Page 26 of Return to Whitmore (The Whitmore #2)

Chapter Twenty

T he woman waiting for Charlotte and Nina on the glorious villa veranda was the most beautiful creature north of seventy Charlotte had ever seen.

Perhaps her dark hair was dyed, and maybe she’d perfected her wrinkles with Botox, but you would never know it.

She looked fifty-ish, tops. And miraculously, she was smoking a cigarette as though she did that every morning, as though she never greeted the day without a dose of nicotine. It hadn’t aged her. She was perfect.

It was true—and maybe devastating—that Charlotte hadn’t seen her mother in years.

When Francesca’s catlike eyes pegged her, she stood gracefully and arched her eyebrow.

In Italian, she said, “My goodness, who have you brought with you?” Of course, Nina didn’t understand, because Francesca had never allowed her to speak the language and had hardly spoken it to her during her childhood.

“Mom,” Charlotte said, “we need to speak English.”

Francesca’s eyes flickered with alarm. “Is that Nina?” she asked in English. Her voice broke.

Was that real emotion on her face? Was that something like regret? Charlotte couldn’t believe it.

Nina stepped toward the beautiful old woman with tears in her eyes. “Mom,” she said, her voice shaking.

At first, it surprised Charlotte to hear it. But of course, Francesca was the only mother Nina had ever known. Just because Francesca had abandoned her didn’t mean Nina didn’t still love her that way.

Oh, it was complicated. It made Charlotte dizzy with sorrow. Why couldn’t they have just brought Nina to Italy with them? Why couldn’t they have maintained the lies they’d always told?

Francesca touched Nina’s cheek delicately, as though it were a flower petal.

Charlotte hung back, waiting. Francesca’s emotions could turn on a dime.

In the silence, Charlotte let herself survey the grounds, looking for Jefferson Albright, her birth father.

Were they still together? She couldn’t believe she didn’t know.

“Why are you here, Nina?” Francesca asked. She still sounded tender.

Nina sounded uncertain, as though she’d forgotten. “I found out you’re not my real mother.”

Francesca closed her eyes and sat down. For the first time, she showed her age, if only for a moment.

Nina sat in the chair across from her and reached for her hand, glancing over at Charlotte.

Charlotte couldn’t believe it. She’d expected there to be an incident upon their arrival, but nothing as emotional as this.

Charlotte hurried over to sit next to Nina and take her mother’s other hand. Together, they sat in a beautiful circle—the mother and her daughters—as a soft wind traced its way through the stone pine trees.

Slowly, Francesca opened her eyes again and looked from Charlotte to Nina and back again.

“You look so similar,” she said of them.

“It doesn’t make any sense, does it? Or maybe it makes all the sense in the world.

” She pursed her lips. “Nina, I have thought of you every day. I have thought of what I did to you every single day. I have paid for it.”

Charlotte felt regret echoing from her tone. She couldn’t believe it.

“I’ve thought about you every single day, too,” Nina said. “But I don’t want you to pay for it. I’ve had a wonderful life. I have two children and a career I love.”

They sat in silence. For a moment, Charlotte couldn’t remember why they’d come.

Francesca bent her head. “I can’t ask for your forgiveness because I don’t deserve it.”

Never in Charlotte’s life had she heard Francesca somber and reflective. She was suddenly terrified that her mother was sick, that she was coming to the end of her life and wanting to rectify what had happened in the past.

Before Nina could speak again, Charlotte said, “Nina found me in Nantucket. She’s been digging around, searching for clues about what happened that night. She’s an anthropologist and probably much better at ‘digging’ than your average private investigator.”

At the mention of the private investigator, Francesca’s eyes became electric. “Anthropology?” she asked Nina. “That is an incredible field. You are a genius, like your grandfather.”

Charlotte knew Francesca was referencing her own father, who still lived next door and wasn’t related to Nina at all. Not by blood.

