Page 20 of Return to Whitmore (The Whitmore #2)

Chapter Sixteen

K athy pulled up out front of the apartment in Greenwich and honked her horn at just after six thirty that evening.

Charlotte, who was waiting upstairs for just this signal, burst out of the door and locked it behind her.

When she got downstairs, she threw herself into the passenger side and plopped her bag in the back.

Kathy was playing a pop CD and singing along, her bright pink lips shining.

Charlotte, finally awake and alive after her episode of exhaustion after being burned out, threw her arms around her.

“Hey! I’m driving here!” Kathy said in a fake Brooklyn accent.

Charlotte laughed and looked around, realizing they were stuck in heavy traffic. “How far ahead are the guys?” she asked.

“They passed me a few minutes ago.” Kathy tried and failed to merge into the lane beside them, as it was going faster. “They were listening to really loud music and singing and acting insane. I think they’re finally getting along.”

“About time,” Charlotte said, her heart ballooning.

They decided to take two cars because Kathy had to leave Nantucket early, Monday morning at the latest, and Charlotte didn’t want to make her drive alone.

At first, Jack had seemed nervous, not so eager to drive with Ralph by himself, but then he’d shrugged it off.

“What do you think clicked for Seth?” Kathy asked. “I mean, you and Seth have never felt like a romantic item to me. But Seth is certainly possessive of you. Why has he decided Ralph’s okay now?”

“I made Seth understand that he’ll always be in my life. He’ll always be, like, number one-ish.” Charlotte smiled.

“I mean, your husband will be number one,” Kathy said. “Right?”

“Husband!” Charlotte cried, ignoring the question. “I can’t believe it.”

“You’re too young.” Kathy shook her head.

“We’re in our mid-twenties, now. This is when this is supposed to happen,” Charlotte reminded her.

“I didn’t know we subscribed to society’s rules,” Kathy said.

Charlotte stuck out her tongue and turned up the volume, leaning back in the seat and watching the skyscrapers roll past her.

It had been five years since she’d moved to Manhattan, five years since she’d left Italy, and six years since the fire, almost. Insanity.

It felt remarkable that she and Jack had decided to bring Kathy and Ralph to the Nantucket house on Madequecham Beach.

It felt like offering them pieces of their soul.

Would they tell them about Jack’s real identity later? She half imagined it, explaining what they needed to know about the past for her best friend and fiancé and watching this knowledge transform them. It wouldn’t have to change everything. Maybe it would bring all of them closer.

Maybe Jack would finally tell Charlotte more about what had happened leading up to the fire. Maybe he would finally bring her fully in.

“I hate that you have to leave early,” Charlotte said as they escaped the city.

“I know. But the gallery doesn’t let me have any time off,” Kathy said.

She was currently the gallerist of a cool and up-and-coming spot in Greenwich.

It was the job of her dreams and something she wanted to succeed at.

“But Seth’s right. We have to celebrate your new doc and your engagement and everything else.

Maybe it’s the reason you got so tired, you know?

You have to learn to take a break and celebrate the wins. ”

“We’re celebrating your new gig, too,” Charlotte said.

They kept driving. It felt like the most remarkable road trip, just two best girlfriends, speeding north to that fantastic island on the Nantucket Sound. Charlotte was in charge of the CDs, and she swapped them out deftly, curating a playlist that had them both singing at the top of their lungs.

About two hours outside of the city—at nine o’clock in the evening—they stopped for dinner at a fast-food place, where they grabbed burgers, fries, and diet sodas and perched on the back end of Kathy’s car to eat before heading on.

They figured they’d get close to Hyannis Port by midnight or so, where they’d spend the night in the same hotel the guys were at before moving to Nantucket in the morning.

Jack had written the name of the hotel down for Charlotte, promising they’d be there.

“They’ll probably be hammered by the time we get there,” Kathy said, rolling her eyes. “Playing pool and making friends with everyone at the hotel.”

“It’s their way,” Charlotte agreed.

“You know, sometimes I wonder if Seth and I have a thing,” Kathy said, shifting her weight. “Sometimes I catch myself thinking about him. He’s so cute and fun. I remember when you first brought him around three years ago. He seemed like such a stray dog. But he’s come into himself.”

Charlotte couldn’t imagine anything better than her best friend with her little brother! She took Kathy’s hand and gasped, “I would love it! You have my blessing!”

Kathy laughed. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“What are you going to wear for the wedding?” Charlotte asked. “Can I be the flower girl?”

Kathy whacked her playfully. “Come on. Give it a rest.”

“You should ask him,” Charlotte said, her tone shifting. “As far as I know, he hasn’t dated anyone in a few years.”

“Maybe he doesn’t like anyone. Some people just never get attracted to anyone,” Kathy said.

But Charlotte remembered Jack’s high school girlfriends, plus the odd girls he’d mentioned from his stints in Nantucket, stints during which he’d looked for Tio Angelo, for signs.

“Seth likes women,” Charlotte affirmed.

Kathy sighed and lay back across the top of the trunk and gazed at the night sky above them. Charlotte had the sudden sense that this was the last day of their youth, the last day when they could dream about the future without actually living it. It scared her.

When they got back in the car to drive the rest of the day, Charlotte tried to recreate the same magic, swapping out CDs and looking for songs on the radio.

