Page 5 of The White Oak Lodge

“It seems to me that knowledge is never a bad thing,” Amos said.

Nina lowered her eyes. “You’d be surprised.”

Amos took a sip of wine and watched as moonlight fluttered through the waves. “There are a lot of universities up in Jersey. Which one is yours?”

Nina grimaced. “Princeton.”

Amos nearly dropped his glass of wine. “You’re kidding me.” It wasn’t that he’d ever been there or known anyone who’d been there. He hadn’t ever pulled for one of their sports teams or read about their assuredly important work in research. But he’d heard of Princeton. He knew of its prestige. Who hadn’t?

Nina waved her hand. “It looks good on paper, but trust me, it has the same problems as every other university. Maybe it has even more.”

“How did you end up there?”

Nina looked like she didn’t want to talk about this anymore, either. She stretched her legs out far in front of her and let her face melt into something languid and soft. Amos allowed himself—briefly—to pretend that he and Nina were a married couple, that they’d met in university at the age of nineteen, and that their children were sleeping in the next room. It was a life so many other people were allowed to enjoy. Why had it passed him by? But Nina was a stranger, a Nantucket-born PrincetonUniversity professor who was probably here to do something important and very beyond him. Amos’s heart slowed. He knew if he stayed there a moment longer, it’d break. So he finished off his glass of wine, stood, and said, “I better get out of your hair.”

Nina looked about to protest, about to tell him to sit down, that she had another bottle of wine chilling in the fridge. But instead, she nodded and got up to guide him to the front door. They laughed about how they’d met with the air of people who’d never see one another again. When Amos stepped out the door, he could feel Nina watching him as he cut into the dark down the road back to his cabin.

Chapter Three

Nina

July 2012

On the day of Nina Whitmore’s wedding to Daniel Plymouth, Nina’s soon-to-be mother-in-law spent nearly forty-five minutes reminding Nina that it was okay that she didn’t have any family to invite because the Plymouths were her family now. “And it’s not like the Whitmores were ever a decent family to you!” Fluttering around the salon, her hair in curlers, her makeup half done so that she had one very thick eyebrow and one very slender one, Deborah Plymouth presented the facts of Nina’s life as though she were a haughty political candidate, reminding Nina, “After you lost your great-aunt, I know you had nobody to reach out to, and I know your family is scattered to the four winds. We just want you to know that we’ll fill both aisles, love. You don’t have to worry about being an embarrassed bride. You will have plenty of love.”

Until that moment, it had never fully occurred to Nina to be embarrassed by how few wedding guests were invited, specifically from her own life. Since she’d met Daniel at Princeton, she’d fallen so completely into his world, his friends, his family, that she’d nearly forgotten that back in Michigan, she’d been raised by Great-Aunt Genevieve and had a shadow of a life, just a few acquaintances, and buckets and buckets of dreams. Nantucket was a thing of the past—and more like a nightmare than anything else. But apparently, Deborah was very much aware of the difficult nature of Nina’s past and here, just three hours before the ceremony, wanted to remind Nina all about it. Did that mean Daniel had spoken to Deborah about Nina’s family? What had he told her? Had he told her about the White Oak Lodge? But Nina had only told Daniel what she knew—which wasn’t a lot.

But it didn’t matter, Nina reminded herself. Daniel and Nina were in love and preparing to pledge that love to one another in front of two hundred and fifteen guests, most of whom, Daniel had told her, were “social acquaintances” of his parents, people who’d come from money and were prepared to keep that money and social standing no matter what. The fact that Daniel had studied anthropology had ruffled a few feathers, of course, because where was the money in that? But his parents soon understood that a life of intellectual pursuits and academia very much fit in with their social structure, and they were often caught bragging about their son, his big brain, and his future as a professor, for sure at Princeton because where else? The fact that his fiancée was supposedly going to be an anthropology professor too was not something they talked about, presumably because they thought she’d give it up and have some kids and be a Plymouth wife—a strong and good-hearted creature whose place was far off campus, probably in the kitchen.