“The private investigator, or gardener, or whatever he is, is coming in twenty minutes,” Francesca said. “He doesn’t know you will be here, but I’m sure he will be very pleased to pick your brains.”

Charlotte took a breath. She was fearful. How much did she want to tell her mother about what she knew? How much of it was relevant any longer?

“Mom, Jack and I lived together in the 2000s,” Charlotte blurted.

Francesca shot Charlotte a look that terrified her.

“He’s alive,” Charlotte whispered.

At least, he was until two months ago, which was the last time Addison saw him, she didn’t say. She didn’t want to complicate things.

Francesca’s face crumpled with alarm, with sorrow, with worry. She hid behind her hands and sobbed openly, her shoulders shaking. “My baby! My Jack!” she cried. “Why did he do this to us? Why did he hide himself away?”

“We don’t really know,” Charlotte admitted. It felt pathetic that in all the years she’d spent with him, she hadn’t managed to figure out what he’d been up to.

“But I’m worried,” Charlotte said. “Tio Angelo was running a drug ring out of the White Oak Lodge, and Jack was tied up in it.”

“So was my boyfriend, Amos,” Nina said. “He’s told me bits and pieces of what went on.”

Francesca’s face went pale. She looked like she couldn’t speak.

“Jack thinks something bad went down,” Charlotte said.

“Apparently, that night, somebody told him to run. After that, it was said that he was dead along with Tio Angelo and Dad.” At the mention of her father, Charlotte’s chest tightened with pain.

“Jack wanted to track down Tio Angelo. He was sure that Tio Angelo ruined our family, that it was his fault that everything happened. But as far as I know, Jack could never find him.”

Francesca gripped Charlotte’s hand so hard that Charlotte’s fingers cracked.

“I don’t understand,” Francesca said in both Italian and English.

“I’m worried that Tio Angelo sent this private investigator to you to dig around,” Charlotte said. “Maybe he thinks you know where Jack is. Perhaps he thinks you’d hide your son at all costs.”

“I would hide my son at all costs,” Francesca said. “I’d do anything for him.”

“We need to be strategic. Maybe we can figure out where this private investigator came from. Maybe we can offer him money to go the other way?” Charlotte suggested, thinking of her grandfather’s resources, her mother’s money. It was no Whitmore treasure, but it might get them somewhere.

Just then, there was a knock from inside the house. Francesca bristled and got to her feet.

“I told him that if he wants to come back, he has to knock and enter through the house,” she said regally.

“I won’t have some fake gardener making a mockery of my flowers.

” She strolled through the back door and entered.

Just before she disappeared, she draped her head back and said, “Perhaps you two could hide yourselves away and listen? He doesn’t expect anyone else, for now. ”

And then, she added, “Nina, I’m so happy you’re here.”

A sob escaped Nina’s throat.

Charlotte and Nina hurried away from the veranda and hid behind the thatched fence. Charlotte wrapped herself in a ball and leaned against a nearby tree, her heart pounding. Nina looked nervous and grim.

The first thing she heard was a man’s American-accented English. “Whose car is out front?”

They were coming through the back door and sitting around the veranda table. Francesca set down something that sounded like a pitcher of water or lemonade.

Francesca hadn’t mentioned that the private investigator was American. Charlotte cursed herself for having forgotten to hide the car down the block.

“That’s my daughter’s car,” Francesca said in English. “She’s here for the weekend.”

It was a good strategy, as today was Friday. They’d left Boston on a Wednesday and arrived in Italy on a Thursday. Time was passing too quickly. Charlotte tried to calm herself down.

“Which daughter?” the investigator asked.

“Shouldn’t you know that? Since you’re a investigator,” Francesca said, not even vaguely insulting him. Such was Francesca’s way.

The investigator chuckled. “I never assume anything until I know for sure.”

“It’s Lorelei, my oldest daughter,” she said. “She lives in Rome. They both do.”

“Both?”

“Both daughters I keep in contact with,” Francesca said. “I have four in total.”

