that he’d be back soon to answer any questions she might have, and then he was gone, their laughter echoing up the staircase and winding through the cobblestone streets.

It seemed it had been easy for them to fall back in love.

Nina opened the first drawer with a shaking hand and took a second to find and remove the photograph of her father at age ten. There, Benjamin Whitmore was holding up that newly caught fish that flashed in the sunlight of a forgotten afternoon. Frozen forever—just thirty-eight years before his death. Her breath caught in her throat. Everything rushed back at once: the ornate dinner with Daniel, her belief that she’d never be able to face what had happened at the White Oak Lodge, her sudden fear that Daniel wasn’t who she’d always thought him to be. She’d been right about all of it. But she’d forced her fears about Daniel into the dark alleys of her mind and proceeded to build a life with him—a life with two children and a beautiful house a few blocks from Princeton campus, a life of theses and research papers and tremendous amounts of travel.

It had been a good life. But most of it had been a lie.

It was a relief to be in that basement alone. It was a relief to feel like Daniel was miles and miles away and without any comprehension of where she was. Slowly, she shifted through articles and photographs and Whitmore-related items, using her cell to take photographs and jotting notes into her notebook. So many years after the fire, it felt as though the story of the White Oak Lodge was more like a myth like the characters of her family were characters from a storybook, like any attempt to find them was the same as trying to find Rumpelstiltskin or Snow White. But the thing was, after all these years, she’d held that photograph she’d stolen from the restaurant—the photograph that seemed to depict her dead brother Jack Whitmore on a golden beach in the year 2002. The photo had moved from one desk to another, from one house to another, from the office at Princeton and back to the office at her home. It had always eaten away at her, begging to be understood. She’d come back toreckon with the past. To put away the idea that Jack had actually escaped death that night. It had been gnawing away at her.

So many years later, she was grateful she’d never told Daniel about the photograph. He’d been overeager to learn about the Whitmores, to unravel the events of her past, especially after she’d told him that she wanted nothing to do with them. But she should have seen that coming, she guessed. He was a scientist. It was not only his job to answer difficult questions—he saw it as his mission.

Eventually, Nina found the very first published newspaper article about the fire at the White Oak Lodge. Sitting on the cold concrete ground, she read and reread the article, feeling as though she was dropping into the sludge of time, unsure if she’d have the strength to swim her way out again.

It read:

On the Fourth of July, at approximately 11:17 p.m., a fire broke out at the luxurious White Oak Lodge, which proceeded to consume much of the hotel. Sources at the scene suggest that the cause of the fire was a rogue firework from the beachside celebrations—the likes of which are known as some of the very best Fourth of July celebrations on the island. Due to the joyous atmosphere and the intoxication of many of the guests, the fire wasn’t called in for quite some time, and firefighters didn’t reach the scene till nearly midnight. By this time, much of the property was damaged beyond immediate repair. Most of the hotel guests escaped the fire and required no medical assistance. The fire did, however, claim two casualties: Benjamin Whitmore (48) and Jack Whitmore (17), both of whom were inside the White Oak Lodge, in the Whitmore family quarters, at the time of the fire.

The White Oak Lodge was originally built in 1862 and was a pillar of the Nantucket community and the longtime home of the elite Whitmore family. Jack and Benjamin preceded in death a number of Whitmore family members: Benjamin’s lovingwife, Francesca, and the remaining of their children, Alexander, Lorelei, Allegra, Charlotte, and Nina.

At the mention of her name, Nina nearly dropped the newspaper article. Here it was, proof not only that she’d been a member of the “elite Whitmore family” but also that Benjamin and Jack were dead. Nina took a photograph of the article and hunted through the archives for the death certificates—all of which were located in the entire row three aisles away. There had been a lot of Nantucket deaths. The boxes in which the files were stored weren’t dusty in the slightest, as though numerous other Nantucketers and family researchers waded through these archives, looking for answers, looking for confirmation of who they were, where they belonged and who had come before. Nina flicked through the folders to find July 1998. Confident was the word for what she was. Ready to move on? That photograph from 2002 was either incorrectly dated or not of her brother at all. It was a red herring, something meant to throw her off. She knew that in just a few moments, she’d find Jack’s death certificate, solid confirmation of what she’d always known, and she’d immediately leave the archives, go back to the cabin, pack up her things, and go pick up her children from the summer camp.I have a divorce to get back to, she reminded herself.It’s time to move on to the next phase of my life.

But in the file, she found no such death certificate—not for her father, nor for her brother. Nina didn’t know what to do. Her mouth tasted of sand. She kept checking and re-checking, flipping through the files, reading and rereading the obituary pages from July 5th all the way to the 31st. But there was nothing. There was no mention of the funerals she’d supposedly “not been allowed to attend,” either.

Her ears rang.

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