Page 9 of Return to Whitmore (The Whitmore #2)

Chapter Seven

I t was the morning after Charlotte, Allegra, and Lorelei’s night of dancing in Florence, the morning after Charlotte had learned that her father was Jefferson Albright, and Charlotte still hadn’t slept.

Over and over again, in a kind of trance, she watched the film footage of the time she’d followed her mother to the edge of the grounds to meet Jefferson on horseback.

The memory of that day now felt more like a dream.

But it was clear from the tape that there was so much love between them.

Did this love make Charlotte? Was this the love they’d backed away from so Francesca could go back to Benjamin Whitmore? But why? Charlotte felt unmoored.

Out the window now, she watched as Francesca and Jefferson rode horses from the edge of the woods to the barn, where they leaped down and kissed beneath the cerulean Italian sky.

Charlotte’s hands were in fists. Had Jefferson told Francesca that he’d run into the Whitmore sisters at the club last night?

Had he told her about his whole you look just like my own mother comment?

Fuming, Charlotte burst from her room and ran downstairs to meet her mother as she came inside.

Francesca’s olive cheeks were sun-kissed, and she looked bubbly and fresh.

But when she saw Charlotte’s face, her smile dropped off immediately.

She understood the challenge in Charlotte’s face and knew to meet it head-on.

Nobody had ever bested Francesca Whitmore.

But rather than face Francesca boldly, Charlotte very spontaneously burst into tears.

With her hands over her face, she sobbed and tried to speak but couldn’t force the words out.

She knew her mother found her pathetic and hadn’t raised Charlotte to act like this.

But Charlotte was overwhelmed. When she managed to pull herself together a little bit, she forced herself to look at Francesca.

Her mother was perched on the nearest chaise lounge, looking at a magazine, waiting for Charlotte’s outburst to cease.

It enraged Charlotte all the more, but it also didn’t surprise her.

Her mother had never been one for compassion.

“Are you finished?” Francesca asked, not looking up.

Charlotte flared her nostrils and told herself to get out of there, to go back upstairs and not bother with this. But instead, she sat across from her mother and folded her hands on her lap. “Did Jefferson Albright tell you we ran into him last night?” she asked in English.

Francesca gave her a look that meant we will not be speaking that language .

In Italian, she said, “He mentioned he saw the three of you in passing, yes.”

“Did he tell you what he told me?”

Francesca’s eyes half rolled into the back of her head.

“Don’t roll your eyes!” Charlotte cried, again giving herself over to her emotions.

“Darling, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Jefferson is your father. Yes. Everyone knows it. Everyone has known it, apparently, except for you.” Francesca flicked a piece of lint from her knee.

Charlotte felt her heart shatter. Feeling like a child, she said, “I can’t believe you’d cheat on Daddy.”

Francesca let out a sad little laugh. “There is so little you know about your father. There is so little you know about Nantucket, about the White Oak Lodge, about all of it.”

Charlotte ached with anger. “You cheated first! It’s why Dad cheated!” She took a deep breath. “You shouldn’t have blamed Nina for what happened! You should have brought her here! And now she’s all by herself!”

“Why on earth would I bring her here where she doesn’t belong?”

Charlotte felt it like a slap. “If you say there’s so much I don’t understand about Daddy, about the Lodge, why won’t you tell me?” She gestured vaguely. “All we have left is time, Mom.”

But Francesca suddenly looked older than Charlotte had ever seen her. She said, “It isn’t for me to explain.”

“Okay? Then who will?”

Francesca got up and walked to the doorway between the sitting room and the long, slender hall. She clicked her nails on the wall. “In Italy with your sisters, we’ve begun a new life,” she said after a long pause. “We’re no longer Whitmores. We’ve left that all behind.”

“You can’t just run away,” Charlotte insisted.

Francesca sniffed, then said, “In fact, I think you can. Especially you, my darling. You were never a Whitmore after all, were you?” With that, she disappeared down the hall, leaving Charlotte reeling with confusion.

In the wake of that conversation, Charlotte sensed she couldn’t trust anyone, not her mother, nor her sisters, nor Jefferson Albright.

