Page 18 of The White Oak Lodge

Suddenly, Amos knew who to ask about the photograph. “My friend Calvin owns the diner we ate at today,” he explained. “Restaurateurs on the island know each other well, and he’s been in the business a while. Maybe he’ll recognize the restaurant owner in here. Perhaps we’ll have a name.”

Nina grinned and slipped the photograph back between the pages of the book.

It felt as though they were on a wild goose chase. But Amos wanted to remind her that the answers to all these questions and more had burned in a massive fire back in 1998. There were dead ends no matter where they looked.

And Amos certainly did not want her to know what he’d been up to back then. He hardly wanted to think of it himself.

Chapter Nine

Nina

June 2025

It wasn’t till ten thirty that evening that Amos’s friend Calvin called back and gave them the name of the restaurateur and where to find him. “Ralph moved to the Vineyard,” he explained in a thick accent, one that suggested how tired he was after a long and arduous day flipping burgers and dropping fries at the diner. “Why are you looking for him?”

Amos had put Calvin on speakerphone and not told him that Nina was in the room, so Nina stood silently, her hands clasped, watching Amos as he stared down at the phone. “He might know a friend of mine,” Amos explained. “I lost touch with him years ago and don’t know how to get ahold of him.”

“Funny, isn’t it?” Calvin said. “In the age of information and social media, I didn’t know we could still lose track of people.”

Amos laughed and said he knew what he meant. Calvin gave Amos Ralph’s number and said, “Ralph’s always up for a good time. Take him out, have a drink with him, get to know him. Ithink you’d really like him, Amos. And, you know. Stacy and I always talk about how you need to put yourself out there.”

Amos’s cheeks flared red with embarrassment. Nina shifted her weight and forced her eyes away. Amos’s laugh was false. He thanked Calvin and said he’d see them soon.

Amos got ready to leave. Nina sat at the kitchen table with the last bit of wine in her glass and listened to the wind as it howled against the cabin and made it shake on his stilts. Nina fought her urge to remind Amos that he didn’t have to help her find Jack, the man who looked like Jack or anyone at all. It wasn’t up to him to help her wade through the murkiness of her Whitmore past. But she had the sense that even if she told him to go, he wouldn’t. There was a way about him, a sense that he wanted to protect her, to quiet the exhausting voice in her head that told her on repeat that she wasn’t enough and deserved what had happened to her. What had happened to Amos to make him this way? Why was he so kind, so good, and so alone?

They said goodbye at the door and didn’t hug. After all, they’d only known one another for a single day.

Nina watched Amos disappear through the darkness, then locked her door, changed into her pajama pants, and cozied up on the sofa. She was too exhilarated to calm down, to watch television, to do anything but think about the immensity of what Jack’s potential life might mean. She could still smell the inside of that truck he’d had so long ago. She could still hear the utter chaos of his laughter.

Nina pulled out her phone and found two emails from her children within her inbox.

The first was from Will.

Hi MOM!!!!! Camp life is cool, I guess, and yesterday we went swimming and fishing, and i caught a BIG ten-inch bass and then I ate a piece of chocolate cake that I think you would not have let me eat. I saw Fiona at the canteen during snacktime, and she had a huge face painting on her cheek, I think it was of a dog.

Nina couldn’t wipe the smile from her face. Although Will hadn’t gotten around to telling her he loved her nor saying goodbye, tears trickled down her cheek. Her son! How she missed him! When she went back to the inbox to find Fiona’s email, however, her phone lit up with a call.

It was from Daniel.

Immediately, her hands cramped up and her heart pounded. She shot to her feet and waited a full ten seconds before doing anything more because she wanted to be sure that Daniel wasn’t butt-dialing her or accidentally calling her out of habit. After all, they’d been married thirteen years, and old habits died hard. Anthropologists knew all about the nature of habits and why we formed them. But when the phone continued to ring, Nina filled her lungs and answered it. It didn’t take long for her to regret it.

“Nina, what the hell?” Daniel barked.

Nina sat down again and curled herself into a ball, thinking that if she made herself very small, he couldn’t hurt her. With Daniel, it was never true.

Nina fought back with soft sarcasm. “Daniel, good to hear from you.”

Daniel’s connection wasn’t very strong, presumably because he was already in South America. It was winter there, and she hoped he was bundled up in a chilly bungalow in a jungle, uncomfortable and wishing he was anywhere else. Unfortunately, she knew he was probably having the time of his life, investigating tribes in the Andes that other anthropologists hadn’t yet wrapped their heads around.

Because of that weak connection, Nina didn’t hear what Daniel said next, and when she asked him to repeat himself, he snapped at her and said, “You drop our kids off at camp like that? You make someone else parent them?”

Nina flared her nostrils and fought the urge to say,you were the one who left. But Daniel going out on an anthropological mission wasn’t the problem. They’d always promised one another that their work wouldn’t fall by the wayside, that they would further their research and raise children concurrently, that they would fight to be different from most academic couples who found themselves unable to balance both.

They’d made so many promises. Maybe it was impossible to keep all of them.

In the background, Nina heard a woman’s voice, and her bones went cold. Daniel pulled the phone away from his ear so he could answer her. Nina couldn’t hear what he said, but she could imagine it—that he was telling her he’d be off the phone soon, that they could go for that glass of wine or go out dancing when he was done ridiculing his ex-wife.

Ex-wife! Not that they’d filed the paperwork yet. Nina had the rushing sensation of disbelief.

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