Page 18 of Return to Whitmore (The Whitmore #2)

Chapter Fourteen

C harlotte had never imagined she’d feel this in love again. It was a floaty love, a head-in-the-clouds love, a love that tried (and often failed) to negate all the heartache she’d gone through before. But yes, she was twenty-four years old—and she was in love again.

Charlotte gaped at him, her heart pounding, wet winds sweeping through her black hair.

When she couldn’t find the word—not a yes or a no—she took his hands and pulled him up.

His palms were warm and calloused, and his eyes were soft blue and so kind.

She pressed a kiss into his lips and felt in her heart a sturdy knowledge that this man would love and protect her, if she let him.

So when their kiss broke, she said yes. He took her in his arms and spun her around as twenty-plus people around them in Central Park cried out, “Congratulations!”

Charlotte could hardly believe it. In her mind, she practiced telling her mother about Ralph, about her engagement, about how normal and happy her life had turned out to be, probably just because she’d taken herself out of the equation of Francesca and Francesca’s demands.

After their engagement, Charlotte and Ralph sped back to Greenwich Village to share the news with “Seth Green,” who, miraculously, still lived with Charlotte and went by a false name.

When they came into the apartment and told their news, there was a flash of something like annoyance in Jack’s eyes.

He feels like I’m abandoning him , Charlotte thought.

But she didn’t want to let on that she understood.

She threw her arms around him. “You’re my maid of honor, Ja…

” And then she bit her tongue hard, remembering to correct herself. “Seth! Seth, you’re my maid of honor!”

She laughed at the idea of entering into a marriage with such an enormous lie between them. But it wasn’t her secret to share.

Jack poured them drinks and asked them the play-by-play of how it happened.

“Don’t you think you should have asked me for permission first?” Jack said to Ralph, clapping his shoulder to let Ralph know he was joking.

Ralph beamed. He looked like the happiest person Charlotte had ever seen.

That night, Charlotte, Jack, Ralph, Kathy, and others in their Greenwich Village art community went out for a raucous night of drinking and celebrating.

Ralph, who worked as a journalist for several art magazines in the city, was a brilliant conversationalist and very good at remembering details about Charlotte’s friends.

This was just one of the things Charlotte loved about him.

The fact that she was never sure if she loved him as much as she’d loved Vincent felt like a part of life.

Everyone loved their first love the most. It had been her first experience of love, her first go at it.

But that didn’t make her love for Ralph any less special.

That night, when he’d had maybe one too many beers, Jack brought up the question of where they were going to live. “Are you going to move in with me and Charlotte?” He looked directly at Ralph, waiting for an answer.

Ralph laughed. “I can’t imagine we’ll do that, as much as we love you, Seth.”

“But Charlotte can’t leave our apartment,” Jack said. “I won’t give her up! I already lost her once before.”

Around the table, Charlotte’s friends’ smiles dimmed with confusion. Once before rang in the air over their table. Nobody save for Charlotte and Jack knew what it meant.

The bar felt suddenly ominous. Charlotte couldn’t imagine why Jack would try to give the game away like that. He was losing his edge, maybe. Or maybe he was tired of playing pretend.

“When did you lose each other before?” Ralph asked, tilting his head.

Jack’s face broke into a lopsided grin. “In our past lives!” he tried to joke. “Charlotte and I were meant to be best friends. Actually, we were meant to be sister and brother. We even sort of look alike, don’t we?”

Everyone agreed that they did, sort of. Charlotte tried to laugh it off, but there was a strange look behind Jack’s eyes, one that told her that nothing was all right.

A few days later, Charlotte was washing dishes in the kitchen, and Jack was at the kitchen table, writing notes to himself in a journal.

Charlotte wasn’t privy to what was in the journal and often wondered if it was a list of all the lies Jack had told so that he could keep track of them.

Drawing a breath, she cut the water, turned around, and asked, “Why did you say that the other night at the bar?”

Jack quit writing but kept his pen poised. “What do you mean?”

Charlotte knew he knew exactly what she meant. She remained quiet and crossed her arms.

Jack put the pen down. Finally, his eyes to the wall, he said, “The past few years haven’t gone the way I planned.”

“And how did you plan them?” Charlotte asked. She wanted to say, Nothing ever goes the way we plan. Don’t you know that by now?

“I planned to find Tio Angelo by now,” Jack said. “I planned to get to the bottom of what happened the night of the fire. But I’ve encountered one dead end after another.”

Charlotte rubbed her chest. “Maybe Tio Angelo really did die that night.”

Jack lent her an ominous glare. “It’s unlikely. Let’s just say that.”

“You haven’t shared more details,” Charlotte said, her voice breaking. “You haven’t let me help you as much as I want to.”

“You have to work on your career,” Jack pointed out. “I want you to focus on that.”

“What about your career?” Charlotte demanded. As far as she knew, Jack had continued to work odd jobs here and there before returning to Nantucket intermittently to “dig around” for details about Tio Angelo and their father and that night. He was wasting his life.

“Listen, Jack. Maybe there’s a time to let go of the past and move forward,” Charlotte said. “Maybe you can even take your name back again. We can explain to everyone that you were in witness protection or something. I don’t know. Or we can tell them the truth?”