If she was ever going to get to the bottom of Francesca’s vague references, she sensed she’d have to do the unthinkable and go back to Nantucket to dig through the Whitmore family secrets.

She certainly couldn’t live out the rest of her days in Italy, feeling listless and lost. But in order to go back to the States, Charlotte needed cash.

She wasn’t one to ask for handouts, least of all from her mother.

And if her grandfather had instilled anything in her, it was a love of work.

Over the next few months, Charlotte picked up every film-related gig she could.

She worked odd jobs in kitchens, carried sound equipment, put up sets, fed employees, worked nights, days, and mornings.

July 4, 1999, and a year after the fire came and went, leaving Charlotte feeling devastated but more determined than ever.

They still hadn’t mourned the loss of Jack, Tio Angelo, or Benjamin Whitmore, not in any official ceremony, and it was driving her insane.

She needed to go back to Nantucket and see their graves for herself.

She needed to stand beside the wreckage of the White Oak Lodge and understand.

When Charlotte decided she had enough money to her name, she booked a flight to Boston and packed her few belongings.

She didn’t tell anyone her plan. But a few hours before her departure, she went to her grandfather to say goodbye.

Although Charlotte didn’t tell him everything, she did say, “I have to find a way to make documentaries. I’m chasing a story. I have to leave Italy to do it.”

Her grandfather hugged her and breathed, “You’re brave, Charlotte. You will always go where you need to go. You will always follow your heart.”

Charlotte thanked him for showing her the ropes of filmmaking, but he reminded her that she had an inner knack for it anyway. “I only pointed out what you already knew,” he said, winking.

A taxi came for Charlotte while her mother was horseback riding with Jefferson and her sisters were upstairs, preparing for their first university classes.

It was late August and nearly time for school.

Charlotte pressed a kiss to her palm and blew it to the upper floors, hoping her sisters felt her love for them.

It had been a complicated time, and they hadn’t always gotten along.

But Charlotte certainly couldn’t have survived the previous year without them.

On the plane to Boston, Charlotte tried to write a list of things she wanted within her newfound documentary project—one that doubled down on her previous mission to “understand her mother” and extended to “understanding the Whitmores and what it means that I’m not one.

” But Charlotte struggled to make the list very long.

On it was: 1. Figure out why Mom cheated with Jefferson Albright.

2. Figure out if there was foul play when the Lodge burned down. But that was where she finished.

She fell asleep and woke up back on American soil.

Of course, Charlotte had considered Vincent.

Since she’d decided to return to Nantucket to dig around, she’d dreamed of him almost every night.

In some of the dreams, he met her at the Nantucket harbor, eager to ask her to marry him and settle down.

In others, he was a criminal, running from the cops, and it was up to her to hide him.

Charlotte knew he’d probably gotten a girlfriend since last summer and that she couldn’t control his right to live.

But she hoped that whoever he’d found wasn’t as “special” as she was, and the minute he saw her again, he’d leave his new girl and begin again with her.

Charlotte reached Nantucket two days after her departure from Italy and got a room at a little bed-and-breakfast not far from the Sutton Book Club.

On an evening stroll, she spotted Esme Sutton on the front porch, sweeping with a long broom and whistling to herself.

Everywhere Charlotte looked, she saw similarly quaint Nantucket scenes: couples eating ice cream, children playing on swing sets, teenagers eating burgers and milkshakes, and sailors bringing their vessels in for the night.

Her heart panged. It wasn’t so long ago that she and her family had been an integral part of these scenes.

Never could she have imagined that she’d feel like an outsider.

That first night, she kept to herself. She put a hat on and hid her face when she saw anyone who might recognize her.

She slept fitfully, still jet-lagged, and woke up late, feeling dreadful.

How long was she going to wait before contacting Vincent?

Two days? Three? She checked her reflection in the mirror and was petrified to think she looked old! But she was only twenty.

Maybe it was all in her head.

When Charlotte finally got the nerve to go back to the White Oak Lodge, she brought her camera with her and set up her equipment out front.

She wanted to get plenty of shots of the burned-out place, which had been covered in parts with massive protective tarps.

It felt incredible that it was still standing, although, even beneath the tarps, she could make out charred bits. She bit her tongue to keep from crying.