Page 16 of The White Oak Lodge

Of course, their lunch had been cut short.

When Nina had told him her last name—that she was, impossibly, a Whitmore—Amos had been more-or-less staking out the Historical Society, waiting for her to come out. After she’d broken the news, Amos had searched her face for understanding and discovered, sure enough, Jack’s nose, planted right there at the center of her face. Her hair was darkas night, just as Francesca’s always had been, and her eyes were bright and eager, like Benjamin Whitmore’s.

“It’s why I’m here,” she’d gone on. “I want to understand them. There’s so much I don’t know.”

But before Nina and Amos could really dig into the chaos of everything Nina didn’t know and before Amos could reveal anything he remembered, Nancy had called him. There’d been an incident with one of her rentals, a raccoon break-in that had led to busted lamps and dirty rugs and broken glass. Amos was tugged away from Nina, his thoughts swirling.

They’d agreed to meet again tonight. So here Amos was.

He’d considered not coming. He’d considered deleting Nina’s number, going back to his cabin, and locking the door till she got the hint and left the island for good.

Nina had ordered Thai food. Now, she separated various curries out on the plates, keeping her eyes downcast. Her hands shook just the slightest bit. She seemed nervous, far more nervous than even Amos, who was saying something.

Amos didn’t want to break the silence. He didn’t want to frighten her.

But it was Nina who finally raised her glass of wine and said, “So I’m guessing you knew the Whitmores?”

Amos tilted his head and reckoned with what he’d already put together. Nina Whitmore, the youngest of that troupe of six children, the little black-haired and mysterious one who’d loved Jack so much that, when she was really young, she’d sobbed when he left the house. Amos had wondered at the time what it was like to be loved like that, loved in a way that rooted you somewhere and made you want to come home every night. Most of the time, Amos’s mother had hardly looked at him when he’d left the house. She’d hardly said hello when he came in—sometimes late at night, sometimes when the sky was tinted pink with morning.

“I did. But everyone did,” Amos said. “I mean, they were the Whitmores. One of the wealthiest and most prestigious families on the island. And there were so many of you!”

He did not say,my mother hated your family because something like that didn’t matter anymore, not now that his mother was gone.

Nina’s shoulders dropped. She took a small bite of Thai curry and let her eyelids fall. “I don’t know why I ordered food,” she said, putting the plate aside and looking at it sadly. “I’m not hungry.”

“You hardly touched your burger earlier,” he reminded her. “You need your strength.”

Nina arched her eyebrow and reached down to tug something out of her purse. From between the pages of a book, she procured a photograph Amos had never seen before—a typical beach-day display of beautiful people in their twenties or so, strewn across the sand, glowing from sunscreen and long days of doing nothing but that. Nina’s hands were shaking even more. Amos took the photograph and scanned the faces. He recognized most of them as people who’d either grown up in Nantucket or spent summers here.

And then his eyes stopped on the man who looked like Jack. His heart dropped.

“Do you see it, too?” Nina whispered.

Amos put his plate of food to the side and clutched the photograph with both hands. That was when he noticed the time-and-date stamp in the corner. The year was 2002—four years after Jack died. It couldn’t be him.

Unless it was.

Don’t indulge in conspiracies, Amos.

Amos returned the photograph and pressed his hands together, studying Nina’s face for clues. She was a brilliant anthropologist, after all. Everything she’d studied made her aprime candidate to uncover the truths that churned beneath the surface.

“You knew Jack?” Nina asked.

“He was in my year at school,” Amos said.

“Were you close?”

Amos raised his shoulders. “Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. But it was Nantucket High. Everyone knew everyone else. Everyone was at the beach parties. Everyone drank beer and drove too fast and ran around.”

Nina furrowed her brow. Amos recognized that he was describing a portrait of a teenage youth that Nina hadn’t been allowed to see because she’d left the island after the fire. She’d gone to Michigan, a place he couldn’t even picture.

“It sounds like a fantastic way to grow up,” she said.

Amos shrugged again. It was too much to get into the specifics of his own upbringing and how different it had been from the White Oak Lodge and the Whitmores.

“Did you see the date on the photograph?” Nina asked.

Amos nodded. “It’s 2002. But it has to be wrong.”

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