Jack scoffed and got up from the table, closing his journal.

“And maybe it’s time to tell Mom where you are,” Charlotte said. “Allegra and Lorelei, too. They’ve thought you were dead for years and years. It would be a huge gift to them.”

Hovering in the doorway between the kitchen and his bedroom, Jack pressed his hand on the wall and took a breath. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

Charlotte’s heart leaped with excitement.

“Maybe at the wedding.” Charlotte dared herself to hope.

Jack turned and offered a soft smile, one that surprised her. “Maybe,” he said. “I didn’t know you could love anyone the way you loved Vincent.”

“I didn’t know it was allowed,” Charlotte agreed.

“You deserve every happiness, sis.”

“So do you, Jack,” Charlotte said, hitting his real name hard. “Do you hear me?”

“I hear you.” He stepped into his bedroom and closed the door.

Over the following two months, Charlotte was busy with preparations for her next film, which was premiering at a film festival at the end of summer.

Every day, Charlotte spent nine to twelve hours in the editing suite, perfecting a film that felt closer to her heart than anything she’d done before.

The subject was a group of Italian immigrant cooks working in Brooklyn and changing the restaurant game of the neighborhood.

In fact, the cooks were five brothers, all immigrants from the same family, who altered their mother’s recipes just the slightest bit, in unique ways that had all of Brooklyn in an uproar about which recipes were better.

In the documentary, Charlotte spoke a mix of Italian and English with the chefs, asking them questions about the importance of Italian family and eating to her heart’s content.

She gained no more than three pounds during filming, but that was only because Ralph was obsessed with exercising, and they went jogging together most evenings.

(This was a romantic thing that Charlotte never would have dreamed of doing before Ralph.) In reality, she spent almost every day eating pasta and pizza till she felt stuffed—and so happy.

On the day of the documentary premiere, Charlotte was surprised and pleased to find that the auditorium was packed.

She sat in the middle with Kathy, Jack, and Ralph, listening as the audience laughed and engaged with her film.

At the end, there was a forty-five-minute question-and-answer session, with some people asking their questions in Italian. Charlotte’s heart was so happy.

When it was over, Charlotte was exhausted and on the brink of burnout.

Ralph, Jack, and Kathy could see it clearly and did their best to take care of her.

But Charlotte spent several days in bed.

Ralph, Jack, and Kathy swapped turns making her food and sitting with her, and Charlotte did her best to smile and talk to them and laugh at their jokes. She could see the worry in their eyes.

Once, Francesca called from Italy to ask how her documentary had gone. Charlotte was still in bed and wondering if she’d ever get out of it.

“Your grandfather watched your documentary,” Francesca said. “He adored it. I don’t know how you got that man to like you so much. It’s like you can do no wrong.”

Charlotte smiled over the phone and tried to picture her mother back in Italy, perhaps lying in the cool shade of the garden, watching the stone pine trees flit. Charlotte was surprised at how much she missed her. It was for this reason, maybe, that Charlotte finally told her about the engagement.

“Marriage?” Francesca sounded surprised but sort of bored about it. “I didn’t think you’d go for that.”

Charlotte laughed. “You did.”

“Yes, and look how that turned out.”

Charlotte knew better than to let her mother bruise her heart.

“Well, I suppose I’ll have to find a nice dress,” Francesca said. “You’ll have the wedding in Italy, won’t you?”

“Maybe New York.”

“Nonsense. It will be in Italy,” Francesca said. “It’s the most beautiful place in the world.”

Charlotte decided she’d figure that out later.

“I do love you, you know,” Francesca told her—speaking English for the first time in ages. Charlotte had half imagined she’d forgotten how.

“I love you, too, Mom,” Charlotte said. Her voice broke, betraying her.

For a moment, she allowed herself to imagine Jack (as Jack!), Allegra, Lorelei, Alexander, their mother, and even Nina at her wedding. She imagined the reunion under a glowing Italian sun. She imagined drawing her mother into a hug and saying, Let’s never be cruel to one another again .

Maybe everything would be all right.

At the end of the week, Jack burst into Charlotte’s room to find Charlotte up and around, wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top and putting on her tennis shoes.

“Brilliant!” he said. “You’re up!”

Charlotte laughed and put her hands on her hips. “About time?”

“Don’t worry yourself,” Jack said. “But I wanted to tell you that your fiancé and I have a little surprise for you.”

“And what could that be?”

“We refuse to tell you,” Jack said. “But we will kidnap you in approximately five hours. Have your bags packed and be ready to go. Kathy has been notified, as well.”

Charlotte laughed. “What should I bring?”

“Swimsuits? Dresses? I don’t know what you women need.” Jack pretended to roll his eyes, then ran out, closing the door behind him.

Charlotte’s heart leaped with excitement. It was clear that Jack wanted them to have a sort of “family” party, one that celebrated both her engagement and her recent success in the film industry. He also wanted to pull her out of her exhaustion and remind her there was so much to live for.

Jack had saved her life. More than once.

She would continue to save his, if he’d let her.