Page 8 of Return to Whitmore (The Whitmore #2)

Chapter Six

O n the drive back from Chez Paul to the house on Madequecham Beach, Charlotte could hardly focus.

Twice, she made wrong turns, then had to correct them without Addison noticing so as not to irritate the stunned and fatigued woman even more.

The last thing she wanted was Addison accusing her of not knowing what she was doing (despite the fact that, honestly, Charlotte couldn’t remember the last time she’d had all her ducks in a row, so to speak).

In a semi-intelligent move, they’d decided to leave Addison’s rental car back at the restaurant, because Addison was too distraught to drive.

Now, Addison was talking a mile a minute, recounting the drama she’d undergone during her long trip from Hawaii to the East Coast. Charlotte heard herself ask a few relevant questions, like about her children, where they were staying while she was here in Nantucket.

Why did Addison have to come now? It was terrible timing.

“The kids are with my mother,” Addison said.

“You have three, right?” Charlotte asked, narrowing her eyes, trying to concentrate on the road. They were only a few minutes from home.

“Kennedy and Penelope are twins. They’re eleven,” Addison said.

“Gavin’s the youngest. My baby. He’s ten.

” She continued talking, explaining that Gavin was the most eager for Addison to get home, that her twins had already “shifted toward teenager-ness.” Charlotte ached, wishing she knew them.

But there was so much about the Whitmore family that remained unexplainable.

Charlotte pulled into the driveway of the little house and cut the engine. “This is it,” she said.

Addison was stunned speechless. She got out and gazed at the house, her hand still gripping the car door. “This is his other house,” she said. “This is his secret.”

Charlotte had to bite her tongue to keep from saying, there are many more secrets where this one came from. She didn’t know how much to betray. It was a mess.

Charlotte carried Addison’s suitcase to the front door, which she unlocked and opened wide.

From the foyer, she watched Addison wander through the living room and kitchen before taking her things to the guest bedroom and changing into a big T-shirt and a pair of shorts.

When she returned to the living room, she accepted Charlotte’s glass of wine and said, “It’s strange.

Isn’t it strange? I can’t believe we’ve never met. I mean, we’re family.”

Charlotte raised her glass and clinked it with Addison’s. “It’s about time, isn’t it?”

“I hope you mean that.” Addison looked uncertain.

They sat on the sofa, settling under blankets. The house creaked under a violent Atlantic wind.

“So,” Charlotte said, wanting to draw Addison out of her nervousness, “when was the last time you saw him?”

“The last time I saw Seth?” Addison asked.

Charlotte nodded, although even all these years after the fire, she still struggled to call him Seth. “How long ago did he go missing?”

“It was about two months ago,” Addison said.

“Did something happen to chase him away?”

Addison furrowed her brow. “He had a visitor. It was a visitor he didn’t tell me anything about. I never would have found out about him if I hadn’t stopped by Seth’s office. It was lucky. Or maybe it was the thing that drove him away. I don’t know!”

Addison threw her hands over her face and took a deep breath. Charlotte decided to backtrack.

“What did Seth do? On the island, I mean.” They were details Charlotte had never been allowed to know.

“Seth’s a repairman. He fixes everything from boat motors to garage doors to plumbing,” Addison said, removing her hands from her face, sounding proud of her husband.

“I see. That’s wonderful,” Charlotte said, remembering that Jack had been handy as a kid, always eager to take something apart and figure out how to put it together again. “What was the stranger like?”

“He was an older guy,” Addison said. “Maybe sixties or seventies? Silver-black hair.”

Charlotte couldn’t speculate for the life of her who that could be. Unless Nina was right about who had and hadn’t died the night of the fire, that is. But Charlotte wasn’t sure she could wrap her mind around that yet.

“Did you talk to him?” Charlotte asked.

“He was really curious about me,” Addison said.

“He was asking me all kinds of questions about me and the kids and what we were up to. He was really fascinated with Kennedy’s love of sports.

I showed him a few videos of Kennedy playing soccer on my phone.

I got the sense that he was a grandfather, or that he always wanted to be a grandfather and didn’t get the chance. ”

“Huh.” Charlotte took a long sip of wine and tried and failed not to imagine the man as Benjamin Whitmore. But that was impossible. “And that was the last time you saw Seth?”

“He came home that night,” Addison remembered. “We got into an argument about something stupid. I wish I could remember what it was. We went to bed, woke up, and got the kids ready for school. That was the last morning I saw him. He didn’t come home that night.”

“And there was no indication that he was up to something?”

Addison shook her head, her eyes glinting with tears. “Like I said on the phone, when he was gone for forty-eight hours, I called the cops, but they thought Seth had just left me and didn’t want to get involved. Everyone knew that Seth could be like that.”

“He cheated on you?” Charlotte gasped.

Addison shook her head. “Not that I know of. But he could be flighty. Running away for a job or a trip with friends. Of course, he hadn’t been as much like that since we had the kids.

In any case, when the cops wouldn’t help me, I basically destroyed his office, looking for information. That’s how I found that photo of you.”

