Page 14 of The White Oak Lodge

“My dad has me going on about a million errands,” Jack said. “You know how the preseason is.”

“No doubt,” the owner said.

Back at the truck, Nina considered asking why Jack had said the errand was for their father rather than for Tio Angelo, but thought better of it. Maybe Jack had mispoke. Or maybe the errand was for both Tio Angelo and their father. Regardless, by the time they were back on the road, Nina had dismissed the thought entirely and thrown herself into singing with Jack. It was lunchtime, and he pulled them into the parking lot near the Boardwalk Burger Point, where he bought them cheeseburgers with french fries and milkshakes. Nina could hardly believe it. They sat together with their food on the boardwalk, watching men work on their boats. Jack ate his burger in what seemed like three seconds flat, but Nina ate slowly, wanting to cherish every bite. Was this a birthday present? Or was this a random, everyday treat from Jack? He seemed so bright and happy, telling jokes at rapid-fire.

After they ate, Jack dropped the plastic containers off at a little warehouse not far from the port and drove them around the island at top speed, practically daring any cops to pull them over. Nina was ecstatic, squeezing her knees and crying out with happiness. Jack couldn’t stop laughing. “You’ll tell me if you’re too scared, Nina? I’ll slow down!” he promised. But Nina would never tell her brother she was too frightened of something like this. She wanted to like what he liked. She tried to be brave enough for everything.

That afternoon, Jack was needed back at the White Oak Lodge to help out with preseason fix-ups. Nina clambered out of the truck onto legs like pudding and smiled at her father and mother, who were watching her from the veranda, drinking lemonade. It was nearly sixty-five degrees and far warmer than it usually was for her birthday, and Nina thought it was really such a waste that she hadn’t had a little party on the beach. Shehung there for a second, half expecting her father or mother to say happy birthday, but neither of them did.

“Where did you take Nina?” her mother demanded of Jack.

“I was watching out for her. We had lunch and everything.” He adjusted his baseball hat and gave their mother a look that Nina couldn’t fully understand.

Francesca glowered at him and said, “I made lunch for her. I had everything ready.” Implied in what she was saying was that she’d wasted her time.

Nina’s heart spasmed.She had a birthday lunch ready for me.

But Jack scoffed. “Don’t lie to yourself, Mom. I know how you treat Nina. Everyone does.”

Nina hung in the driveway. Her legs felt like they didn’t belong to her. Her mother and father gaped at Jack, and silence stretched between them. Jack looked proud of himself. Nina was half grateful to Jack for pointing out how cruel their mother could be to Nina, but she was also half ashamed that it was so obvious and easily said. Francesca’s cheeks were fire-engine red. “When you have six children to raise, why don’t you call me and tell me how it is?” Francesca hissed at Jack.

Benjamin clapped his thigh and said, “All right, Jack. I think that’s about enough for today. Follow me to the boathouse?”

Jack disappeared with Benjamin and left Nina with Francesca, who couldn’t look her in the eye.

“He really did feed me,” Nina chirped, wanting to fix it. She wanted her mother to know that with Jack, Nina was always safe and always cared for.

But Francesca’s face was drawn. With her hand on Nina’s shoulder, she guided her back to the kitchen, where she sat in front of a cold bowl of soup. Francesca told her to eat it so it didn’t go to waste. Nina thought she was going to throw up. She held the spoon aloft and tried to look her mother in the eye totransmit the knowledge that today was Nina’s birthday, which meant that Nina was supposed to be held, cared for, and laughed with. But Francesca was looking out the window at something Nina couldn’t see.

Francesca said, “You’ll tell us, won’t you?”

Nina’s voice was fuzzy. “Tell you what?”

“Tell us if Jack is up to no good?”

Nina furrowed her brow and put her spoon back into an Italian soup she’d had probably a thousand times in her not-so-young life. “Jack’s always working for you and Dad,” she reminded her mother.

Francesca’s fingers flickered in a way that suggested she craved a cigarette but wasn’t going to let herself have one. She kept watch out the window. In the back of her mind, Nina prepared herself for what was to follow: a birthday unlike any other birthday, a birthday everyone had fully forgotten. There it was on the calendar, written in bright red. A Saturday. Nina had double- and triple-checked today’s date. There could be no denying it was today.

Later, Nina escaped her mother and that bone-cold soup to roam the beaches by herself. In the distance was the sound of machines and men calling out, but out here so close to the Nantucket Sound, Nina’s thoughts were the loudest. She dreamed of leaving the island and having a different life. She dreamed of traveling great distances, meeting all kinds of people, and becoming like a heroine in one of the books she liked to check out from the Sutton Book Club. But it felt like a lifetime between here on this Nantucket beach and that impossible future.

Suddenly, there was a shadow on the beach beside her. Nina flinched to look up at her Tio Angelo: a broad-shouldered man in his late forties with a handlebar mustache and trousers with suspenders. He spoke English with a powerful Italian accent thatmade Nina think of old black-and-white films directed by her grandfather, a man she’d never met.

Tio Angelo liked to speak Italian to his nieces and nephews and laugh when they didn’t understand. “Why didn’t your mother teach you?” he asked now, shaking his head and sitting in the sand beside her. “What a waste!” But his smile reminded Nina that he was just playing around.

“What’s got you so blue, darling Nina?” Tio Angelo asked now. He was the first who’d noticed and seemed to care.

Nina’s chin quivered, and for a moment, she thought she would give herself away and tell him it was her birthday.

But Tio wasn’t done. He said, “Your father, he is swept up in all the chaos of opening. It is a difficult time. You know, for the Whitmores, all the money must be made during the summertime. It brings a great deal of pressure.” He tapped his nose.

Nina had always heard that owning and operating a luxurious hotel on one of the swankiest vacation destination islands in the United States was no easy feat. Once upon a time, apparently, it had been easier. Money had dropped in buckets into the Whitmore accounts.

“Your father thinks he is a failure,” Tio Angelo said, his eyes on the horizon between the water and sky. “He is not the same owner his father was. He is not the same owner as his grandfather. And who is to say he can keep it up forever? Not to mention, which of his Whitmore sons will he pass the hotel to?”

Nina couldn’t keep it to herself. “Alexander, of course!” He was the oldest, the most responsible.

But Tio Angelo shook his head. “Your oldest brother wants to do something else with his life. Haven’t you heard their arguments? They’re echoing through the halls of that hotel day in and day out. Usually, they pick outside my room to argue, which is a wonderful gift.”

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