Page 12 of The White Oak Lodge

She couldn’t be in that basement a moment longer.

Nina was extra diligent in putting everything away. Jeremy knew she was a professor from Princeton, and although she wasn’t currently certain about her future at the university, she didn’t want to smudge her once-good name. She checked her phone to see that she’d already been down here a full hour, which meant that Jeremy’s lunch with Alana was running late, the two of them dropping into an ice creamery or kissing on the boardwalk, unable to rip away from one another. Had Daniel and Nina ever been like that with one another? She supposed. But it felt like a story that had happened to somebody else.

When Nina went up the staircase and into the chilly, air-conditioned lobby, her legs wobbled beneath her, nearly toppling her to the tiled floor. Her phone exploded with messages she hadn’t been able to receive down in the basement—some from the divorce lawyer, a couple from Daniel, and two emails from Will and Fiona, which they’d been allowed to write during tech hour at camp. But before Nina had a chance to open anything, the woman at the front counter announced they were closing for the rest of the afternoon.

“It’s a beautiful day!” she said. It meant that she needed Nina to get out of there as soon as possible.

Nina pocketed her phone and booked it out of the Nantucket Historical Archives. She could feel a headache crawling up the back of her neck and threatening to ruin the rest of her afternoon. But when she directed herself back to her car, she spotted someone on the opposite side of the street, drinking a coffee and jotting in a journal. It was Amos, the handyman. Her heart spasmed. She’d known Nantucket to be a teeny-tiny island, a place where everyone knew everyone else, where gossip was like social gasoline, revving everyone forward. But she hadn’t expected to meet the handsome stranger who’d broken into her cabin last night and sat with her in quiet reflection, watching themoon over the Sound. A part of her had put the vision to bed—deciding it was a dream. But here he was.

Nina panged with nerves. On the one hand, she wanted to duck into her car, go back to the cabin, and hatch a plan, one that would unveil why her father and brother didn’t have death certificates and whether their lack of death certificates suggested foul play. Foul play? What am I thinking? The lodge burned down. They were in it. Case closed. Right?

But she saw a cheeseburger special at the little diner Amos was sitting at, six dollars and ninety-nine cents with fries and a soda, and she wanted to drop into a chair across from him and fill herself up. When was the last time she’d eaten anything? She crossed the road and paused in front of his table, trying to make out what he wrote. But before she could, he flinched and looked up, covering his journal with his hand. His eyes melted.

“Nina!” he said.

Nina tried to laugh at herself, at how strange it was that she’d approached him like this. “Hi! I’m sorry. I saw you across the street, and I thought I’d say hi.”

It sounded so sloppy. Could he tell how thrown off she was?

But Amos told her, “I’m so glad. Please. Sit down.”

Nina did. A moment later, a pretty blond woman came out to take her order, and when Amos heard it, he said, “I’ll have the same thing.” The blond woman gave him a funny look, shrugged, and went inside. Nina wanted to ask what that was about, but her head was overstuffed. When the blond woman came back outside, she was carrying two enormous chocolate milkshakes, which she set in front of them, saying, “On the house.”

“Thanks, Stacy,” Amos said.

Nina put her lips around the straw and drank three gulps—more at once than she had in years since she was a girl in Michigan, brokenhearted and nervous, the only child staying at her great-aunt Genevieve’s house. Why hadn’t she been allowedto ask any questions about her parents? Why had her mother never called? Where had her siblings been?

Nina was beginning to question every element of her entire life. What was going on?

“You look like you have something on your mind,” Amos offered.

Nina closed her eyes. A cold chill flushed through her.

“It’s strange to be back,” she whispered.

“I can’t even imagine,” Amos said.

“Did you ever live anywhere else?” Nina asked, forcing herself to open her eyes to look at his shaggy dark curls and the few dog hairs stitched out across his shirtsleeve.

Amos shook his head and let his gaze fall. Nina’s instincts said there was a story there.

And because she was suddenly so exhausted, so sick and tired of her own story, the family she’d never understood and never really known, she asked, “Did you want to leave?” And then she hurried to add, “You don’t have to tell me one way or the other.”

Amos bit his lower lip and cast his eyes toward the yonder harbor, where the turquoise sound glinted gently. Being on an island allowed for a bizarre sensibility. It felt like everything else in the world didn’t exist—that on the mainland, Will and Fiona weren’t running around at summer camp, and Daniel wasn’t off somewhere having celebratory drinks about his tenure status, introducing his mother to the new person in his life.

“I wanted to go,” Amos confessed. “I had ideas about college. But some stuff got in the way.”

Nina felt how ominous this was. A baby? An accident? What could have kept this handsome and charming man behind? What could have forced him into a life of handiwork? Not that there was anything entirely wrong about this life. He was sitting in the sunshine, drinking a milkshake, with seemingly nowhereto go and nothing to do. Wasn’t that everyone’s version of a fantasy?

“I got involved in some bad stuff when I was younger,” he explained. “My parents didn’t have a lot of money, and then my dad died, and, yeah, I don’t know. There was this guy. An older guy. He wasn’t from here, foreign, from Europe, and he roped me and a few of my friends into a kind of mess, I guess.”

Nina was intrigued. She had the sense that Amos never told this story, that he was uncovering pieces of himself that he didn’t necessarily let other people see.

Stacy burst out of the diner with their burgers and fries and set them between them. The smell of tantalizing red meat made Nina’s mouth water. Amos shook his head, seeming to force all attention to the burger instead. It left Nina to wonder if Amos had nearly gone to prison. Had someone manipulated him and altered the course of his life?

That was when she opened her lips as if to take a bite of the burger and said words that she knew might change everything between them.

She said, “My maiden name is Whitmore.”

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