Charlotte’s heart leaped into her throat. She was surprised Jack had kept anything related to his Whitmore past anywhere near his “real” life in Hawaii.

“I’m sorry to say that at first, I thought you were, I don’t know, an old girlfriend or something,” Addison went on, glancing at the floor.

“He’d never talked about any of his exes.

Of his family, he’d only ever said he wasn’t in contact with them.

That something bad had happened and they didn’t talk anymore.

I knew better than to pester him about it, although I’ve been dying to understand.

But when I found the paperwork that linked him to this house in Nantucket, I knew something was really wrong.

” She gestured at the house around them, a house that stood formidably against the burgeoning winds.

“That’s when I hired the private investigator to come out here and see if he was around.

When he sent me those photographs of you, I recognized you from the photo I found in Seth’s office and panicked. ”

Charlotte remembered the day she’d noticed the private investigator.

She’d first seen him at the little coffee shop down the road, the one you walk up to and order right at the window.

He’d been off to the side in a pair of dark sunglasses and all-black clothes, looking at his phone.

The air about him was “pretending” or “acting,” which Charlotte wasn’t immune to, having come from the world of film.

She got a picnic table a few away from his and pretended to look at her phone, too.

It was still early, springtime and chilly and much too early for the mega-tourism Nantucket usually brought in.

She’d wondered where the man was from and why he was on the island by himself and what he was up to.

But when she finished her coffee, she left, returning home, throwing thoughts of him out of her mind—at least until she’d seen him the very next day at a restaurant in the Historic District.

That was when it had rung through her mind for the first time: he’s following me. As it turned out, he had been.

“What else did the private investigator tell you about me?” Charlotte asked, her heart pounding.

“He said you were a documentary filmmaker,” she said.

“He said you were the daughter of a once-prominent hotelier on Nantucket Island but that you lived part of your life in Italy. He couldn’t find any connection between you and Seth and speculated that you’d met him by chance, maybe when Seth was spending time in Manhattan.

” She took a breath. “You spent time in Manhattan, too, right?”

“I did.” What filmmaker hadn’t? It had felt like a rite of passage.

Addison sighed with relief, as though pleased that her private investigator had gotten it right.

Charlotte thanked her lucky stars that the private investigator was not very good. That, or “Seth” had covered his tracks well.

But what was he hiding? And why hadn’t he mentioned any of this to Charlotte?

What had happened next was like something out of a television drama.

One night, Charlotte hadn’t been able to sleep.

She’d tossed and turned in bed and eventually gotten up to watch a film and drink a glass of wine, hoping to lull herself to sleep.

It was a little past two when she got the phone call from an area code she recognized as Hawaii.

She’d answered it, thinking it was Jack.

Instead, it was a sobbing woman named Addison, accusing Charlotte of having an affair with her husband.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Charlotte had said, standing to her feet, her head throbbing. “Wait a minute. Seth is your husband?”

Addison had scream-cried accusations in a way that made her terror echo across the Pacific.

Charlotte hadn’t known what to do. She couldn’t comprehend why Addison had her number, or how she’d tracked her down, or what she possibly knew about Seth, about the Whitmores.

Finally, when she couldn’t take it anymore, she cried out, “I’m Seth’s sister.

I’m his older sister. My name is Charlotte. ”

Addison had been stunned into silence.

After that, Addison hadn’t stopped calling and texting Charlotte, wanting more details, demanding to know where Seth was and why he had this “secret” house in Nantucket.

Charlotte had only confirmed bits and pieces of the stories “Seth” had told her, like that their family didn’t talk anymore, like that something awful had happened back in the nineties that had drawn them in separate directions.

Addison hadn’t felt that Charlotte was giving her enough information and had decided to come out to Nantucket on her own to search for Seth herself.

Now, Charlotte watched as Addison’s eyes flickered around the living room, as though she were certain Seth would leap out from behind the television or the drapes. Charlotte sighed. She wished he would, if only to take this drama off Charlotte’s hands.

Addison seemed sweet, if slightly neurotic. She didn’t deserve this. Neither did the kids.

“Are there more of you?” Addison asked suddenly, her voice wavering. “More siblings, I mean.”

Charlotte wasn’t sure how to answer that either. Her silence lent meaning anyway.

“How many more?” Addison asked.

“There are quite a few of us,” Charlotte said after a pause. “But some of us have different mothers and fathers. Ours was a messy family. Is a messy family, I guess.”

“Where are your parents?”

Charlotte’s throat was tight. “My mother’s back in Italy.”

Addison’s lips parted with surprise. “Is she Italian? Is Seth Italian?”

Charlotte nodded.

Addison’s eyes were buggy. With a fist, she smashed her thigh and said, “We’ve been married for years. We have three children. Why didn’t he tell me any of this? Why did he keep so many secrets?”

Charlotte took a breath.

“Why?” Addison demanded again.

“It’s how we were raised,” Charlotte answered, surprising herself.

“To lie?” Addison asked, looking dejected.

Charlotte was too terrified to give her the answer she needed the most, which was yes. It was also the truth. But Charlotte wasn’t so keen on that either, so she said, “We’re going to find him. I promise you that.”