But they were exhausted. Charlotte half considered pulling over at the nearest hotel and calling ahead to the Hyannis hotel to explain to the guys they’d meet them in Nantucket in the morning.

Right before she prepared this speech for Kathy, however, the traffic tightened around them and forced them to stop.

“What’s going on?” Charlotte asked, trying to peer around the truck in front of them.

“I think I see cops up there,” Kathy said. “Maybe an ambulance?”

“Shoot.” Although Charlotte was sorrowful for whoever was involved in the accident, she considered them only briefly before she mourned the loss of time for their vacation.

The more time they spent in traffic, the less they were able to as a group of loving and passionate friends in both Hyannis and Nantucket.

She reached under the seat to grab a bag of snacks and opened a chocolate bar, passing Kathy a square.

They sat in silence, eating and waiting for the traffic to clear.

It was another two hours before they passed the accident site—proof of how dismal the scene truly was.

At first, Charlotte saw two cars in the ditch, both flipped over and with their wheels in the air.

Three cop cars remained parked on the side, with one of the officers outside, waving them through.

Charlotte’s heart pounded. She gripped her knees and, because she couldn’t stop herself, glanced at the vehicles, trying to see what kind they were.

It was then she realized one of the cars was Jack’s.

Charlotte gasped. “Stop the car!”

Kathy stomped her foot on the brake. “Why? What?”

But already, Charlotte scrambled from the vehicle and ran over to Jack’s. She felt as though she were living in an alternate timeline. None of this could be real.

“Ma’am, you need to get back in your vehicle!” one of the cops called, rushing over to her. Anger marred his face.

But Charlotte was touching the corner of the car and shaking violently. “Where are they?” she demanded, gasping.

Kathy was hot on her heels, having abandoned her car, which now had the single lane completely stopped. Cars were smashing their horns, confused at the blockage.

When the cop finally got the hint that Kathy and Charlotte knew the people who’d been in the car, the people who’d flipped over, his face grew pale. “They went to Victor Huffman Hospital. It’s about ten miles from here.”

Rather than force them to go all the way down the highway and use the exit that would take them the wrong way, the cop got in his car and led them a quarter of a mile to a median turnaround between the two sides of the highway.

With his lights flashing, he drew them to the opposite side, where they were able to speed down a traffic-less road and all the way to the hospital.

Too out of her mind to remember anything, Charlotte had written down the cop’s directions.

“He said they took them both to the hospital,” Kathy reminded her. “It’s good news.”

Charlotte wasn’t sure if that was good news. It meant neither of them had died at the crash site, but there was no knowing what had happened once they’d left it.

Charlotte and Kathy burst into the emergency room and up to the front desk.

When the woman behind the counter asked about their relationship to the men in the accident, Charlotte said, “One is my husband, and one is my brother.” Kathy didn’t flinch.

She thought Charlotte was lying, which had to be okay.

To add to the lie, Charlotte said Kathy was her sister.

They were told that one of the men was in surgery and one was resting in a room on another floor.

They weren’t told which. A nurse came to guide them to the other floor, and all the way, Charlotte shook with fear, unsure which of the men she wanted to be waiting for her on the other side.

If it were Ralph, she would throw herself on him and cover him with kisses and say, “ Let’s get married tomorrow !

” If it were Jack, she would scream with relief. He couldn’t die on her twice!

Kathy sensed her hesitance and took her hand. “It’s going to be all right.”

It was a nightmare scenario, Charlotte knew. It was something she’d have to come to terms with for the rest of her life.

Like the unbreakable man he was, Jack waited for them in the hospital bed, one of his legs in a cast and one of his arms wrapped up in tight bandages.

There were scratches on his face and a greenish tint to his cheeks.

But he was almost fully intact. Charlotte took a breath and wrapped her arms around him.

“What happened?” she whispered.

Jack shook his head. He couldn’t meet her eyes.

Charlotte leaned back and tried to read his mind, a difficult task after years of lying and not understanding the Whitmores or what they wanted from one another.

It was clear that Jack had no plans to tell her what happened, why the accident had occurred, and, for Charlotte, there seemed to be only one reason.

It had been Jack’s fault. An icy feeling came over her heart, and she sat down and cupped her knees.

Kathy did better with him, at least at first. “I can’t believe you’re all right.”

Jack flared his nostrils. “I couldn’t believe we were flying through the air like that.”

Charlotte remembered how Kathy had spoken about Jack and Ralph, driving too fast and listening to music. Had they been so reckless the entire way?

“How are the people in the other car?” Jack asked.

“We don’t know,” Kathy said. “We only know about you.”

“And Ralph?”

Charlotte’s voice was harder than she’d planned. “He’s in surgery.”

Jack’s face grew shadowed with horror.

Charlotte couldn’t remain in Jack’s room for long.

Her heart was beating at irregular intervals.

She genuinely felt she was going insane.

Eventually, she and Kathy went to the waiting room, where they sat, holding hands, for the next two hours.

It felt like years before someone came to tell them that Ralph would maybe never walk again.

Charlotte was stricken. Half stumbling down the hall to meet her love, she prepared herself for the worst. And when she turned the corner to find him, she saw unfocused eyes that seemed to look at her as though she were a stranger.