Page 2 of Return to Whitmore
But Francesca remained eerily quiet, her face pinched. Allegra roared Charlotte’s name a third time and threatened to hang up the phone if she didn’t come over there “this minute.” Charlotte burned back up the staircase and into Allegra’s bedroom, which she shared with their other sister Lorelei, who was very slow and without passion painting her toenails. Allegra shoved the phone against Charlotte’s chest. “It’s him,” she said.
Charlotte’s eyes filled with tears. Before he hung up, she raised the receiver and said, “Vincent?”
“Charlotte!” Vincent’s voice was rattly and strained. “I can’t believe I found you.”
“Vincent, can you hold on a minute?” Charlotte asked. “I’m in the middle of a crisis.”
Before Vincent had a chance to answer, Charlotte pressed the receiver against her chest and whispered to Allegra, “Mom is sending Nina away!”
Allegra’s face transformed for a split second, becoming pale and strange. But, in Allegra fashion, she rebounded swiftly and said, “That isn’t really a surprise, is it?”
“We have to do something,” Charlotte shot.
“What do you suggest we do?” Allegra asked. “Dad’s dead. Jack’s dead. I can’t take care of an eleven-year-old by myself, can you?”
“If we all stayed here and watched out for her,” Charlotte sputtered. “If we made a plan?”
“You want to make Mom go back to Italy on her own?” Lorelei asked quietly.
Charlotte felt a stabbing realization. Although she was angry with her, although she couldn’t understand her at all, the last thing she wanted was to lose her mother, too.
“It isn’t fair to Nina,” Charlotte said. “She’s just a kid. She almost died in the fire. I mean, imagine how messed up she is right now!”
Allegra bowed her head, looking thoughtful and reticent in a way, Charlotte thought, that proved she really did love their little sister. Everyone did, except their mother.
Jack had been Nina’s favorite, though.
If only Jack were here, Charlotte thought. All at once, the realization that their brother was dead, their imaginative,spectacular, effervescent brother, sent her reeling. She sat on the edge of Allegra’s bed.
Suddenly, a voice cried out from the receiver. “Charlotte? Charlotte, are you still there?”
Charlotte felt pulled in a thousand directions. Tears spilled from her eyes. When she put the phone to her ear, she breathed, “I’m sorry, Vincent. Everything is so messed up.”
Ordinarily, she would have asked Allegra or Lorelei to give her and Vincent some privacy, but because they had only three bedrooms at the bed-and-breakfast and very limited space and time, she felt trapped.
She could feel Allegra listening, although her eyes were on her book.
“Baby, why didn’t you call me?” Vincent asked, sounding hurt. “I had no idea where you went after the fire. I was terrified that something had happened to you.”
Charlotte remembered how, when she’d realized the White Oak Lodge was in flames, she’d run as fast as she could from Vincent and their celebratory beach bonfire. Calling her name, Vincent had tried to chase her, but she’d been a top track-and-field athlete in her day and was therefore too fast. It was at the edge of the big house that she’d discovered Nina, Nina with a bad cough and a little backpack, Nina, who’d woken up and gotten herself out of the burning building. Nina, her little sister, who was going to be sent away.
On the phone, Vincent was still talking. “There are so many rumors swirling about the Whitmores right now. A few people said that you all ran away to Manhattan or something. They’re saying that your father died. Jack, too?”
Charlotte found it difficult to breathe.
“I asked everyone where you were staying,” Vincent said. “Nobody could tell me anything. But then I just started calling bed-and-breakfasts and hotels. I basically had no hope I wouldfind you. I thought you were long gone. On my sixth one, the guy said he’d heard a rumor you were staying here. I didn’t even let myself believe it.” He let out a sob that he seemed to regret. “Can I come see you?”
“I don’t know if Mom will let us go outside,” Charlotte said, realizing for the first time that her mother was trying to keep her daughters away from the gossip channels.
“Can you sneak out?” Vincent asked. It was what they’d both done all through high school, Charlotte slipping through the window of the White Oak Lodge to leap into Vincent’s crappy and sputtering car.
“I’ll try. Tonight? We can go to our special place?” Charlotte suggested.
Allegra gave her a look that made Charlotte wonder if she planned to tattle on her.But I’m nineteen and she’s twenty-one, Charlotte thought. Weren’t they too old to do that to one another?
The pettiness of the Whitmore sisters prevails.
“See you there,” Vincent said. “I love you, Charlotte.”
