Page 41 of Return to Whitmore
Charlotte laughed and wanted to tell her not to get ahead of herself, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Instead, she said, “Vincent thinks we should try to sell the Lodge.”
This caught Addison and Nina off guard. Nina’s face paled.
“What do you think about that?” Nina asked.
Charlotte pondered for a moment. “I think it’s a piece of our family history. I don’t want to get rid of it.”
Nina nodded furiously, as though that was exactly what she’d wanted to say.
“But it makes me think that we should stop ignoring it,” Charlotte went on delicately. “I mean, it’s just sitting out there, slowly rotting. It isn’t in bad shape.”
“What are you saying?” Nina asked.
“Do you want to open it up?” Addison gasped, her eyes bugging out.
Charlotte felt flustered. “I don’t think we have the money to refurbish it the way it needs.”
They sat in stunned silence for a moment, realizing what an enormous task that would be.
“But I want to make a documentary about it, I think,” Charlotte said, trying to regain excitement. “It’s related to various projects I’ve begun in the past—projects about my real father, about my mother, about the Whitmore family at large. Obviously, something is rotten about our shared history, something that forced our family to the four winds. Maybe if I start asking the right questions, if I start digging around, we can get to the core of it.”
“And maybe we can find Seth. I mean, Jack,” Addison said, her eyes illuminated.
Charlotte nodded. Finding Jack was part of her vision, too. Make him explain himself.
Oh, but she missed him so much. She missed him down to her bones.
The Madequecham Beach house wasn’t made for such an enormous crowd, but Charlotte didn’t want to let anyone go home, certainly not Will and Fiona, as they were fast asleep and needed rest. Addison retired to her bedroom, and Charlotte told Nina she could share a bed with her if she wanted to. Nina said, “I’m so beat that I’ll fall asleep immediately.” As soon as she tucked herself in, she was out like a light.
Charlotte, however, was too invested in a future documentary, at once terrified of it and excited by the prospect of it, imagining shots and potential interviews until she got up and went to the kitchen and began to write herself notes. She didn’t want to leave any idea out.
It was the story of her lifetime, the story she was born to follow. Nina, being an anthropologist, would be a brilliant help. It was wonderful that she wanted to move her children to Nantucket, both to be near Charlotte and their shared past. Charlotte resolved to let them live here at Madequecham Beach, for now. She’d get them out of the rental house near the White Oak Lodge so she could help Nina raise them and drive them to their various soccer practices or ballet performances or whatever it was they did in their free time. Maybe one day, Nina would want to move in with Amos. But Charlotte would be there till then and beyond.
Maybe she was getting ahead of herself.
It was nearly two o’clock in the morning before Charlotte considered going to bed. She closed her notebook and brushed her teeth, trying to calm her mind. When she finally turned toward the hall, however, her phone buzzed in her hand. Sheglanced down to see the caller and nearly dropped it to the ground when she saw MOM.
Charlotte’s heartbeat rocketed. She rerouted to the kitchen and stood and stared at the phone until it stopped buzzing. It was nearly eight in the morning in Italy. Was it possible that her mother had accidentally called her? She waited, biting her tongue, until her phone rang again. It felt like a nightmare. But it also excited Charlotte. It almost felt as though Francesca could sense that Charlotte was “up to no good,” eager to dig deeper into the Whitmore family secrets and expose everything.
It was only when you cleared the past of secrets that you could learn and grow beyond them, Charlotte thought.
Finally, Charlotte answered her mother’s call—in English, just to frustrate her. It was like old times. “Mom, hello. Good morning.”
Francesca didn’t bother with English at all. “Darling, where have you been? It’s been too long since you called me.”
Charlotte couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a conversation. In fact, Charlotte had been too embarrassed to tell her mother about her failed documentaries and diminishing bank account, and Francesca had seemed uncertain as well, unwilling to talk about whatever was going on in her “real” life. Charlotte was pretty sure Francesca still lived at the villa next door to her very old grandparents, maybe with Jefferson Albright and maybe without.
“How are you, Mom?” Charlotte asked, switching to Italian. She was rusty.
“Well, now that you ask, I have to say that I’m rather terrible,” Francesca said.
Charlotte rolled her eyes and sat down at the kitchen table. If she was going to have Francesca in her documentary, she knew she’d have to put up with far more of this. “What happened?”
“Before you say anything about me being an old and wacky woman, I need to say that I didn’t think anything of the man at first,” Francesca said, as though they were already in the middle of a conversation rather than at the start of one.
“What man?”
“He came over because he said he was a gardener,” Francesca said. “I needed a bit of help with the garden. It’s so big, as you may remember, although you haven’t been here in ages. Anyway, I thought he was fully capable of helping out and hired him. It wasn’t till the fourth or fifth day that he began digging around, asking questions. He asked the maid first, asked her how long she’d been working for me.”
