Page 23 of The White Oak Lodge

The work was not exactly titillating and involved cleaning two jewel-tinted pools and no fewer than seven horse stables. Amos opened his ears to his surroundings as he went, trying to make sense of this world so far above his own. When he emerged from the horse stalls, he watched a slender and wealthy woman in a riding outfit stomp across the sand to get to him, her face pinched. In an English accent, she said to Amos, “You wouldn’t believe my husband. Imagine! The nerve of some people! Oh, but isn’t it my fault? I’m the one who married for money. Or so my mother says. As though I don’t have an MBA! As though I couldn’t have done all of this on my own.” She breezed past Amos and went directly to a sleek black horse toward the back, to whom she spoke gently as she rubbed his nose. “Don’t do it like me,” she said, speaking maybe to Amos or maybe to thehorse, Amos couldn’t tell. “Don’t get involved with someone who hates you just because he says you’re too pretty to give up.”

Amos watched from the stables as the woman rode the horse down the beach, her blond hair shining. He thought,I will never understand the world of the wealthy.

And then he heard a voice behind him. “What a performance, hmm?”

Amos whipped around. He’d thought he was alone at the stables. But a forty-ish dark-haired man emerged from the shadows, smoking a cigarette with a jewel-lit tip. He was olive-skinned and spoke with a lilting accent that made Amos think of Europe. Maybe he was related to Francesca somehow. But how had he gotten into the stables? Was there another entrance? Amos took a small step back and cursed himself for being so afraid.

“You’re Jack’s friend,” the man said, twisting his heel over his cigarette to squash it.

Friend? That was a stretch. But Amos nodded and said, “I’m doing some work today for the hotel.”

“That you are. And you’ve done incredible work,” the man continued. “I’ve been watching.”

Amos’s cheeks were hot. He hated the idea that someone had been watching him. But in a luxury hotel like this, it probably wasn’t a stretch to say you were perpetually watched.

“Thank you, sir,” Amos said.

The man waved his hand and looked him dead in the eye. “I have a question for you. Would you like to see something incredible?”

Amos furrowed his brow and remembered what else remained on his to-do list for the lodge. He didn’t have time to mosey. But if this man really was related to Francesca, he couldn’t afford to be rude to him. So he said, “Of course. Yeah.”

Amos followed the man from the stables to what the man explained was the “family entrance” of the house. “This is where we live,” the man said in a singsong. “All together, big happy family. The Whitmores!” He scoffed.

“So you’re related to them?” Amos asked. He wanted to make conversation. He wanted to feel not so strange.

The man didn’t answer and instead opened the unlocked door to reveal a white-walled kitchen with glossy drapes. A little girl was sitting at the table with a glass of milk. She was reading. Was this another of the Whitmores? There were so many of them that it was often hard to keep track. But the man went over and touched the girl’s head, saying, “Can I get you anything, Nina?” When Nina said no, the man gestured for Amos to continue to follow him into the heart of the house. Soon they were in a long, shadowy hallway. The man explained that it was the hallway that divided the main house with the hotel, that it had been especially useful during the early days of the lodge, when whalers and outdoorsmen had stayed there during deep winter. Amos was intrigued. He was also deeply freaked out and aware that he’d followed a stranger into a dark hallway from which he wasn’t sure he would ever emerge.But I’m bigger than this guy, Amos reminded himself. He swallowed.

Suddenly, they stood before a door. The man unlocked it to reveal a deep and inky darkness. A staircase shot down into the depths, and there was the smell of something rotten.

“Well?” the man asked. “Do you want to go first, or should I?”

After that, Amos woke up so violently that Monty started barking. Amos was slick with sweat. “I’m sorry, buddy,” he muttered to the dog, then got up and poured himself a glass of water. Drinking it, he reminded himself of who he was, where he was, and what age he was.It’s 2025,he thought.You aren’t sixteen anymore. You aren’t even really that broke anymore. You own this cabin. You have a dog. You have a life.

But all night, he shivered with nerves. He didn’t want to plunge back into that dark abyss. He didn’t want to go back to the past.

Despite all that, Amos had agreed to go with Nina to Martha’s Vineyard to meet Ralph, and Amos wasn’t the kind of guy to back out of a promise. Five days after their phone call with Calvin, he and Nina met up at the port to take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. Amos hadn’t seen Nina since then, and he’d hated how painful it had felt to get ready to see her. He’d labored over fashion decisions and used gel in his hair. Nina looked suntanned and beautiful.

Amos suggested that he drive since he knew Martha’s Vineyard roads very well, and Nina agreed, saying, “I’m too nervous to drive anyway.” In the pickup, she pulled the photograph of maybe-Jack and Ralph out of her bag and gazed down at it.

Amos wondered what she’d been up to since the last time they’d seen one another but wasn’t sure how to ask.

On the ferry, they got out of the pickup for a few minutes and wandered the deck to feel the sun on their faces. Amos searched his mind for something to say, anything to break the silence.

“Have you been enjoying the island life?” He immediately cursed himself for sounding so juvenile.

Nina smiled at him in a way that made him think she was grateful. “I’ve been trying to. I took a few academic books to a beach and fell asleep instead of reading them.” She laughed at herself. “A year ago, I would have been in a dark room, reading obsessively and taking notes. But I can’t find it in me right now.”

“You have a lot on your mind,” Amos said.

“Yes,” Nina agreed. “And, you know, I miss my kids. I really miss them. Usually when I’m away from them, I’m at a tribe somewhere in the Andes, working tirelessly on research that I think will in some way further my career. But right now, I’m in Nantucket, trying to further my understanding of my messed-up family. I’m not sure I’m in the right place.”

“I think you’re doing the right thing,” Amos said. “You’ve been curious about that photograph forever. It’s better to know.”

Nina clenched her jaw.

Amos wondered if she knew anything about the door that led into the darkness—the one he’d dreamed about that he knew in his bones had once been real.

He wondered if what lay beneath the White Oak Lodge remained.

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