Page 35 of The White Oak Lodge

June 2025

In Amos’s arms, Nina shivered and quaked. There at the edge of the beach on the side of the road, he held her tighter and whispered anything that came to mind, “It’s okay. I’m here. We’re in this together.” Slowly, Nina’s anxiety seemed to ease out of her, and she shifted away from him to look into his eyes. As though she didn’t want to be far from him, her hands remained stretched out on his chest. She said, “You have to believe me. I didn’t know he’d be there.” She meant that hideous man, Daniel. She meant her soon-to-be ex-husband. Amos wasn’t keen on violence, but he’d fantasized about punching Daniel in the jaw. (He never would have done it with the children right next door. He probably wouldn’t have done it at all.)

“What was in the letter?” Amos asked, trying not to let his nerves show.

Tears drizzled down Nina’s cheeks. “A lot. A lot of things.” She laughed.

“Is it true about this Whitmore fortune?” Amos asked.

Nina raised her shoulders. “I don’t know. I really don’t. But what I do know is that the mother I always thought was my mother isn’t my mother.”

Amos’s ears rang. “Francesca isn’t your mother? Who is?”

“I don’t know!” Although she looked emotionally rattled, Nina let out another laugh. “But my husband of thirteen years kept that from me! How did I let myself marry someone like that? How did I spend so many nights in his bed? How did I have his children?”

Amos smoothed her hair. “You can’t think about that right now.”

“How can I stop?”

A few cars whizzed past and swept Nina’s hair to the side. How many times had Amos thoughtshe’s beautiful, just as Francesca was? But apparently, the two women didn’t share a single gene. Amos was especially surprised he’d never heard this piece of gossip. This sort of thing should have spread like wildfire on an island the size of Nantucket.

“I need to get him out of here,” Nina breathed.

“He wants that fortune,” Amos said.

“There is no fortune,” Nina shot back.

Amos’s chest heaved with memories of that dark staircase, the locked rooms, the secret passageways he knew lurked beneath the White Oak Lodge.

“Listen, Nina,” Amos stuttered. “There are things about the past. Things I need to tell you.”

But Nina seemed too lost in her head to hear him. “Sure. Yes. We can talk about that. But first, I need to get Daniel out of here. Help me think. Do I have any rights here? Can I threaten him somehow?”

But Amos felt ill-equipped to help. This wasn’t exactly his area of expertise.

“I’m going to call my lawyer,” Nina said. She reached for her phone, breaking the intensity of their hug. Amos let his arms hang and followed her, snaking back down the beach toward the cabin on stilts. As Nina pressed her phone to her ear, Amos practiced in his head how he’d tell her about what he’d been up to during the summer of 1998. There was so much he didn’t understand. He was just a kid. Things were complicated. Everyone wanted so much. Everyone was greedy. Everything fell apart.

It felt foolish, even in his head.

Amos listened to Nina talk on the phone with her lawyer. In a terse tone, Nina explained that Daniel had removed the kids from camp and broken into her cabin. She explained that he’d hidden things about her past from her for the entirety of their marriage. She explained that she didn’t want him anywhere near their children, nor to her. “He’s supposed to be in South America right now,” she said, sounding at the end of her rope. “He isn’t supposed to be stalking me.”

They reached the porch of the cabin. Nina thanked her lawyer three times in a row, with an edge to her voice that made Amos think she’d found a solution. But when she hung up, she lowered her head and said, through gritted teeth, “She says it’s tricky because we aren’t officially separated. We haven’t filed anything. The fact that my husband entered the cabin with our children when I wasn’t here—it’s not going to look so strange to a cop without proving a whole lot of other things.”

Nina bit her finger and stared at the door. It was clear she didn’t want to go through it.

After a long time, Amos offered, “He doesn’t know that.”

Nina looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“You could tell him that your lawyer said you could file a restraining order immediately,” Amos said. “You could threaten him with one.”

Under her breath, Nina said, “I hate lying.”

Amos said, “It’s not really a lie. But maybe you have to take a page from his book. Just for a little while.”

Nina grimaced and reached out to touch Amos’s shoulder. “You should go home.”

“I’m not going to leave you alone with him,” Amos promised.

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