Page 13 of Return to Whitmore
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 thatlinked 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 thatsomething 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.
