Page 44 of The White Oak Lodge

Charlotte looked down.

“You know that I was raised in Michigan? You know I was raised by Great-Aunt Genevieve? You know that after that night, nobody ever called?” Nina’s pulse quickened. “I lost my entire family in a flash. I lost everything. I was just a kid.”

Charlotte couldn’t look at her. Tears filled her eyes. “We couldn’t bring you, honey. You didn’t want to come with us, anyway. Mom was a mess. For years, she was a mess.”

“Was?” Nina asked, suddenly petrified. Was Francesca dead? She’d spent so many years loving her as the mother who’d left her, and Nina wasn’t sure she could face saying goodbye like this.

“Mom isn’t dead,” Charlotte said. “She’s just, you know. Dramatic. A therapist of mine called her a narcissist. I don’t know what to believe.”

Nina let silence ring between them. “I found out that my ex-husband married me to get to the Whitmore treasure, or something like that. We’ve been married for thirteen years.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Who told him about it?”

Nina balked. “The money isn’t real,” she said. “Is it?”

Charlotte raised her shoulders. “Every year that passes makes me more confused about the Whitmores and what they’re hiding. You’re another element of that, I guess. Showing up at my door like this. I feel like I’m going out of my mind.”

“You mean, showing up at Seth Green’s door,” Amos interrupted.

“Yes. Of course.” Charlotte put her face in her hands. “Seth Green.” Her voice was laced with sarcasm.

Suddenly Nina was on her knees in front of her sister. She was reminded of hundreds of sunny days, when Charlotte and Nina would spin and spin on the sand and run into the water. Charlotte was eight years her senior, which had made them four and twelve, six and fourteen, until Charlotte had fully grown up and left Nina to herself. How Nina had missed her! How Nina had missed her playmate! Jack had been her substitute, but then Jack had grown up, too.

“I’m not here to trick you out of any treasure. I don’t care about money at all,” Nina whispered. “I’m just here tounderstand. I want to know what happened to Jack, and to Dad, and to Tio Angelo.”

Charlotte’s shoulders shook as she answered, “I’m here to understand, too.”

Nina’s voice brightened. “So maybe we should help each other get to the bottom of this?”

Charlotte nodded. “Maybe we should.”

Nina returned to her chair. A massive seagull swooped overhead, eyeing them and cawing out.

“I know Mom isn’t my real mom,” Nina offered, breaking the silence.

Charlotte smiled softly. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg, honey.”

Amos raised his glass of wine, and Nina watched as the sunlight danced through its reflections. Her heart was bruised and aching with confusion. But she’d promised herself she’d keep digging. And in finding Charlotte, she’d struck gold.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Amos

September 1998

It was two months after the fire that engulfed the White Oak Lodge. It was also Amos’s first day of senior year. Prior to, Amos woke up at dawn and went out in the fishing boats, working a four-hour shift that made him dreary-eyed and exhausted when he reached school at eight o’clock. Because he was three minutes late to first period, he was written up and told that if he “didn’t pull it together, he wouldn’t be going to college.” Amos almost laughed. Amos? Go to college? Maybe at one time, he’d thought he was meant for that. But now that he’d been interviewed so many times by the police and so many people pinned the fire at the lodge on him and saw him as a lowlife and a freak, he knew to keep a low profile. Maybe he would find happiness between the shifts of his three jobs. Perhaps he would find happiness in a good film or a book.

It was clear he wasn’t going to leave the island.

At school that first day, Amos overheard many students gossiping about the White Oak Lodge and the Whitmores. It was one of the strangest stories any of them had ever heard, and they picked it apart.

“I heard Benjamin isn’t dead,” a kid in third period whispered, “but I heard he accidentally killed Jack and covered it up!”

“No way,” another kid said. “Jack’s dead, but his dad didn’t kill him. That’s crazy gossip.”

“Why wasn’t there a funeral?” another demanded.

“There was,” another kid said, “but they’re so crazy wealthy, it was closed. They didn’t let anyone else in Nantucket grieve over Jack or Benjamin. I think it’s cruel.”

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