“Four? I thought only three.”

“You thought wrong,” Francesca said.

Charlotte eyed Nina, curious about this change of pace. Never had she thought her mother would accept Nina as one of her own. Time had been kind to her heart, maybe.

“That’s Allegra, Lorelei, Charlotte, and Nina,” the investigator listed. “And you have two sons. Jack and Alexander.”

“Jack is dead, as I told you last week.”

The investigator sniffed. “We have reason to believe he isn’t, Madame.”

Charlotte’s eyes were thick with tears. A part of her wanted to tear out from her hiding place and demand answers from this man.

How dare he come sniffing around like this?

She wished she had her camera to film him.

These people were the lowest of the low, leeching off other people’s needs and spying on people.

“And why is this so important to you?” Francesca demanded.

“My client is very interested in discovering where your son Jack is,” the investigator stated.

Something struck Charlotte, suddenly. The way the investigator said the word “client” was terribly familiar, as though she’d heard it before. Had she met this man?

Unable to resist, Charlotte poked her head out from the side of the fence, peering through the dense pine trees to find him. Nina was mouthing like crazy, “What are you doing? Stop!” But Charlotte couldn’t stop herself.

When she realized who it was, her heart stopped.

It was the private investigator she’d met twenty years ago—the same gray-and-black-haired man who’d met her at the SOS Diner and told her he wanted to find Jack.

Charlotte nearly leaped up with surprise.

It was clear he wasn’t a very good investigator.

He was twenty years into this game and still none the wiser about Jack.

Charlotte hid herself away and shook with a mix of fear and intrigue.

Had Tio Angelo sent him? Why hadn’t they found “Seth Green” in Hawaii?

Had Jack grown better at hiding his tracks over the years?

Maybe everything was in Addison’s name. Her thoughts raced in circles until, finally, Francesca told the investigator to see himself out.

“I told you, I don’t know where my son is. I know he’s dead. It’s time for you to get that through your head.”

“What about your husband?”

Francesca scoffed. “You were spying on me here in the garden for days. Did you find anything relating to my husband or my son? Did you discover anything about my brother, too? Did you scour my parents’ place, looking for proof that Angelo was alive?

” She took a beat. “Or is my brother perhaps this secret client who sent you here? Is he behind all of this?”

“I can’t tell you who my client is,” the investigator said, standing. “Thank you for the water. I’ll be in touch soon.”

If only they knew where he was off to. If only Charlotte was better at following a car without them noticing. But she wasn’t James Bond. She was mostly just jet-lagged and heartbroken and terrified.

Suddenly, Charlotte remembered her tracking tag!

It was here in her purse, right here at her side as she hid from the private investigator.

Such luck. She pulled it out and ran around the side of the property, not waiting for Nina to call her back.

She had to get to the investigator’s car before he did.

She was pretty sure she could still hear her mother berating him on the veranda, telling him that he was irritating and insulting an older woman—an older woman who lived on her own.

But where was Jefferson? Charlotte would have to deal with that question later.

Miraculously, the private investigator’s car was parked directly in front of Charlotte’s with its passenger window cracked just enough for her to hurl the tracker tag into the dark shadows under the back seat. In all likelihood, he wouldn’t find it for another week or two. She had to hope and pray.

Without hesitating, she sped back around the side of the house and collapsed in the weeds next to Nina.

She heard the back door open and close, followed by the sound of the private investigator’s engine turning on.

Charlotte gasped and grabbed her phone, eager to track him.

She watched as the little dot connected to her tracker went down the road and back toward what looked to be Florence.

Nina grabbed her wrist and pulled her back to real life. “What’s gotten into you?”

“I put a tracker in his car,” she whispered. “Maybe he’ll lead us directly to his client.”

Nina’s mouth hung in alarm. “You’re good,” she said finally.

“I’m not an anthropologist, but I’m scrappy,” Charlotte said. “Sometimes that’s all that matters.”