This was something that Nina and Daniel sometimes laughed about, mostly because everyone knew that Nina was the prize-winning anthropology student and Daniel was not. “You’re the brains,” Daniel teased her, “and I’m in it for the tweed suits.”

Not that Nina didn’t think Daniel was brilliant. She wouldn’t have had any interest in him were it not for his wonderful mind, his zipping thoughts, their hours-long conversations that ran deep into the night about all things anthropology: language and culture, heritage and identity, migration and diaspora, and so on. Nina’s few friends—who were also at university and therefore also Daniel’s friends—liked to say that Nina and Daniel would be impossible partners for anyone outside of their field. But it was that way for most graduate students, Nina knew. Once you became obsessed with something, it was all you could see in the world. Daniel fit into that picture.

Nina walked down the aisle at two thirty in the afternoon and performed all the rituals of a beautiful East Coast bride. She said her vows, kissed her husband, and talked endlessly with people whose names she would never remember, people she would maybe see again at Christmas or birthday parties or maybe never again. She shoved cake lightly into Daniel’s mouth and accepted his cake-shoving, laughing and drinking more champagne. She was caught in the splendor of a life she’d never imagined would be hers, not after the fire at the White Oak Lodge, and she hardly gave herself time to remember her own family, the family she hadn’t known since she was eleven years old. When she and Daniel danced to their first song, he kissed her cheek gently and whispered, “This is all I’ve ever wanted.”

That night, Daniel carried Nina over the threshold of the honeymoon suite and set her on the mattress so that the skirt of her elaborate wedding dress went all around her.

“I feel like a doily,” she joked.

Daniel kissed her collarbone, her forehead, and her ear. “You look like my beautiful bride,” he told her.

Nina closed her eyes and was suddenly plagued with the image of her mother and father, dancing together on the sands in front of the White Oak Lodge as a copper sun dunked into the water behind them, her mother’s hair black and sweeping, her father’s hand large and powerful on her mother’s back. Nina opened her eyes and shook the image out. Be in the moment, she reminded herself, kissing her husband and embracing her future. The Whitmores were gone, and this was all she had.

That night, twisted up in one another’s limbs in a beautiful embrace, Nina swept her fingers through his thick black chest hair and laughed with Daniel about their wedding guests, about the faux pas they’d made, about the silly gifts they’d gotten, and about Daniel’s mother, who’d wanted all eyes on her as much as possible throughout the reception. “She’s a diva,” Nina whispered. “She told me she thinks it’s insane that we’re pushing back the honeymoon. But come on! We’re both writing our theses. We need to be here. We need to work.”

They planned to travel to South America next year—Chile and Argentina—to study various mountainous tribes and write additional research papers, thus elevating their theses in ways that would, they hoped, escalate their tracks to becoming professors and, later, to securing tenure. Their plan was to help one another through their academic trials and deepen their understanding of the anthropological world. They'd decided that trip to South America would serve as their honeymoon. Nina thought this was endlessly romantic.

But now, the glint in Daniel’s eye told her he was up to something. “I had an idea about that,” he said.

Nina struggled to keep from groaning. She wanted to say,your parents didn’t give you money to force you to take me on a honeymoon, did they?But she kept it in.

“Come on, Nina,” Daniel said, touching her hair. “We only get married once, right? We need to celebrate.”

Nina groaned again and reminded Daniel of all the work she’d planned for the month of August, the long hours she’d spent at the library outlining her thesis paper and reading testimonials from previous anthropologists who’d traveled through South America, the huge chunks of time required of her to sit in rooms and think. “I just don’t see how we can honeymoon anywhere when I have that lined up for myself,” she said, “and I thought you had similar plans?”

Daniel assured her he did. “The honeymoon I have in mind isn’t too far,” he explained.

Nina’s stomach churned with anxiety. She got out of bed and poured herself a glass of water, feeling Daniel’s eyes follow her around the room. Her feet were bare, and she was suddenly chilly. She tugged a fluffy hotel robe from the closet and pulled it around her shoulders. “I take it you want it to be a surprise,” she said finally, recognizing Daniel’s expression as one he’d worn when he’d thrown her a surprise birthday party or taken her out to dinner without telling her where they were going.

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